Two weeks later...they haven't changed much!

Here are some of the MF/Calico Cochin chicks two weeks later.  They haven't really changed much have they?

A little bigger, a few more feathers but still cute!

I think this is Kt's favourite-it's hard to tell what color it will end up.

A box of cuteness

Look what came in the mail a couple of weeks ago (yes a couple of weeks ago...sigh...never enough time in the day to the Blog updated!).

I woke up in the morning to a phone call from the post office-your chicks are here! I got up and drove down and there was a chirping box.  These weren't day old chicks so I was pretty worried about their travels. They came from South Dakota to Denver and then on up to Bailey by express post. Even though they were express going between here and there it's a two day trip. And Denver was getting pretty warm (mid-90's).

Here is the box they arrived in...

And this was what was inside! An assortment of colors and sizes

Pretty cute aren't they?

I was shipped 11 chicks alas 2 didn't survive the journey, one was dead on arrival and another despite my offerings of sugar water and egg died a few hours later.  Despite the losses which saddened me, I was quite happy that the others had made their long journey without harm.  I'll only be keeping a few of these as I don't need this many chickens, now how to choose amongst them?

Of Chicks and Chickens

I've had a fondness for Cochin chicks since I purchased my first paid a year ago so in February I decided to order some Cochin eggs for hatching. Then I read about how hard it is to hatch eggs that were shipped from a lower altitude. Sigh. It really does pay to research before you buy.  I don't know how I missed this tidbit of information before I ordered.  I dutifully set 15 eggs for hatching and immediately broke a couple because my incubator is too small for that many-but how could I not try to get them in?

In March after painstakingly candling the eggs (the process of shining a bright light into the egg to see it's development) I was down to just 3 eggs that looked viable. Of those just one hatched. What a cute little thing.

Trey hatching

A day old..

Wanting buddies for my little chick, I purchased a couple of Silver Laced Wyandotte Chicks in April, and then at the end of April a couple more Cochin Chicks.  All went well until it was time to graduate from the hutch in my office to the outside world.

The Wyandotte Chicks,

"Trey" my sole hatching chick went out first as he was the oldest. My plan was to slowly acclimate him by putting him out for short periods in the chicken pen. What's that saying about "the best laid plan"?  Jinny my cochin hen didn't think much of the new addition and chased him out of the pen. I didn't realize that a chick already feathered out could slip so easily between the wire mesh.  Jasper alerted me to his escape but I couldn't find him, so I let Jasper off his leash and "whoosh" Jasper was chasing from his hideout. I quickly grabbed him and brought him inside and decided to wait a little while before putting him out again.

I reinforced the pen with chicken wire and tried again the following week. This time things went even worse...Trey got out and Jasper got him. I found him limp and bleeding and laid him beneath the nesting box to peacefully pass. An hour or so later he hadn't passed. I decided to bring him inside and let him die in peace. He didn't die. I examined him and found that he was missing a wing and his wing socket was protruding. I didn't have much hope, but washed his wounds, put an antibiotic cream on them and put antibiotics in his water. I put him in the hutch for the night not expecting him to be alive in the morning. I lifted the hutch door with trepidation the next morning and there was Trey drinking and eating as if nothing were wrong. His injuries didn't seem to bother him anymore.

A couple of weeks passed and the "Eau de Chicken" smell in my office was driving me crazy, so I decided once again it was time for the birds to move outside.  I moved all three into the coop and watched carefully as I planted my garden. All seemed OK-the chicks were keeping to themselves in the coop.  Jinny was clucking scornfully but wasn't chasing anybody.  A couple of hours later I checked again and Trey was gone! He was nowhere to be seen. We searched high and low but couldn't find him.  I hoped we'd find him the next morning but there was no sign. The two Wyandottes seemed to be faring all right in the big coop so I left them there.

That evening when I went to shut everyone in-the Wyandottes were gone too. I searched some more but they too seemed to have vanished.  How dissapointing, all that work raising the chicks only for them to disappear.

