The Broody - Learning Experience #528

I have had the amazing pleasure, over the last few months, of having a couple of broody hens. It has been so fun and yet another learning experience. 

So, it all started with Pepper. Pepper is our Bantam Silkie and sweet roo who is too small to mate most of our hens. So, to save the ones he can reach from overmating, we decided to get a couple ladies for him. I contacted the person we got Pepper from and asked if she had any Silkie girls we could buy. She had two Partridge ladies and apparently one of them was currently broody, but without eggs.

I picked them up a night or so later and the seller was kind enough to throw some call duck eggs my way, for the broody. I got them home and set them both up in our small coop, to get them integrated, and popped the call duck eggs underneath the broody (she is now known as Coco). Over the next couple of weeks, the ladies hung out together and Coco stayed on those eggs, doing a wonderful job. Wookie (the non-broody lady) came out to play with the rest of the chickens and was immediately welcomed (by Pepper, in particular) or ignored. It was perfect. Meanwhile, Coco plugged away with seven fertile eggs.

It was about day 30 when they decided to pip, but remain inside the eggs. One of them ended up with a broken up egg and died and two others didn't make it either, so Coco hatched out four tiny, tiny Call Duck babies. 

Then, despite them all being isolated from everyone else, in our small coop, the first two ducklings to hatch disappeared (see the sweet picture above). My husband and I looked everywhere, but eventually came to the conclusion that a snake had gotten itself a solid meal. We immediately removed the poultry wire, since they were locked in a secure run, we had only worried about the other chickens getting to them, and attached some hardware cloth all around, plugging up any tiny holes. It worked, and the two remaining babies stuck with their mommy tight.

As this was my first broody, I was unsure what to expect and totally unaware of how good of a Mommy chickens are. Coco was amazing to these babies. They are much bigger than she is now and would still be cuddling with her at night if it wasn't for her hatching some more babies right now. 

One of my more entertaining moments with Coco and her babies was when she decided they needed a bath and tried to teach them dust bathing.  The poor babies didn't know what was going on. So, I ended up picking up the ducklings and taking them inside for a bath, while Coco took some time to soak in her dirt for a bit. 

Next up was Wookie, the other Silkie hen who went broody a few weeks after Coco hatched her ducklings. We didn't have any fertile eggs for her and I was unsure if we really wanted to let her hatch any - for about a second - then I called a local farm and asked if they had any fertile eggs. They did and I ran out and grabbed a dozen. I put them all under Wookie and decided to let her decide how many she could handle. In the end, 7 of them stayed under her and developed. She hatched out all 7 babies, but two of them she pushed away and they died while still wet. She apparently knew something the rest of us didn't, so five babies it was.

Wookie was an amazing Mommy, teaching them how to eat, bath, everything that a Mommy does. They decided to hatch on the coldest day of the year and since the other two had died cold, I brought Wookie and her brood inside for about a week, to ride out the 10 degree weather in the warmth. 

Now, when the babies made it to about four weeks old, we came home and Wookie has disappeared. We have been doing a few things to keep hawks away, but it wasn't enough. Two days after Wookie disappeared, her baby, Lemon, also disappeared. With the loss of Wookie, we fenced in a shaded area and hung owl reflectors. When we lost Lemon, we hung more pie plates and kept a closer watch. Then we had a third attack. I was home during the day and heard the crows outside. I went out to watch everyone and saw the hawk sitting in my yard, she had grabbed another baby, my favorite one, Izzy the roo. I was able to get him back, but he was too badly injured and died shortly after. 

At that point, I brought out the big guns (not literally). We built a scarecrow and multiple coverage areas (cool gazebo below) for them to hide under. It didn't take log for the doodles to figure it all out and we have not lost anymore, thank goodness.

So, today, Coco is hatching another batch, this time it's her own eggs, fertilized by Pepper, the Silkie roo. We have two that have appeared so far and I am anxiously waiting on the remaining five eggs.

So, here's what I have learned about the broody hen:

1. They are WAY better at hatching eggs than I am. Balancing the heat and humidity is not my forte. I can manage to hatch a couple of eggs here and there, but a broody knows what she's doing. The Call Ducks were Coco's first set and she was eight months old at the time. She did great.
2. When babies are outside, instead of inside the house in a brooder, you have to think of snakes and animals that will only go for babies. This batch Coco is hatching today is completed enclosed in a small coop with hardware cloth. I found a hole about the size of a silver dollar and cut a small piece of cloth for it too. No risks!
3. Hawks love bantams and teenage chicks as well. I have never lost a standard hen to a hawk and my ducks do fine as well, but the little ones are fair game. When these get bigger, they will only be out under my watchful eye until they are grown.
4. Watching a broody teach their babies after the hatch is simply wonderful. The safety and comfort they give is beautful. 
5. This was kind of sad, but wonderful as well - if a Silkie Mommy disappears or dies, a Silkie Daddy will step in and take care of the babies just as well. When Wookie disappeared, Pepper stepped in and he did everything she did, including sitting on them at night for warmth. Even though they're too big now at 9 weeks, they still snuggle with Daddy every night.

