Adding New Chickens to Our Flock

Oh, so much has happened. I am not that good at keeping up with my blog. Just need to work on carving out the time...

We have some new chickens!! Here is the story...We have a hen named Penny. You remember Penny. She laid the "first egg". She is a Buff Orpington. These hens are known for their "broodiness" or their desire to "set eggs" and hatch chicks. This trait has been "bread out" of many breeds as it is not a desirable trait in chickens needed for laying. A broody hen does not lay. She sets.

So, Penny decided to "go broody". She would sit in her nesting box on her egg and screech at anyone who disturbed her. The kids found this hilarious as they could get a screech out of her each and every time they opened the lid to the nesting box.

Well, I had been looking at a breed of chicken that I liked. It is called a Cuckoo Marans. These beautiful chickens lay a very dark brown egg. Like chocolate brown. I thought this would be a fun kind of hen to have, so I contemplated ordering some "hatching eggs" from a breeder.

Before we could do this, we needed to make sure that Penny was serious about hatching eggs. I had heard that first time broodies would leave their post halfway through the process. That wouldn't be good. So, I gave her some of our own eggs from the other hens. Keep in mind that all my eggs are fertile. We do have a rooster and he takes his job very seriously. So I put about 8 eggs under her to see if having a whole "clutch" of eggs would kick her into high gear.

Sure enough, she would not leave that nesting box once she felt that she had a good clutch.

Now, hens are funny characters. They like to lay their egg in the same box that other hens have. Sometimes they make up their minds to lay in a box that another hen is still occupying. Here is an example. Here you see Speckles (the white hen) in a nesting box. Then Fiona (the brown hen) decided she wanted to lay her egg in that box, too. Even though there were 7 empty, clean nesting boxes available, this was the one she liked. She didn't care that Speckles was in there. I watched this silliness and saw her lay the egg while sitting on top of Speckles - who stubbornly stayed put. You can see the egg in the bottom left of the picture.

Well, when Penny started to "set" her clutch of eggs, the others still wanted to lay in her box. Unfortunately, Penny is ranked at the bottom of the "pecking order", so they would either kick her out or sit right on top of her and lay eggs to add to her clutch. When we moved her to her own apartment, she had 18 eggs in her clutch.

I wonder if birds in the wild do this. Do they appoint one or two hens to do the brooding and all contribute to the clutch? That would make a lot of sense. A flock certainly couldn't afford to have all the females brooding at once. That would leave them too vulnerable. Hmm.

Anyway, we moved Penny and 14 of her eggs to her own apartment (a large wire dog crate) to hatch her eggs in peace. Here she is happily keeping her eggs warm. She usually flattened herself to a "Penny pancake" as we called her, but here, she is all puffed up in defense of her space.

Hens keep their eggs warmed to a temperature of between 100* and 101*. In colder climates, they will shed some of their breast feathers to line the nest and bring the eggs closer to their warm skin. In our weather that wasn't necessary and she didn't shed any feathers.

So, remember, these are just my own hens' eggs. I hadn't ordered my prized Cuckoo Marans eggs yet. But once I saw that Penny was serious, I did order them. They came in about 3 days and on Friday evening February 13th, we went out and pulled Penny off her nest. I took out the 14 eggs she had been incubating and replaced them with 12 Golden Cuckoo Marans eggs, 2 Ameraucana eggs, and 2 of my own hens' eggs. So, 16 eggs in all. At the same time, my friend Rene' and her husband were there to take the eggs she had been incubating and put them in a homemade incubator to finish the process. I broke one, so they took 13 and got 10 chicks!!!

Chicken eggs take 20-21 days to incubate. So on day 15, we wanted to see how they were doing. A process called "candling" would tell us. So we went out in the dark of night to candle the eggs. It was difficult and really hard to take pictures of. I didn't get any good still pics, but got this video. We did find 4 eggs that had not developed or had died and we took those out. 12 left.


Once the big day arrived, we went out in the morning before the kids had to go to P.E. class. It was Friday, March 6th, right on schedule. When we went out, there was a little chick!!! It was the Ameraucana chick. Yay!!
The next to hatch was a Golden Cuckoo Marans. We could tell by its coloring that it was a cockerel (boy). Some breeds are like that. You can tell by the coloring whether it is a cockerel or a pullet (girl). We named him General Mustard. Our other rooster is General Cotton. We like those names.
Here he is on the left. Note the size of his feet and head. He is still the biggest of all the chicks.