The birds later showed up dead by my guesthouse-dogs had got to them but I don't think they intended to kill them as they weren't torn up. It looked like the birds had probably run and the dogs chased. It was sad-especially as Trey was found a week later and it looked like he had just been killed as his little body was limp with no rigamortis. 

Meanwhile the fearsome Ginny who probably was the cause of all this trouble through her chasing of the chicks...crawled under the chicken wire around my garden and proceeded to mow down all of the plants I had so painstakingly nurtured all Spring. She left just one lone potato and the pumpkin plants.  Ginny is sure lucky she lays well as she'd be so out of here...

A Couple of New Faces

March is always so busy here...Not only is it baby animal time and blooming gardens, it's also income TAX time. I'm a CPA and a tax CPA at that so there is absolutely no rest for the wicked at this time of the year. And it's really hard to squeak time to post. But I thought I'd better get some updates posted, or all the new news will be old news.

There are a couple of new faces in the duck pen -and they're not ducks. I was trying so hard not to increase our menagerie's size prior to our big move, but I succumbed. I just can't help myself. It seems I just have to read the Craigslists farm ads. And there was this ad for a pair of splash bantam cochins -just what I have been wanting. And here they are now:

Meet Harry and Ginny (my daughter is a huge Harry Potter fan and thus christened them).

Harry is quite the ham....

"Did you get my good side" he asks?

It's a little harder to get a pic of Ginny, it seems Harry has to sneak in...see him?

"It's all feathers," says Ginny.

First Egg of the Year

Last year, I was a chicken failure . I previously posted about my two hens in my post entitled Chicken Run . Chocolate (the runaway chicken) after a day or two of coming back to the coop decided she was a wild chicken. She hid in the cedar trees for about a month. I'd occasionally catch a glimpse of her when she'd come to clean up the grain from under the horse feeders, and then finally we saw her no more. I lost my other hen in the intense heat of July.

That left me with the one chick I hatched out in May -but as fate would have it, she became a he, so I had a Brahma rooster with no girls.

Sydney the Brahma Rooster

A friend of mine had some excess young ducks at the time and being the enabler she is, pawned a pair off on me. Welcome Harriet and Carter.

Harriet & Carter

I then purchased another hen from fellow North Texas blogger the "Modern Day Redneck" a pretty Brahma/Orpington cross. One day while I was working I heard a big ruckus, a looked out my office window, and around the corner of the yard came Harriet and Carter a squawking followed by the Rooster but no hen. I went outside to see what was going on, but there was nothing, except one thing was wrong -the hen was missing. I went back to where the birds free range every day, but there was no sign of the hen. She had vanished. I don't know if a stealthy coyote had sneaked up in the middle of the day and snatched her or if her attacker came from above. She was gone without a trace.

With no hens and winter coming I placed an ad on Craigslist for my rooster and happily someone wanted a breeding rooster, and so he was rehomed.

That left me with the two ducks Harriet and Carter. They were supposed to be a pair but I'm pretty sure I have two females. When they hit five months of age back in November, I was hoping they might start laying. I'd read threads over at Backyardchickens each day of peoples ducks laying their first eggs, but every day I checked my ducks, there were no eggs. My welfare chickens must have rubbed off on the ducks.

With the days now getting a little longer each day, I"ve been on a mission to get these ducks to lay. I've been encouraging them with alfalfa in their nesting box, feeding them freshly picked Dandelions, treats from the house, and adding laying pellets to their grain. Each day I look in the tractor and in their yard, no eggs, that is until today.

Hubby came in this evening and said give me your hand. I did as I was told and in it he put a nice creamy egg. Yippee, our first duck egg. I am so excited you'd think that I had the goose that laid the golden egg!