And here is Coco with her beautiful first baby chick, the only egg that wasn't hers. This is Mabel, our 1/2 Sapphire 1/2 Pepper baby. 

Doodle Review: Once Upon a Flock

When I first dove into the world of backyard chicken-keeping, the connection I felt to my ladies and the desire to just sit, drink coffee, and watch them was something I wasn't sure spoke for a healthy mental state.  I found myself fascinated by their individuality and quirky behaviors. It didn't take me long to realize that, even though I had gotten chickens of all the same breed and color, they were very different and needed names, something I hadn't considered initially. It also wasn't long, before I was completely in love. The author, Lauren Scheur, perfectly validates this experience in Once Upon a Flock: Life With My Soulful Chickens. 

Much like Lauren, I not only love my flock, but I also have a love for power tools and being outside in my backyard. Creating and learning has been one of my favorite parts of keeping chickens and is clearly hers as well. She breaks out the books and tools when she gets an idea, even building a small, low to the ground coop for a special needs chicken, much like one we built for our Cornish X hen we couldn't bring ourselves to have for dinner. She even has a Buff Orpington who acts like a weenie, just like mine. 

This sweet, easy to read, book is something everyone who has a small backyard flock should read. The author deals with different personalities, broodiness, health issues, and the surprise of having a boy when you don't want to annoy your neighbors. A delightful addition to the stories are her illustrations. She manages to weave words, photography and these perfect drawings to lure the reader into loving her flock as much as she does. I read this book in two evenings and I highly recommend you do the same.

Processing Your Chickens

I am not a vegetarian, but I am an animal lover. I do not believe those two things are mutually exclusive. My husband and I have several pets and we love each and every one of them and believe they deserve a loving home. I also believe that animals we eat should be treated humanely until that point where it's time for dinner. So, following this belief system, I thought having birds that we raise for meat would be something that would be fine. I love the idea of really knowing where my food comes from and being a chicken person now, I thought, I eat chicken, so I can kill a chicken. But the reality in my head turned out to be much different than the reality of having chickens in my backyard. 

I have, after much research, googling, and an acceptance of my heebie-jeebies, am finally owning that I will not ever have meat chickens that I kill or eat myself. My chickens will always have names and lives as long as they would like in my backyard. The local grocery co-op sells birds that are packaged by a local Amish farm that are both affordable and delicious, so that's what I'll be going with when I want some good chicken.

In doing research on this topic, one thing I discovered is that it's not really easy to find people who will process small numbers of birds for you and this is important if you are not able or willing to do it yourself. There is this Directory provided by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, but it appears that not all places are listed. So, for the rest of you (I'm a little jealous), here's a list of additional places in Kentucky that I have seen recommended for processing birds.

1. David Miller at Hamilton Valley Poultry Processing on Hamilton Valley Rd in Garrard County. (859) 925-9871 From Lancaster take 52 towards Paint Lick ..look for hwy 954 turn on to it go about 3 miles you will pass a blue bldg as soon as you pass it make a right turn and follow that road you will come to a Y turn left and follow that road for about 4 miles or so you will see a sign that says Hamilton Valley Poultry Processing on your left. They charge 3.50 per chicken. FDA inspected.  leave him a message and he is really good at calling back. They process on Tuesday's and Thursday's.

2. The Meat Shop - (606) 365-3800 - 95 White Oak Rd., Lancaster, KY - http://www.themeatshopinc.com/ We can process you home grown beef or hog. For those Deer Hunters process deer, make summer sausage and jerky. We also sell retail meat.

3. Taylorsville Butcher's Block - (502) 354-0168 - 226 Taylorsville Rd, Taylorsville, KY. http://www.faulknermeats.com/ We at Taylorsville Butcher Block thrive on customer satisfaction! We will do anything to make the customer happy! We offer custom and USDA processing, along with retail sales to the public! All of our Meat is fresh never frozen, and top quality. We also offer deer processing! If we dont have something in stock, we will do our best to find it for you and offer it in our store!

This is just a few so far. Please, if you know of any others that are not in the KYAgr directory or above, let me know!

The Heebie Jeebies

I have had a variety of pets over my lifetime; my Elly, various cats, fish, mice(blech), hermit crabs, a snake, a gecko, fish...and now my chickens. It's mostly very entertaining and wonderful to love something that adores you back, much like your kids used to before they realized you are imperfect. One thing having pets provide you is grossness. I don't mean threw-up-on-the-floor gross. I raised two kids who are very prone to car sickness, puke is a breeze. I'm talking about having a dead bird brought in as a gift or trying to keep the dog from eating the chicken poop or (and this is my favorite) a cat that pees where She thinks is best, regularly, no matter what you do to convince her otherwise. Never would I have imagined that I would have to change my clothes (more than once, folks) because I realized I smelled of cat pee. 

