Category: chickens

Dust

On By CarynIn chickens, dog
Dog chasing green laser light, kickin’ up dust

My dog loves laser lights. Correction: my dog is obsessed with laser lights. He is funny about them though, he doesn’t chase it just wherever, he has a self defined path that if you flash the light at the beginning of the path, he will traverse the whole trail, whether or not the light leads him. If you shine the light elsewhere you are given “a look”, and he waits until you get it right. Goofy dog. This behavior does result in a dirt path through the yard. For me, though, this is not a bad thing necessarily. We have clay soil, which is hard and unforgiving to dig. In the dog’s trail, the clay has been churned to a fine dust, which is easy to scoop up and add to the ash and diatomaceous earth for the chicken’s dust bath. So really, the dog’s favorite activity in the whole wide world is also providing a chicken service. So there we go. The dog is happy, the chickens love their dust bath, and even the cat, when she dashes through the door, beelines for a good roll in the fine dust.

Green grass

On By CarynIn chickens
Chickens at the “salad bar”

I purchased some wheat seeds for the two “salad bars” in the coop runs. The forage seed I was using had more dicotyledons (two leaf) sprouts than monocotyledons (one leaf) sprouts. The sprouts weren’t growing through the mesh, but bending down underneath. The wheat grass is working nicely as it can grow through the mesh and be neatly trimmed by the chickens, which they do enthusiastically.

Cooling their heels

On By CarynIn chickens
Two chickens cooling off in an iced foot bath

It is hot. Feels like temperatures over 100 F in the afternoons. This time last year I was in a panic trying to keep the chickens cool. I’m a little more calm this year, as I know they use the foot baths to cool down when they are hot! I put gallon containers of water in our freezer, then when it is frozen, take it out before noon to put in the foot baths. By about 3pm, the ice is melted, but not yet hot, so I clean out the yucky water and fill the foot bath (which is a plant drip catcher) with the cool water. When it is exceptionally hot, I’ll put a 16oz frozen water bottle in later in the afternoon. They all look like they’ve gained weight because their feathers are all fluffed out to circulate the air near their skin. Egg production is also down. Hot.

Rest in Peace, Pooh. Yesterday we went to check on the chickens, and Pooh the hen had passed away. She is in the picture above, top left. We figure it was something with her oviduct (an exam of her cloaca revealed a full egg, but it seemed caught in a thick membrane), or it was the heat. My eldest and I are not up for a necropsy, and since Pooh was a healthy weight, my Mom thinks it wasn’t a disease. It was hot that night too.

Golf balls in the nest

On By CarynIn chickens

A couple of months ago, I took all the golf balls out of my hens’ nests because we were seeing a series of broody hens. A few hens were sitting on only a golf ball and getting sassy about it! The golf balls have been in the nest since the chickens were pullets to show them where they should lay their eggs. Hens will look for the safest place to lay, and if another hen has laid an egg there, it must be a safe place. I took all the golf balls out to see if it would change their behavior.

Two hens in one nest. Um no, girls.

I did see a dramatic drop in broodiness (where the hen insists on sitting on eggs), which could be because there were no fake eggs, or because it is summer and just too darn hot. However, several times I also caught a hen not waiting her turn for a nest, but just climbing in with her sister. Ugh. I’ve read that this is one way eggs get broken in the nest – overcrowding. The two nests pictured above are the two favorites. The other four nests have been completely abandoned. So I put golf balls back in the shunned nests to see if that will cure the doubling up, but not encourage brooding in a favorite nest. Time will tell.

Flying purple goo

On By CarynIn chickens
Pick-No-More applied to hen’s comb

I noticed that our hen, Magic, had a wound on the back of her comb. Not sure how, whether she caught it on something or one of the other hens got her, but I thought it best to put some Pick-No-More lotion on it to help healing and keep the other chickens away from it. Yeah, that was fun. I was able to get a nice big glob on her comb, and she immediately shook her head and sprayed the purple goo everywhere. I’m glad this stuff smells nice. After a few hours, the purple stains even faded from my skin.

A portion of purple goo