The "Golden" Egg (I guess I should have cleaned it better for it's moment of glory)

Crunchy Grass

It's the fourth of July but it sure doesn't look like it outside. It looks like late August. The grass is brittle and dry and crunches under foot. The grasshoppers have chewed the leaves off of much of the garden as well as the surrounding weeds. The cicadas are singing at nine in the morning and in the evenings, their noise is deafening . The only green spots in the yard is where hose ends meet, the little area where I dump the dogs wading water every couple of days and around the pool where I didn't quite tighten a pump top properly. That's it. The rest is just plain crunchy. And brown.

Looking like August

And it's dusty. I vacuumed much of yesterday. At 9:00 pm when I was cooking supper I still had to grab a dustpan and sweep the grit up from under my feet.

The weatherman hasn't promised us any relief. One website's headline is "Crazy Hot in Texas". They got that right. Many Texas cities have broken daily high records, not just once but several times. The USDA has finally declared Texas a disaster area allowing for many farmers who've experienced wildfires and drought devastation to seek some much needed aid. And June 2011 will go down as the third (or fourth depending on whose stats you look at) hottest June in history, with the two prior years following right on their heels. That means three of the hottest Junes in Texas history have occurred in the last three years. And I thought I was just becoming intolerant! Highs were 90 plus every day of June with four of them over 100. This weeks forecast is over 100 until Friday when we'll be treated to a cold front...a high of 97!

Happily our little homestead isn't suffering nearly as much as others. We did loose a chicken the other day and I imagine the heat played a large part in her demise. She was fine one day and then was looking poor on Saturday morning, just making tiny "uck uck" sounds instead of full throttle clucks. Saturday evening, she was gone. The sheep are going to have to start eating hay, and I'm sure the horses that are in the pasture that usually carries them almost right through the summer will soon be on hay too.

And of course the garden isn't doing so well. The grasshoppers have pretty much devoured the vegetable garden (even the egyptian onion tops have been mowed down to the soil). The flowering plants that have been so valiantly growing despite the heat are beginning to droop.

Obedient Plants wilted at 8:00 am

There is a bright spot within the garden. For several years I've been trying to get a plant called "Poliomintha Longiflora" or "Mexican Oregano". I was successful this year and planted one in May. It has rewarded me with blooms since planting. It is literally covered and has been since I planted it. A plant well worth planting! I hope to take cuttings off of this beauty just in case it meets some untimely demise.

A close up of the poliomintha longiflora flowers

Pardon me for not deadheading first, here's the whole plant!

Chicken Run

Egg white and chocolate our two game chickens given to us in April seem to be what I call "welfare" chickens. I've nicknamed them "Useless" and "Useless Too". Why do I talk about them like this you wonder?

Well I got these chickens as laying hens. All seemed OK -not great the first couple of weeks. They laid about 6 eggs in two weeks -not super laying numbers by any means but I figured they needed to settle in and get used to life at our farm.

Then they stopped laying. I blamed it on their quarters, we hadn't finished their chicken tractor yet and had to use a dog x-pen and dog carrier as their temporary home for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile we had some hard rains and the chickens got wet. I wasn't about to blame them for not laying under those conditions.

Then they moved to their new chicken tractor and still they didn't lay. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt- afterall they had moved twice in less than a month. Finally we found an egg or two in the tractor and we thought all was well.

Then things heated up in Texas. It seems these chickens don't lay when the temps are above 90 degrees nor do they lay when it storms. In Texas conditions are either stormy or hot or both about 75% of the time. I won't be counting on these two chickens for my egg needs much longer.

I was going to put an ad on Craigslist offering two free game chickens (my dd would never forgive me if we ate her first chickens), but then I had an idea! I've been battling bugs and pests in my gardens as I do every summer -what better to demolish the grasshopper population then a couple of chickens?

This morning I opened the coop. Chocolate instantly took off running (her wing feathers haven't grown back in sufficiently to fly). She ducked under the horse fence and kept on running. Wild thing. I figured she was gone forever. Egg White meanwhile came out and wandered around, then ducked through the electric fence pen where the sheep are. I didn't think anything of it until an hour or so later, when I look out to see Jasper, the pyreness puppy chasing her. She beat a hasty retreat under the fence and then hung out for the afternoon. I think Jasper was only trying to play but he could have killed her in a heartbeat if he had got hold of her.

