The Halloween pumpkins have gone to the chickens.
My chickens love pumpkin. I made sure to get the pumpkins out to their coop before any mold set in. I hung the smallest pumpkin, and put the others up on the bench, just to keep them off the ground and out of the droppings. Within hours each pumpkin had a hole dug through the decoration into the guts so the chickens could reach the seeds. Now we have a pumpkin grave yard!
What the heck? I went out to put the chickens to bed (really to make sure they were headed to roost and lock up), and three of the hens were soaked. It had been raining all day, so I imagine they were out in the rain, but I didn’t think they liked to be wet!? After trying to take pictures of cold wet chickens all excited because the light was on at bedtime (obviously that didn’t work out well), I dried them off as best I could since it was forecast to be cold that night and hoped for the best.
They all survived the night, even Navi with her pendulous crop. There must have been a seriously tasty tidbit to tempt them into the downpour. Crazy chickens.
I put the Wyze camera where we could see the popular nest boxes. It is neat because we can see the chickens in the nests, but the angle does not make seeing their colored leg bands easy (or even possible).
So we are trying a new method of chicken identification, at least for the purposes of figuring out who was on the nest when. I took pictures of all their combs, which are all slightly different. (Scientists identify orca whales in a similar way; by taking pictures of their dorsal fins.) Trying to get a clear picture of the comb when they are wiggly and their head is rarely still was a challenge, but eventually I figured out to tuck the subject under my arm and angle my phone camera back toward their head. I then used Adobe Lightroom to adjust the photos and get the combs all facing the same way.
I printed a reference sheet and then checked the camera. I think this is a viable method! I was able match Jade’s comb with the reference. Not sure how much time I will spend going through the saved footage to figure out who laid what egg, but it might be helpful if I have an off egg and need to figure out the culprit.
We did a health check recently and from the look of the hen’s vents, we think everyone except Navi and Cockatrice are now laying. Navi has finally gained some weight, but if we let her out of isolation for even parts of the day her crop gets large and squishy. We have decided to go for quality of life and are letting her run with the flock. If she gets lethargic and won’t eat, we’ll put her back in isolation with copper sulfate water.
Magic lost her colored band for awhile, but we made sure it was her and put the band back on. However it does look like she lost weight, so either we mixed up chickens or we need to keep an eye on her too. Seeing as how she was the heaviest chicken last month, and is still the heaviest chicken, I don’t think we have a chicken identity crisis.
They don’t like it as much as the other nest boxes, but I found a chicken in the metal nest box! And she laid an egg there! Cleaning and painting it was not a wasted effort, yay! Granted, their two favorite nest boxes were both occupied.
I have been putting down plastic bins everywhere I find an egg on the floor. We are up to 6 nest boxes. For 12 chickens. A little overkill, but they fight over the two boxes under the workbench. Here is a video: https://youtu.be/6hDRHzRU3fQ. I thought Velociraptors were eating my chickens; no, it was just a hen screaming at another hen coming toward her nest box.
Critters and Craft 