Isolation and eggs

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!!!

Teaser apology

Here is the video of the chickens actually leaving the coop. At least I hope it is. I’ve trimmed and uploaded it five times, messed with it with four different apps, and finally went back to the original and only used the YouTube trim option. Interesting that a video trimmed in iMovie, then trimmed again in YouTube gives a completely different 40 second clip. Did I say interesting? I think I meant frustrating. So sorry for that little teaser in my previous post!

Chicken cam

Yes, we installed a chicken camera. No one reading this is probably surprised we did, but I do feel a bit of chagrin at installing the tech in a coop. But, you see, my youngest’s favorite YouTuber has a camera in their coop and they could see when the chickens were in the nesting boxes (still no eggs here). My youngest doesn’t go out to the coop at all right now, so it is a way for her to see the chickens, and maybe get more comfortable with the idea. And I had points.

Still peering around (from the glint of their eyes) near midnight

Now I can finally see the chickens sleeping. Is that weird? I’ve never really seen them sleep. As chicks they would always get active whenever I went into the coop, and it hasn’t changed as they get older. But they don’t seem to really sleep until the wee hours of the morning. At midnight they are still peering into the darkness. Huh. The secret life of chickens revealed. Sort of.

Finally asleep

Happy Friday!

I made it to Friday!

Here is a little something for all of us that made it through the week. ‘Cause chickens are funny looking straight on, especially with a beard and muffs.

Another scare

What have you been eating?!?

I went to check on the chickens and was quite alarmed to see that many of them had red in their beard feathers. What the heck? Was someone bleeding and they all had a peck? Chickens will peck at anything red, especially blood. I started to look at each of them for injuries.

Don’t you hate it when the watermelon juice drips into your beard?

No. I had given them a watermelon end, and the bowl was a little deeper than usual. They had watermelon beards. Ha.