Second Coop for New Flock of Orloffs

We have built the second coop and it is ready for the flock when the flock is ready to move outside. There are a few things I like better with this design and a few things I don't like better.

Some things I don't like, for example is the nesting box is too close to the ground, I feel. But the design will not allow it to be up higher. The coop's human access door is h-e-a-v-y! If it falls on me, it is going to break something on my body! We may need to put a latch on the hen's door into the pen. The gate on the end of the pen will need to be tweeked  in order to work correctly.

One of the things I do like is the fact that the coop is quite a bit more spacious. The hen door into the pen will be easier to open. There is no ramp to fuss with. We put a built-in feeder into the coop. We have added electricity into the coop. This coop has already passed the "rain-proof" test. This coop was a lot cheaper to build than the last one.

This coop and pen was modified from a plan we found in "Building Chicken Coops for Dummies."

Happy First Birthday Beautiful Orloff Hens!

One of our beautiful Birthday Girls

 

Russian Orloff - One Year Old

Our first flock of four Russian Orloffs has reached their first birthday.  Although we are not exactly certain when they were born, we speculate that it was the last few days of April, 2013.We still have all four hens. None the worse for wear. They are protective of each other. We have had no major incidences with predators aside from a few coyote visits late in the evenings in our backyard after the girls are safely in their coop.

One of the girls was a bit camera shy and I was only able to get her "tail" in the first of the photos. They are looking beautiful today. It's a warm day, lots of sunshine and wind. If you look closely, at a few of the photos, you can see the feathers around their heads are billowing up.

No Cake. Just Cracked Corn and and a few mealworms for their big day.  Happy Birthday, Girls.

Sandbath in the Brooder?

Today, I discovered that my babies are wanting to take dust baths. 

I use old disposable microwavable teriyaki rice bowls filled with sand to help elevate the water and feeder to keep the chicks from walking on the rims and keep the chicks from kicking the shavings into them. This also helps to keep them from pulling all their food out onto the floor of the brooder. As the chicks get larger, we add more height by placing these sand filled bowls onto other things, like blocks of wood and other stable objects. 

When it is time to clean and refill their water/food supply, I take the feeder and water out of the "base bowls." When I do this, the chicks take that opportunity to jump into the "sand bowls" to peck at the sand and they probably eat some of it too, like they would be doing outside. I'm usually not gone for more than five to ten minutes. Otherwise, they really don't have access to that sand, except during that short period each day.

Today, when I returned with the water, one of the chicks was laying on her back in the little bowl of sand, flapping her wings and trying hard to take a dust bath in that little pile of sand! It was sooo cute. But mind you, that sand is so totally wrong for that particular purpose.  We use playground sand as "weight" for the little bowls to keep the chicks feeder and water in place. That type of sand is heavy and clean BUT not a good idea for chicks to play in it. That really fine sand has too much silica in it for chicks (or chickens, for that matter.) 

So, to placate the chicks' desire to roll in the sand, I put a little tray with high sides on it into the brooder. I filled the tray half way up with clean, all purpose river sand. The grains of sand are larger than playground sand, with less dust and silica floating around whenever they decide to take a roll in it. 

Silly Chicks.  I didn't realize that they want to take dust baths at this young age! 

.

Week Four - Three Russian Orloff Peep Models

Here we are at four weeks (28 days) and all is well.  The gangly Orloffs want to fly (and do it quite well). They are turning into gawky looking teens now. However, they do tend to stand more upright.

The Fuzz is falling off their chests and necks without enough feathers there yet to cover it up. Their necks are longer, their beaks are getting longer (and sharper) and their legs are becoming thicker. They have more feathers on their thighs. Their tail feathers are getting longer.

They are becoming more flighty (fearful) when approached. We are spending more time holding each of them to give them reassurance that we are the "good guys" here. Some of them are more comfortable with it than others.  When I do reach in, I turn my hand over (palm up) and gently move my fingers. This action seems the most reassuring to them. As they approach the hand, I caress them and coo to them. Some are more accepting than others of caressing.

When holding the orloffs now, we have small terry cloth wash cloths that we use.  Some of the baby chicks will just stand there enjoying the caressing.  Others need more reassurance, so we kind of cocoon-wrap them in the cloth with their heads peeking out. The warmth of our hands gently around them will usually be enough to calm them down. We typically hold them for five to 10 minutes each day now. We want them to be accustomed to us as they grow so that if we need to treat them for anything later, as hens, they are more accepting of us, But, this does not work with all our hens.  There is one who loves to give us a good chase!

