Late February Chicken Update

With the really cold weather temps in December that continued into early January, the older Welsummers stopped laying again.  In February, I decided to give them one more month to get back on track.  After the Christmas temps/storm, we begin to notice more and more pest issues. Then we started noticing that we were going through more feed. Soon, we noticed that their water was getting fouled quickly because the varmints eating the chicken feed were climbing the waterer to get into the feeder.  

I wondered if the pests were contributing to the older hens' laying issues.  Two of the new hens were also not laying well.  So, we now take the feed out of the pens each night when the hens roost, and bring it out early in the morning when the hens are up (about 6 am). We do know that the hens will chase any small mice that get into their pens, when they are awake. Took almost a month, but the older Welsummers are back to laying eggs. We are getting about 1 per day from the three of them. So that's better. They were almost stew pot poultry, because I had decided I would only wait until the first weekend of March for them to start laying again.  Another upside to the removing food at night is that we are not going through as much feed now. "Imagine that?" LOL 

Older hens will be either sold, or slaughtered in about three to four months, anyway. We need to make room for the new chicks.  We got three Rhode Island Red pullet chicks last weekend. We also picked up six Cornish Cross this weekend. 

Weather-wise, it is super cold again after starting February with some spectacular warm temps. It was in the 60s F the first weekend of Feb. What a cre-azy weather month. Last week the temps started dropping in to 30s during the day and 20s at nights. Then we received, all told, about a foot of snow this past week. However, the most snow on the ground on any given day was about 6 inches.  Finally melting and almost all gone. I didn't have any batteries for my camera and didn't get any pix of the snow when it was happening. This is all that is left now. But we may get more this weekend. 

That was a lot of Snow for February!

New chicks are all snuggled together in a small pen to keep them safe and warm until the temps in the garage are warmer. The Rhode Island Reds are about 10 days while the Cornish Cross are about four days. We will put them into a larger pen when we no longer need to control the pen (brooder) temps. 

First Photo of the Day

New brooder warmer; long story. Short version is that we could not find the power connector for the brooder warming plate and to order one takes more than a week to receive. But, I could get a new warmer shipped overnight delivery. So, yah, different warmer and it is keeping the babies nice and warm. Still waiting for the power cord. [Ugh] For now, it is the one warmer to be shared by all. Thankfully, the Cornish X are about the same size as the 10-day-old Rhode Island Reds. 

Snuggled under the Warming Plate

The rest of the photos from last night. 

Cornish Cross meet Rhode Island Red

Peeking out from the Warmth

Poop is Always Happening

The First Welsummer Molt

The Welsummers stopped egg production this week and have settled into their first molting season. Time to freeze up the older eggs for use later over the next month or we will be purchasing eggs again this year, which we did NOT like doing last year.  We have no new pullets becoming new layers, so there will definitely be a production lapse again this year.  

The problem that we encountered last year was the fact that the Welsummers were so slow in their laying maturity, that it caused us to cool our heels. Also, if I remember correctly, the Orloffs went into the molt earlier season last year which seems to last longer, but I could be wrong. Regardless, we need to be more prepared, not sell the few remaining dozens that we have, and freeze the older eggs so that we have a back up eggs to tap into next month. 

When I start freezing them, I will try to remember to take some photos of the process.

The Blending Experiment Failed

The combining of the Orloffs failed. The three Orloffs were pretty cruel to the one transitioning Orloff. They made her sleep on the floor at night, or in the nesting box. She spent most of her day in the nestbox to try to protect what feathers she had left. The brutes were picking all the feathers out of her back and neck. 

The humane solution was to put her back in with the Welsummers, who were all too pleased to have her back. The Welsummers truly missed her as their "dominant" hen. So, yah, that attempt to combine the remaining Orloffs was not successful. 

The Wellsummers are starting to molt, as well.  The egg production has slowed down to one per day from that pen. It will be interesting to see how the Welsummers molt since we have never experienced the molting season with them. They are starting to look pretty scraggly, but not anything, yet, as scraggly as the Orloffs look 

We were talking about transitioning out of the Orloffs this next spring to raise meat birds along with just a few Welsummers.  A small flock of four or five would probably be perfect for our needs. The Orloffs are too easily stressed out with the rains and heat. While they do fine with the really cold temps, the Welsummers also do fine with the type of winters that we have. We may just get a couple of new Welsummers next spring, and thin out the aging Orloffs that have slowed down on their egg production.

