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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2upHvNW
Today’s excitement is that in the pig pasture the deep mud sucked my boot off my foot and I wound up ankle-deep in pig shit mud in my sock.
I picked my foot off, peeled the filthy sock off, and re-inserted my bare foot into my boot, and limped back to the house to change my socks. (As I walked away, one of the pigs took a shit directly in the hole my footprint had left.)
That left me separated from the chore vehicle, so I walked to the last place by myself– it’s better to hand-carry the egg basket anyway, because the jostling in the Jeep breaks eggs– but then I was at the pullet pasture alone.
I discovered, which wasn’t a discovery so much as a confirmation of a suspicion, that it’s a terrible idea to try to collect eggs without feeding the hens first. They all mobbed me in great interest, and followed me from nestbox to nestbox demanding to know what I was doing. Since I didn’t understand what they were saying, they also demanded with their beaks. I actually got pecked right in the nose, which was An Experience. (She tried quite hard to wrench my nostril off. It was not pleasant. It turns out you can punch a chicken without affecting it much. She was Offended, but let go of my nose.)
Crouching down to ruffle through a nestbox that has not only one, but often two, and sometimes three hens already in it, while three or four more hens try to perch on your shoulders, back, knees, and head, while keeping your grip on the egg basket, is a really, really strenuous workout.
And oh– for the record, in case anyone was still wondering, now that they are coming to maturity, it turns out that it seems to be sort of a bad idea to mix fancy heritage-breed chickens in with a production flock of sex-link Red hybrids, because the reds develop so much faster and have such aggressive personalities. They’re like chickens on speed, basically, and they live fast and die young and eat anything slower than themselves. Two of the Barred Rocks were found dead, and we’re still not sure if they were bullied to death, or if it’s that we had to switch to layer feed for the Reds because they were starting to produce, and it might have been too early for the Rocks so they might have become egg-bound. It’s possible predators killed them but they weren’t dragged out of the enclosure or anything. So, it’s a mystery.
I still have eight Barred Rocks alive, though, and all of the Homburgs and it looks like all of the Wyandottes made it through. Bonus Fancy, alas, who was shaping up to be an Ameraucana, was stolen by a predator, to our great disappointment. And Snow, the friendly little white rooster (a Red sex-link male who they threw in by accident), sustained an injury that then his sisters nearly killed him by pecking at, and he’s survived and was isolated in Chicken Hospital for a little while, but is not really thriving. (Isolation isn’t great for chickens, even if it’s the only way to keep them alive. They’re social and they don’t like solitary confinement. But if they have friends, the friends will eat them.) He’s still very friendly, but it’s not so much friendly as he just wants to stand on your boots. We’re doing what we can but there’s not much that can really be done, just making sure he gets a chance at the feeders. They’re not pets, so.
The Homburgs are just so hyperactive that the Reds can’t catch them. They’re also so tiny and cute, and utterly bugfuck insane, which is fine, it means they can hold their own. I don’t think they’re laying yet, they produce white eggs and there haven’t been any. They’re a completely different shape than the others, with longer legs and little bodies and big tails.
Having handled the chicks when they were tiny has still proven to have been a good idea, though. They’re friendlier than the old hens, and if they get out, you can catch them to pitch them back over the fence, which is much easier than dealing with the old hens who just run away and tangle themselves in things and panic.
But it is a bit disconcerting when they decide to land on your arm and ride around like that while you’re trying to fill the feeders.
One in particular, a red hen I could distinguish from the others because someone had crapped on her back (listen, they’re all basically identical ok), followed me around for a solid ten minutes, constantly pecking my jeans at the top of my boot. I picked her up and she was chill about it, but her beady little dinosaur eyes were plotting my doom.
Anyway, we’ve been giving them a bale or two of hay per day, because pecking through it to eat the seeds and flower heads and anything they can find keeps them busy so they don’t just murder each other. They’ll be on real pasture soon; they’re outdoors now but it’s boring because they’ve been in the same spot most of the winter. There are still over three hundred and fifty of them, so.
I’d considered putting leg bands on individuals I wanted to be able to recognize, but given what savages these guys are they’d probably peck the leg bands on each other until the foot fell off, so it’s better not to. ISA Brown chickens are i n s a n e. This is why they beak them and cage them, by the way.
It’s less bad in the summer when they have a range to be free on, and can turn their attentions to all the snakes and rodents and insects and worms in the pasture. But winter happens and you need to think of things for them to do.