Three Weeks - Four Russian Orloffs Show Off

The Russian girls are three weeks old today. Similar to last year, some are developing their "long necks" and neck feathers while others are not. They are quite messy with their food. Just like human babies, they seem to like throwing their crumbles out of their tray onto the floor. I swear, we must have 4-5 pounds of food on the floor of their brooder! They love their mealworms and they love mashed hard-boiled eggs.  

They are quite adept at flying now, and, on occasion, will fly out of their brooder up onto my shoulders while I'm cleaning their feeder and water. So I have to be careful not to walk away and the leave a lid/gate off the top at this point.  I have put a makeshift roost in there for them for a high point to rest on and fly up to. They are loving it.

We are about ready to expand their brooder one more time by taking out the divider that I put in there last week. This will be the last time that we enlarge the brooder from eight sq ft to twelve sq ft.  The coop and the pen is ready. We are working on a pen extension to give them more green grass area when they are ready to go outside.

And now we turn to the Orloff show.  These are four of the girls of various sizes. Yes, we still have all ten, this year! Much improved over last year!!! And they are all very sweet.

Orloff Babies - 15 days old - got too big for first Brooder

Last night, the ten chicks were all piled on top of each other under the warmth of the little light that I had on top of the brooder. Obviously, the level of the Brooder Warmer (EcoGlow) was too low for them now to comfortably fit under. I popped it up one level and we were good to go. On the other hand, the first brooder box for them was only 4 square feet (21" x 28") and they were getting quite cramped in there too now that they have doubled in size.

Thankfully, we still have 10 little fluff balls in feather development. I put together a quick large brooder and put it on a folding work table. The brooder is 26" wide and 68" long for a total of 12 square feet.  The walls are 18" high so it was essential that I place some baby gates on top of the brooder. I parceled off 2/3 of the brooder (to 8 square feet). This new space is giving them way more room to stretch their wings and do a little practice flight.

We are done using the towels for flooring.  I put in some of the shredded recycled paper crinkles from the pet store for them. They pick up the paper strips, but they don't eat it. They are "scratching" the floor and moving the paper around, then pecking on the floor, just like chickens. They also nestle into the paper like a little nest. But this will be way too expensive to continue to use. When I run out of the paper bedding, I will switch to something else. Probably wood shavings.  I'm just not comfortable yet using the shavings. 

I did some one-on-one social time with each  of them this afternoon. A little egg yolk mash does wonders for making friends. :) 

Here are some better pictures of the baby orloffs at 15 days of age.

Ten Russian Orloffs in Eleven Days

The babies seem to be doing fine. Ten days was when we started losing them last year so we are hoping for better luck this time around. 

We are getting ready to transition over to wood shavings.  I've been hand washing their "poop" towels.  First, I decided to use towels to start them off with this year instead of shavings because last year, they kept picking up tiny wood shavings as food, and I really don't think that was good for them. Also, I felt it would be warmer in the brooder with a towel on the floor and also it would not be slick so that they would not end up with spraddled/splayed legs. Search the terms if you want to see what it means and looks like. 

So, I've been cycling a few towels as flooring for the brooder by washing two, every couple of days. Mind you, I had no intention of putting the soiled towels directly into my washing machine!!! EWWWW! I would take the towels outside (over my compost pile), and shake off/out as much stuff as possible. Then I would soak the towels in a bucket for a few hours to loosen the stuck on pooh. Next, I would use me $2.50 agitator in the bucket.  For an agitator, I picked up a basic toilet plunger, cut out three three-quarter-inch holes that I drilled through the rubber (evenly spaced around the plunger).  I use it to agitate the towels enough to get the gooey pooh off.  This method works very well, and I can empty the dirty water from the bucket in the compost pile or down the drain, then refill it with cold water until the water is no longer changes color. Then I feel safe in washing the towels in my machine with a little bleach and laundry detergent.  I rinse them twice after that to get the soap and bleach smell off, and I don't use any fabric softener since I don't know if that would cause any respiratory issues for the chicks. It has been a little extra work, but I feel it is worth it if we don't lose any chicks this year. 

We are getting ready now to change over to wood shavings this next week. 

Here are some photos of two of the chicks, today, at 11 days of age.

 The first one figured out how to fly to the ledge of the little container I put them in while cleaning out the brooder each day. So, obviously, we have to keep a covering (I use a spread out baby gate) over the brooder. In some of the photos, you can see the little feathers coming in for the wings and tail. ;)  The last photo is a bit more blurry. More often than not, they move much too quick for me and my camera speed with a blur as a result. She is standing on some poster board and based on my hand being there, you can tell she's still pretty small, but has grown over the past week. She's our little blond one.