The Mystery Plants of Spring

Every year, we discover an/other new plant(s) on our property. Some years, they are noxious, and poisonous weeds. But sometimes, they are productive plants.  Then, there are always the plants and things that come back year after year, no matter what we do. Such as Blackberries.  The fact that the winter temps hardly dipped below freezing this year, the blackberries are growing faster than we can dig them up. We will need to get a backhoe to get these beauties! We have almost acre of berry coverage. Ugh! This is a view of about a third of the blackberries.  I don't know if you can tell, based on Lucky, but these bushes are up to six feet tall in some areas. Ugh again!

 

We found an interesting blooming tree in our field that we had not noticed until this year. It's an Apple tree!  We assume that Lucky (the horse) planted and nourished that tree in a pile of horse apples. hahaha  I think we have another young apple tree out there.  We will see if Lucky lets it live.

 

We also discovered an ash tree that has survived the horse in the field.  Most times, the young trees don't survive because Lucky loves to chew on the bark, push on the tree as a scratching post, eat the leaves, etc. To see these trees growing quite tall out there is an unusual find! We also have holly trees and some types of sticker bush trees that Lucky avoids and we try to pull them out at least once a year. 

 

Today was a beautiful spring day. Not too hot and not too cool. Gentle breeze and the garden is loving it. This is a photo of my favorite shade tree. It's a maple tree.  I guess I just never realized just how much pollen this tree produces! Wheeee! All those yellow buds are enough to cause me to sneeze. 

Late last fall, we threw out some ground cover seed where we pasture the chickens and the other discovery today was a bunch of oats! Oh boy, are the chickens gonna love this new plant. 

That pretty much brings you up to speed on the findings for the season. 

Garden is great. Strawberries, Blueberries, Peach, Cherry and Apple Trees (that we planted last year) survived the winter.  Garlic survived. Onions did not. I had to replant from seed and they are so tiny that I opted to purchase a handful of onion bulbs for this year. Red and Blue potatoes have good growth. Yukon and White potatoes are planted, but not out of the ground yet. Spinach is doing quite well.  Lettuce has just started. Peas are late. Got a late start and I think something ate most of the seeds out of the soil. I planted some more, in the green house to try to get more for replanting. Planted first row of carrots and dill. Starting basil and parsley in the green house. Got another garden area ready for planting corn in a month. Will plant more carrots, plus beans at that same time. We have our gardening thumbs on. 

No chicks this year.  We are going to wait until next spring to get some more.  We have eaten the old hens and they were very flavorful! The Wellsummers and the Orloffs are producing very well this spring. The wet sloggy winter cut down on the production. We ended up adding pro-biotics to their water for a few weeks to get them to feeling better. 

We do have request for a couple of turkey chicks at the farm store this year.  I decided we would try to raise a couple of turkeys for the holidays. So that will be our "adventure" for this year.

A little sneachta with that New Year

Our "official" winter, thus far, has been cold but not a lot of precipitation in our area, so that's been nice! The east winds have been whipping through with 30 mph gusts that drop the temps from barely freezing to brrrrrr. So we put up wind break panels on the chicken runs. You may notice that we have clear plastic strapped on the top parts of the pens to allow sunshine in but keep the elements off the center of the runs. This only helps on snowy days, like today, or when there's a light rain.  Heavy duty rains, of course, can turn the run into a real muck fest, so we throw out some hay to keep that manageable. 

Also, you may be able to see a block on top of a garbage can lid near the corner of coop two. That's to help protect the power cord connections from the elements to bring light and water heaters to life on these dark, cold winter days.  Coop one, in the background of coop two is empty. If you look in the "space" next to the wind break of coop three, you can see one of the Welsummers peeking out to see what's flashing?  :) 

Coop 2

Coop 3

Checked on the garlic and onions.  Garlic stems look fine.  Can't find any onion stems. Hoping that's normal and they will be back in the spring. We will see.  I have enough seeds left to plant more onions in the spring, if necessary.  That's it for the New Year 2016 update. 