I just went to put Egg White back in the coop and thought I should at least make an effort to find Chocolate. I looked into the horse field and there she was poking about. I climbed the fence into the pasture and maneuvered past where she was and then approached her. She took off to hide under some Cedar bush. I grabbed a stick intending to beat the bushes, but then the horses came to investigate what the commotion was about. They scared her out and she took off running toward the fence and the coop on the other side. She ran along the fence line looking for a spot she could duck under and found one, only to find Jasper on the other side. He didn't do much but she took off in the other direction-right towards the coop. She ducked through the fence and jumped into the coop.

With a grin I closed the coop door and thought Day one free ranging done! I wonder how day two will go?

Safely back in the coop for the night

Delilah is doing well

I'm thrilled to report that Delilah, our bottle lamb is getting better! The medicine is doing it's job and the scours are disappearing. Phew....I was really really worried.

Katielyn & Delilah on the couch in the living room...spoiled? Hardly.

I have come to realize that North Texas is not very sheep friendly when it comes to buying sheep supplies, if you want goat supplies, this is the place to be! Goat stuff everywhere. This past weekend, I went looking to buy electrolytes and get some more milk replacer for Delilah. I went to at least four maybe five farm feed stores looking for sheep electrolytes and her brand of milk replacer. At about the third store I was willing to buy any sheep specific milk replacer if I could find some, all I could find was calf and multi-purpose, and most of the multi-purpose had copper in them so they were out. I ended up making my own electrolytes, and bought a multi-purpose milk replacer that didn't have copper in it. I'm not thrilled about this, my lamb already has been battling scours, and changing brands on her is about the last thing I want to do but alas I have no choice. Ordering online will take too long and she needs milk replacer.

I've been thinking about getting some chickens and have been reading about them at Backyard Chickens . My first priority would be building a critter proof coop. My last two forays into chickens (once in Ontario, Canada and once here in Texas) both ended the same way. All my chickens fell victim raccoons. The raccoon here in Texas couldn't manage to get into the coop but he did manage to sucker the chickens into coming to the edges of the coop and there he beheaded them by yanking their heads off through the wire, he then pulled them through piece by piece. A nasty end to my chickens.

I'm actually thinking about hatching some chicken eggs. I remember doing (or should I say trying this, as a child. None of the eggs ever hatched but it was fun trying. It's no wonder when I think back on it, we really had no idea what we were doing, it would have been a miracle if ONE had actually hatched). I see on Backyard Chickens that people even ship eggs these days, that would save time (and gas) trying to find local eggs to hatch. At one of the feed stores that didn't have milk replacer I noticed a pile of Styrofoam boxes (the kind that vaccinations are shipped in to stay cool) piled up by the refrigerator. I inquired if I could take one and they said sure, so I picked one out and now have the first part on my materials list for an incubator.

So while I was in Tractor Supply looking for milk replacer, Katie and I were looking at all the little chicks. She thought they were all cute and wanted me to get some there and then. I explained that first we build the coop and then get chickens. At just that point a client of mine walked in and saw us looking at the chickens. "You want chickens she said, I can get you chickens, free". I cautiously asked "what kind of chickens" as we had already decided there were some chickens more suited to our climate than others. "Laying chickens" , she said. I replied "yes, but what kind of laying chickens", showing her the chart conveniently posted in the store. She said "I don't know, different colors and they lay". Well I thought, free is free, we could try a couple. So a call was place to her friend with the extra chickens and she's going to bring out some chickens next Saturday.

Great what happened to building the coop first? I'm a CPA with April 18th (tax deadline is three days later than usual this year) looming very closer and I'm getting chickens delivered to me on April 16th? What am I thinking?