(Your picture was not posted)
Today’s excitement is that in the pig pasture the deep mud sucked my boot off my foot and I wound up ankle-deep in pig shit mud in my sock.
I picked my foot off, peeled the filthy sock off, and re-inserted my bare foot into my boot, and limped back to the house to change my socks. (As I walked away, one of the pigs took a shit directly in the hole my footprint had left.)
That left me separated from the chore vehicle, so I walked to the last place by myself– it’s better to hand-carry the egg basket anyway, because the jostling in the Jeep breaks eggs– but then I was at the pullet pasture alone.
I discovered, which wasn’t a discovery so much as a confirmation of a suspicion, that it’s a terrible idea to try to collect eggs without feeding the hens first. They all mobbed me in great interest, and followed me from nestbox to nestbox demanding to know what I was doing. Since I didn’t understand what they were saying, they also demanded with their beaks. I actually got pecked right in the nose, which was An Experience. (She tried quite hard to wrench my nostril off. It was not pleasant. It turns out you can punch a chicken without affecting it much. She was Offended, but let go of my nose.)
Crouching down to ruffle through a nestbox that has not only one, but often two, and sometimes three hens already in it, while three or four more hens try to perch on your shoulders, back, knees, and head, while keeping your grip on the egg basket, is a really, really strenuous workout.
And oh– for the record, in case anyone was still wondering, now that they are coming to maturity, it turns out that it seems to be sort of a bad idea to mix fancy heritage-breed chickens in with a production flock of sex-link Red hybrids, because the reds develop so much faster and have such aggressive personalities. They’re like chickens on speed, basically, and they live fast and die young and eat anything slower than themselves. Two of the Barred Rocks were found dead, and we’re still not sure if they were bullied to death, or if it’s that we had to switch to layer feed for the Reds because they were starting to produce, and it might have been too early for the Rocks so they might have become egg-bound. It’s possible predators killed them but they weren’t dragged out of the enclosure or anything. So, it’s a mystery.
I still have eight Barred Rocks alive, though, and all of the Homburgs and it looks like all of the Wyandottes made it through. Bonus Fancy, alas, who was shaping up to be an Ameraucana, was stolen by a predator, to our great disappointment. And Snow, the friendly little white rooster (a Red sex-link male who they threw in by accident), sustained an injury that then his sisters nearly killed him by pecking at, and he’s survived and was isolated in Chicken Hospital for a little while, but is not really thriving. (Isolation isn’t great for chickens, even if it’s the only way to keep them alive. They’re social and they don’t like solitary confinement. But if they have friends, the friends will eat them.) He’s still very friendly, but it’s not so much friendly as he just wants to stand on your boots. We’re doing what we can but there’s not much that can really be done, just making sure he gets a chance at the feeders. They’re not pets, so.
The Homburgs are just so hyperactive that the Reds can’t catch them. They’re also so tiny and cute, and utterly bugfuck insane, which is fine, it means they can hold their own. I don’t think they’re laying yet, they produce white eggs and there haven’t been any. They’re a completely different shape than the others, with longer legs and little bodies and big tails.
Having handled the chicks when they were tiny has still proven to have been a good idea, though. They’re friendlier than the old hens, and if they get out, you can catch them to pitch them back over the fence, which is much easier than dealing with the old hens who just run away and tangle themselves in things and panic.
But it is a bit disconcerting when they decide to land on your arm and ride around like that while you’re trying to fill the feeders.
One in particular, a red hen I could distinguish from the others because someone had crapped on her back (listen, they’re all basically identical ok), followed me around for a solid ten minutes, constantly pecking my jeans at the top of my boot. I picked her up and she was chill about it, but her beady little dinosaur eyes were plotting my doom.
Anyway, we’ve been giving them a bale or two of hay per day, because pecking through it to eat the seeds and flower heads and anything they can find keeps them busy so they don’t just murder each other. They’ll be on real pasture soon; they’re outdoors now but it’s boring because they’ve been in the same spot most of the winter. There are still over three hundred and fifty of them, so.
I’d considered putting leg bands on individuals I wanted to be able to recognize, but given what savages these guys are they’d probably peck the leg bands on each other until the foot fell off, so it’s better not to. ISA Brown chickens are i n s a n e. This is why they beak them and cage them, by the way.
It’s less bad in the summer when they have a range to be free on, and can turn their attentions to all the snakes and rodents and insects and worms in the pasture. But winter happens and you need to think of things for them to do.
(Your picture was not posted)