Having chickens has escalated me into another realm entirely; taking care of dead pets. In my head, I knew this would happen more often with chickens as they can be tough and very fragile, at the same time. Their life spans tend to be shorter and if I'm going to hatch, I'm going to be dealing with babies with issues. I'm also not a vegetarian and had this idea that maybe getting chickens we would use as meat would be great. So, in my head, this was fine and I was going to take a deep breath and take care of business. I wasn't going to call my husband and ask him to handle all the dead things. 

I can do this! Roar!

Ok, so the first loss was Rufus, my sweet Jersey Giant cockerel, at about three months. I came home and he was obviously sick and keeping away from everyone. I climbed into the coop and sat with him, trying to figure things out. I isolated him and did some healthcare type things, but it was too late. 

So, the next morning, I go out to the coop to check on him and the very second I realized he was dead, my sweet Rufus that I carried around and adored, became a dead chicken. It was the heebie jeebies, big time. I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about. That feeling that comes over you and you want to run in circles while desperately shaking your hands and the rest of you like something is attached to your skin and you are desperate to get it off. Just, get it off! Yeah, that was me. I wasn't feeling sad at that second, I felt grossed out, which immediately fed into the guilt I already had wondering how I had lost him. 

I ran inside and asked my 17-year-old son if he could help. He's been hunting with his dad and is a guy (yes, I unabashedly played the gender card here), so this should be a cinch. He said, "absolutely, mom" and got up and went outside. He's a good kid. But the second he stuck his head in the coop, it was the heebie jeebies for him too. We looked at each other and knew immediately we had to wait for my husband and he would have to take care of Rufus for me. He did this willingly and with ease, then we buried him (Rufus, not my husband) in the back of the yard with a sweet moment, while I stood back from the dead chicken.

I was kind of ashamed, but at the same time, we agreed that I would continue to take care of the puke and my husband would do dead things. 

At the same time we got Rufus, we also were given a chick that I thought was a white Plymouth Rock and we named her Amelia. Amelia turned out to be a meat bird, a Cornish X. By the time we realized it, we had named her and found her interesting, so when people asked why we had a 15 pound chicken waddling around, that was my excuse; we'd named her. Truthfully though, I just couldn't do it. I googled putting down chickens, read all the ways I could do this, but I truly just couldn't. She grew to seven months old and was in the summer heat when I realized that she wasn't just big, she was struggling to breath. I had given her a quality of life and she'd been a hoot to have around, but keeping her alive at this point was cruel. 

I once again turned to Google for ways I could put Amelia down myself, but I knew deep down there was no way it was happening. So I called a neighbor that I knew sometimes bought live chickens for dinner and gave her to them. I know she was killed quickly and used as dinner, that is a good thing. 

So, in between these moments, I have lost a few chicks as well. The first one I  

asked my husband to do something with and he did. The second one I cared for until it died with me and found I had no issues with it at all. I carried it's little body to a bag and was able to dispose of it. It was sad, but it was rescued from poor care, so I suspected there would be a couple of losses. 

We've lost a chick to hen pecking once (that was a super sad lesson for me on integrating chicks with chickens) and I was able to actually put this one down. It was injured in a permanent and bad way and I was able to do it quickly with a hatchet. I felt so horrible for the pain it had to be in that I didn't struggle, but that was as far as I could go. The second it was down, the heebie jeebies kicked in and I ran for it while calling my husband to take care of the dead baby.

And we get to today. I went home for my lunch break and found an older chick of

mine dead with it's insides not inside it anymore. We can't quite figure out what happened, but I suspect a couple of cats that wander my neighborhood. They haven't bothered the chickens before, but this pullet was a bantam, very small and with a small injury already. I was able to use the shovel and put it in a plastic tub that was then set in the trash. I was very proud of myself and I managed it with minimum grossed out feeling, but I was sad.

So, the point of all these little stories is to share a couple of theories I have about the heebie jeebies:

1. There's nothing wrong with them. There are folks that don't have them and can pick up the dead whatever, scoop up the entrails and call it a day. That's fine for them, but I think Not being like that is a good thing. We're not yet in a zombie apocalypse, so until then, I choose acceptance over change.
2. I think the heebie jeebies help me grieve. Losing an animal (even a chicken for those of you who've never had one) can be profoundly sad and heartbreaking. Having a moment in that grief to be grossed out gives me a little emotional break, which I appreciate.

For me, taking care of a creature is something I take seriously and I want to do it well. My husband and I name every creature we have, including most of the fish. We find them all unique and interesting and if we lose one, for whatever reason, it just sucks. Because of this, instead of fighting the heebie jeebies, as of today, I've decided to be okay with them. I'm not going to feel ashamed that my chicken I hatched and babied is now a dead thing and I'm feeling all 'ew'. I'm going to be glad that I'm feeling that instead of overwhelmed by sadness that another creature has left my home.