Update on our efforts to combine the Welsummers with the remaining Russian Orloff in coop three.  I think it was about November 10 that we shoved the Welsummers into the coop in the dark of night and kept our fingers crossed.  While two of the Welsummers did fairly well with the transition, the smallest of the Wellsummers was bullied by the primary Russian Orloff.  We kept that Orloff because she was the best layer of the group. And, she still is the best layer, laying almost every day after finishing the molt. The smallest Welsummer even pushed her way out of the pen one day to get away from the Orloff! She was a mess! She ended up with a bloodied comb, losing all her tail feathers and neck feathers. We were not certain she was even going to make it through the week! Although she still avoids the Orloff, she is now being allowed to roost with the other three hens at night together. She has regained her feathers, her weight and is no longer getting beat up. She even laid her first egg since the transition on December 31. So, all in all, it took some time, but the hens are all back in action as a new flock.

Welsummer Layers are Back

Despite the troubling start to merging the one remaining Orloff with the three Welsummers in coop 3, the distress appears to have settled down. The smallest of the Welsummers is regaining her tail feathers and has found a spot on the nightly roost. That Orloff has been literally laying an egg per day for the past week! The Welsummers have been leaving us one to two eggs per day since December 18, so I think we are back to getting a decent number of eggs.  Of the eight layers that we have, we are getting at least three to four eggs per day!  So we are short a couple eggs per day, overall, but that's fine. We still have enough eggs left over to sell off to friends. One Orloff in coop two continues to lay her eggs in the corner of the coop, just outside of the nesting box. :)  

Weather continues to be a sloggy mess, but the winds have been coming in from SW making temps stay above 40F in our area. We may get some snow in a few days.  

The 12-week Moult is Done

Finally! The Orloff hens in Coop Two have finally started laying eggs again!  They started molting about the 2nd week of September and in the past two days, we have received 2 nice eggs.  Big Sigh of Relief there!  I really think this very hot summer was just too much for them so they molted twice as long as typical. 

The Welsummers have yet to lay any new eggs since being consolidated into coop three. That was two weeks ago. One of the Welsummers is super low hen on the pecking stick. She's finding creative ways to avoid the other hens' pecking by hiding behind the water pail and fighting back when necessary while making a mad dash for the feed when the other hens get in the coop.  Hopefully, she will be able to regain her weight and strength soon.  

Coyotes are coming right up to the house with the colder weather creeping in. We've been locking the hens in at about 6:00 p.m.  The light set-up that I created for the two coops this year seems to be holding the lights in place without allowing the hens to knock them down. I have the timers inside of a hard plastic casing. This year, we have the lights coming on at 4:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 p.m., because last year, the ladies would not go to roost until the light would go out at 8:00! This makes it easier to corral them in as it is getting cold at dusk.   Live and learn what works for us.

Last weekend, we prepared the garlic and onions ground with old hay to help prevent deep freezing. It looks like we have about 10 garlic and about 15 onions.  Hoping  they make it through to spring.

Sweet Peppers and Eggs

Our local temps have cooled way off and now we are getting much needed rain. This is a nice relief to all of us, chickens included.  The chickens are laying more eggs now, with the exception of the hens that are well into their molt. The three Welsummers have laid 10 eggs total in 10 days, so that's a good start.  We have now added oyster shell to their pen to help with shell production.  The shells are pretty thin at this point.  I accidentally stuck my thumb through one of the eggs while trying to pick it up. 

One of the Welsummer layers is producing a lighter brown egg that has some funky looking discoloration on one side. There's suggestion that two eggs are developing side by side, causing the lopsided and "circle" band on one side. We will need to keep an eye on her since this is not a good thing. These photos show the discolored side and the back side. But, the insides looked good. The yolks are well formed, deep yellow and the whites were of the right consistency. So I'm thinking she will just need some time to get her laying process more established. 

The other two Welsummers are producing small, thin shelled dark brown eggs. I placed them around one of eggs that our older Orloff laid (top of page). The little brown eggs are so cute! The mix of light brown and dark brown in the carton has a cute effect too. A checker board of eggs.

All in all, we're now getting an average of four eggs per day. That will likely taper off over the next couple of weeks. 

Our bell peppers that we planted in five-gallon buckets are just about done. We have a nice mix of green, red, yellow and orange. So sweet and delicious. Delicious in an omelette, salad or just dipped in sauce.  Well worth the extra work and wait! Planting in buckets like this keeps the sluggos out and we can move them into the shade when it gets too hot outside.