Month: September 2019

I Love Volunteers

On By CarynIn Flora

Pretty plant volunteers that is. We have a wondrous blanket of volunteer morning glories on the slope in the back yard. I love it! They may be doing so well because I’ve been dumping the lanolin water from scouring mohair on that slope. I’ve read the lanolin can gum up septic systems, so none of the water involved goes down the drain. No worries, the morning glories are all the more glorious for it!

Volunteer morning glories

Navi update: Still massaging her crop. It seems like the size is reducing. The poor chicken is so skinny underneath that huge crop. We gave her some nutridrench today just to keep her energy up. It is just too hot to put her in the isolation ward, though.

Egg update: Found an egg still warm in the pine shavings under to roost this morning. I turned on the light early to check on Navi and saw one of the chickens already on the ground. Perhaps she just couldn’t hold it anymore? My eldest thinks Sunrise and Pooh are laying because they are the two that are crouching in submission.

Hindsight

On By CarynIn chickens

We did our monthly health check of the whole flock: checked vents, looked for parasites under the wing, checked feet, checked weight. This time we moved all the bands to the chickens’ left leg to make it easier to identify them. Navi’s colors were changed too, because a white band on a white feathered leg is not helpful. Although honestly, it is really easy to tell which one is Navi since her crop is distended.

Updated weight chart, note Navi’s decline

Not surprising, Navi lost some weight. It looks like what ever is ailing her started over a month ago. Although she gained weight the month before, it was not in proportion to her flock mates and dropped her to the lowest weight bird. Her comb also has not developed, which may or may not be related. Most of the flock now have bright red defined combs, while Navi has almost no comb and the area is still light pink.

Green onion experiment

On By CarynIn Garden
Green onions in window

My eldest likes the green part of the green onions, but not the white part. She will eat them straight! So when it is her turn to cut up the onions the white bulb is left behind. On a lark, I took one of these lonely rooted ends and stuck it in a plastic baggie with a wet paper towel and hung it in the window. It grew. So I stuck a couple more in there too. We’ll see how sustainable this system is!

Update on eggs: two more eggs! And we had our first egg breakfast. And I remembered to take a picture of an egg in the nest box.

Freshly laid egg

Update on Navi: Her crop was smaller but solid in the morning, so we are treating her for impacted crop. I have learned how to hold a chicken, prop open her beak, and squirt vegetable oil down her throat. Not easy, let me tell you. I have also been massaging her crop. I can nearly get my fingers to touch through the middle, so I am hoping I have been able to break up the mass. I let her roam for awhile then put her back in the isolation ward.

Isolation and eggs

On By CarynIn chickens

What an eventful day. We have had our first eggs (!!!) and put the first chicken in isolation.

Navi in the center

The move to isolation came first. I noticed a couple days ago that Navi had a larger crop than everyone else, like softball size and squishy. But she is eating and moving around, and I kept checking in the afternoon and evening. After consulting with my Mom and the chicken health book, we decided to check again in the morning to see if her crop empties. The isolation is to be able to observe her droppings and catch her before she hit the food bin in the morning. We decided not to make any further measures because her breath is not sour smelling as would be the case with sour crop.

Navi in isolation ward. She has a roost, but came off it when we left.

While setting up the isolation ward (I had been using it for storage), my eldest asked if I had checked the nest boxes for eggs. Honestly I had not in a couple days because I had resigned myself to no eggs until the chickens were 8 months old. So she checked. Not only were the nesting boxes behind the curtains visibly sat in, there were eggs in both bins! Holy cow! Three itty bitty eggs! (Yes, I weighed them! 38g, 38g, and 35g, which is about 1.3 ounces each. Extra small eggs.)

First eggs!!!

Nasturtiums

On By CarynIn Garden
Nasturtium seedlings

My nasturtiums have sprouted! We kept them well watered (which was easy because they are near the chicken runs where we are still sprouting wheat and rye grass on rotation, and those get watered three times a day). They haven’t starting vining yet, and there are definitely no blooms, but that they sprouted at all is quite exciting.