Rhode Islands are Lonely

We processed the Cornish Cross two days ago at 10 weeks of age. Average weight this time was seven pounds.  Nice sizes for our dinners with some left overs, around here. 

The RIR's are adapting to being alone.  The Cornish Cross are such mellow, laid back, chickens, that the RIRs felt safe in the larger flock.  Plus, since the CCs were much larger, the RIRs were not the dominant pushy ones in the flock, even though they were a little older.  When I check in on them, they talk and talk.

The Welsummers are doing better. The seven are laying an average of five eggs per day.  It is nice to have them back on track. They seem happier with the warmer temps.  However, when we had three days that were over 80F, the laying slowed down a bit. The first day back to normal temps, they all laid an egg!  😃

We put in an order for Freedom Rangers next fall. We are going to give them a try since they, supposedly, are comfortable with pasture grazing. But, in truth, the CCs would also eat grass, but not a lot of it.  Pastured chickens, in our experience, will take in about 15% to 20% of their nutrition with grass, worms and insects, when they have access to fresh grass/pasture.

Garlic, potatoes, oregano, bell peppers and spinach are looking great.  The hot weather may end up finishing up the spinach, now that they finally started to show growth. Will see if they end up bolting, or if we were able to trick them into thinking that it's not really that hot outside. Will know by next week. 

Four/Five Weeks Featherings

I tried another quick movie.  The Cornish Cross (CX) are growing faster than their feathers can come in. Hence they look fairly bald. The Rhode Island Reds (RIR) are a week older than the CX. This is a great way to see how different the hybrid cross chickens are than the heritage. The heritage are feathering uniformly, but growing slower. The RIR are a dual purpose, meaning that they can either be for meat or layers. While the CX are specifically for meat. 

Most of the chicks are super friendly, wanting to be petted and touched whenever someone walks by. They will lean their heads out of the cage in hopes of a quick pat on the head. 

My Garden is going.  I planted garlic late last fall and assumed that it didn't start because there was no growth showing before winter set in.  But late January, the leaves popped up and have been growing ever since.  I was able to protect them through the late frost and snow.  

Mid February, before the snow, I had planted a few spinach plants because the temps were staying above 40F.  Then, we had the snow and I thought I had lost them, but lo' and behold, some of the seeds popped up and here we have some baby spinach plants! 

I planted 18 potato starts last weekend. Garden Time has begun :) 🌱🌱

Brooder Change after Two Weeks

With nine rapidly growing chicks that have already bonded as a flock, we decided to move them all together into the larger pen. We knew that we needed at least 1 square foot per bird within the next two weeks.  We have a "half" cage assembled that provides a little over 13 square feet, so that's the simple solution.  We have it covered with old bed sheets to minimize drafts in our garage.  We should not need to use a heater any more, but if it does start freezing we have it set up in a way that will allow for us to set that back up. We put both brooder warmers into the cage at different heights. A sheet for the floor to hold in the wood shavings and we have the food/water elevated to minimize shavings in those containers. So, yep, the next stage.  

Since the wings are now feathers, they try to fly around from time to time. And there is enough space to allow them to practice without getting hurt. The beefyest of the Cornish Cross is quite the chunk already.  I took a shot of him, next to one of the Rhode Island Reds, and well, yah.... look at the girth of his legs compared to the other. HA! I assume he is going to be a big boy. 

We will try to keep them in this cage for about four weeks before putting them out in the coop.  I can see no reason to separate the Reds from the Crosses, given that they seem comfortable and content to be together now. When we added the Crosses to the little Red flock, it immediately calmed the Reds down and they are less stressed with the added numbers. So it seems most logical to just keep them together, for now, until we need to take the Crosses for slaughter in a couple months. 

One of the rodents out in the outdoor chicken pens got killed when it ran under the tractor tire.  Talk about large.  The tail was eight inches long and it weighed a little over five pounds. That's almost as much as our chickens weigh. It is twice the size as most of the little wild rabbits in our field. No wonder the poor chickens have been stressed out by these rodents! It's definitely time for outdoor pest control!  We have tackled the rodents in the garage/porch areas, and now to get out the big traps. I might need to watch a few episodes of Mountain Men to figure out how to trap the big game!

For those that are wondering, the brooder pen is 3.5' by 3.75' by 4'h. We have two small brooder warmers in the pen set for two different heights, a long 18-inch feeder for up to 12 chicks, a half-gallon waterer, a light on a timer for 12 hours of light, plenty of wood shavings and DE sprinkled in to help minimize feather mites. We are on to the next stage of chick development. We use non-medicated Chick Start feed.  The first two weeks, we grind up the chick feed into a fine mill so that they are able to get plenty without struggling to swallow the larger pieces.  As their beaks get stronger, they can break it up, as needed. They should be strong enough now to handle the small crumbles.   

New Brooder Cage	Chicks are about the same size now
The Reds are working on feathers	Buddies
Size Comparison

The Latest Chick Flix

I don't normally record my little peeps.  I don't have the best luck with it and it takes up so much space.  Today, I attempted, it worked, and here are the shorts of it.

Watch as a fight is about to erupt. 

After the fracas - a little poop happens. 

Now is it time to eat!

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

Christmas Eve White Christmas

Last year, we had a sudden snow storm on the 15th of December that caught us off guard and ended up with snow inside of the chicken pens.  This year, we had the shields in place before the snow started flying.  We did not get as much snow this year and some of it was freezing rain so it was quite the mix between the two.  Yesterday was so blustery that the wind chill dropped to 16F even though the temps were closer to 30F. We even had a few gusts of 40mph. So, yah, it was bitter cold on Christmas Eve.  

Thankfully, Christmas day has been calm, although it never really got much above freezing. The new chickens are stressed by the snow, but the older chickens seem to be taking it in stride. 

We have a gopher this year that has been taunting the chickens, tunneling under their coops and into their pens. The coops have floors, so it's not like the gopher is adding tunnels into their coops, but my guess is that, either the gopher or mice using the tunnels are getting an added food resource this year.  We do not seem be going through feed quicker, so I don't think they are able to get into the hanging feeders, but I know that the chickens do drop food on the ground, giving the field critters access to the spillage. 

Some of the hens are still laying, so we got a few eggs this weekend. Not as many, but some eggs is better than none eggs. 

Facing East	Facing West - Coops, Cars & Hills
Light dusting of Freezing Rain and Snow	New Hens at the Feeder
New Hens Confused by the Snow	New Hens Perplexed in a Row
Egg in the Nesting Box on Dec 24	Dec 25 More Freezing Rain
Freezing Rain on Coop 1 (older hens)	Freezing Rain (and Snow) on Coop 2
Nesting Box lid Warmed by Hens	Egg in Nesting Box on Dec 25
Gopher Hole from the Field	Gopher Hole and Trail to Hole under Coop 2
Close up of Gopher Hole under Coop 2	Gopher Hole on Other side of Coop 2

It is supposed to warm up tomorrow - we will see if that happens.

Back to the Full Production

Thankfully, the older hens are back to regular production. But, that was almost a 12-week moult.

Even with the light on every morning this week, the younger hens are not producing. [Big Sigh]  But the older hens are giving us the eggs we need, just nothing to spare.  We just used up the last of our frozen eggs, so we will need to start working on those again so that we have some in storage for the future. Finally have a full dozen in the cooler. [Yay!]

Farm Fresh Eggs for dinner tonight!