We ended up with 6 Marans, 1 Ameraucana, 1 chick from my own stock, an Amber Star, and one surprise! The breeder who sent the eggs also raises Salmon Faverolles. They are beautiful birds, but I didn't order any. However she has one that lays a darker egg than most faverolles and the egg got into my Marans eggs. So we have a Faverolle surprise! Now these are funny little chicks. They have fluffy puffy cheeks and they are yellow with feathers running all the way down their legs to their extra toe!! They have a fifth toe. They look like prehistoric creatures. Very cute. Here is a pic of him as a little guy. The black feathers coming in on his wing indicates that this is another cockerel. Bummer! You will have to read my next post to see how ugly he gets. They go through a particularly awkward stage. Here he is. He doesn't have a name. We haven't named most of them.
So we ended up with a total of 9 chicks from the 12 eggs that were left after candling. The sad part is that at least 5 and possibly 6 of the 9 are cockerels. Only 3 pullets for sure. We will be having to make some decisions about what to do with all the extra roosters. I guess the best thing to do is to raise them and then process them for eating. Marans are great meat birds. Here are some more great pics of the momma hen with her babies. She has been a great mother! Also, I included a video of one of the babies hatching which was so wonderful for us to watch!!



Dust Bathing with Momma hen.















Get off of me!

His days are numbered

Well. I think it is time. The following is information for those interested, but more importantly is my self talk so that I may see that it is, indeed, time to invite the poor chap to dinner.

Up until the other day, it was just a quick flog of the back of a leg and off he ran. Like a coward's attack. He had done this to me a few times, to my husband and then to my young daughter. We started talking about doing him in, but I guess our hearts weren't really in it because he was still around to attack me the other day.

Ever since Penny hatched the chicks, he has been getting progressively worse. He is definitely protecting them. It is when I approach them that he comes at me. I understand and I appreciate his efforts. He is a good protector of his little flock. Honestly, though, this has never been a really great family rooster. This rooster was hand raised, but even as a tiny chick, was always flighty, and avoided human contact. He has NEVER been a lovable chicken. He has always been impossible to catch.

Many folks who have chickens have told me that they have wonderful friendly, sweet roosters. So, it seems that they are not all like this bird. Also, we have a hen of the same breed who is just nasty. She bites! The kids would love to get rid of her, but she lays a LOT of eggs. If she wasn't such a great layer, I would gladly give her away. Maybe when the babies start laying...

Our backyard is a sanctuary where the chickens add to the tranquility. Visitors love to come out to visit our chickens and enjoy "nature's Prozac" with us. Kids love to feed treats to and hold our chickens. The rooster has added to that with his crowing. He has a fairly quiet crow and we have grown to love the sound.

Lately, I have been more and more afraid of that rooster. I have taken to carrying a small rake around with me when I go out. I often fend him off with it, but the other day, he caught me without it...

I had gone out to put them all back in the coop and carried a metal steaming pan in which I had kitchen scraps to lure them into the coop. I tossed the scraps in and started my call, "chick, chick, chick, chick" and here he came. He came close and started quietly pecking and clucking nervously. This behavior always precedes an attack. I prepared myself with the metal pan in my hand. Sure enough, he came at me. As he lunged, I smacked him with the pan and away he rolled. He jumped up and came at me again. I wolluped him again and again and again with the metal pan. Each time, he continued to come at me.

I was unable to get away from him and unable to get out of this struggle that I found myself in. I wanted to call for help, but the only people that were home were my two kids. I certainly didn't want to call them into this situation. I was hating this rooster at this point. The struggle went on for several minutes. I didn't know how I was going to get out of it. I did know that if one of my blows knocked him down for good, I was okay with that. Eventually I was able to put a bush between me and him, he came around the bush at me. Then I moved to another bush. Eventually, my distance from the babies satisfied him (though that was not what I was going for) and he backed off. At this point I was late getting off to where I was going, so I just left. I was shaken up and angry!

Now I understand cock fighting. This guy was in it to the death if he had to be. I was whacking him with a metal pan!!! The foolish bird!

The next morning, I let the chickens out. I was sitting here in my family room where I can look out over my lovely back yard. I was noticing that the chickens were up on my patio. They are not allowed up there, and I usually go out and shoo them off gently when they come up. Now, I was afraid to. This was the moment that I realized he has to go. My tranquil sanctuary has been turned into a yard of harassment. I didn't want to go out there! That bird is messing with my sanity. He is a menace.

While I respect his determination and appreciate his protection of the flock, I don't think it is worth it to keep him. I have 5 more little roosters (7 weeks old) and perhaps there will be a sweet roo that will grow from that bunch. I had really wanted to see one of them take him out of power but I don't think I have the patience to wait for that. The kids and I started raising chickens for fun. General Cotton, as he is called, is spoiling the fun. That, alone, is reason enough to rid our flock of him. We just don't need or want the headache.

We don't have the time or inclination to "rehabilitate" what amounts to a wild animal. I don't believe such a thing can really be done. The advice I have read about rehabilitating an unruly rooster indicate that it would need to be done again and again. I have children. I'd be a fool. So, have I convinced myself???