Well Done Penny: Successful Chick Hatch!

Penny hatched out her chicks last weekend!

She surpassed our expectations as a broody and hatched out TWELVE babies! Good Girl!

shortly after hatching- the babies like to stay right up next to or underneath mama

seeing chick feed for the first time

She has been such a good mama to her chicks and very protective of them (pecking us when we reach in or get close). She raises them far better than we could, teaching them everything they need to know in chicken life. She shows them how to eat, drink, scratch, know what treats are, take a dust bath, and lots of other useful skills.

a couple weeks old

The chicks have grown and changed so much in just the last couple of weeks! They love to snuggle underneath her warm feathers and wings and often they will jump on top of her back to hang out for a bit while she is sitting down. SO CUTE.

catching a ride on mama's back

An interesting outcome of this year's hatch was the presence of a white Dominique chick, which when hatched looked like a fuzzy whitish yellow chick with some grey accents on the wings and head. I had no idea what a white Dominique even was until this happened, and at first I thought a stray rooster had stopped by one day without us knowing to visit our flock of all Dominiques! Apparently there is a recessive gene where every once in a while the Dominique will have white or partially white coloring. It is a pretty rare occurrence and it will be fun to see how this little chick changes as she/he develops.

the White Dominique chick gives mama kisses (or more likely picks food from her beak)

I love letting our chickens breed on their own and repopulate the flock naturally. It's much less work for us to let our hens raise the chicks, and I think they probably integrate into the flock better as well. It does involve some planning in order to breed the best type of whatever breed you have and improve your flock's genetics, but I find it great fun. There's nothing like watching a mama hen and her sweet baby chicks :)

A lot of people have asked us what we are going to do with all these chicks when they grow up. Well, we plan to keep all the pullets and from the cockerels we will save the best one with good Dominique type for breeding and the rest will be processed and go to freezer camp. This will be very very hard I'm sure, but a necessary part of homesteading for us. What else would we do with all those grown roosters?

For now, however, we will enjoy their utter cuteness and fuzzy bodies with high-pitched cheeping noises :)

We have a BROODY!!!!

We FINALLY have a broody hen! Yay!! After many weeks of waiting and letting the eggs pile up, Pennyroyal ("Penny") has gone broody. I knew it was for real when at night when the other chickens were coming in, she was grunting and making high-pitched warning sounds while fluffing out her feathers over her eggs. The rest of the chickens kept their distance--and for good reason!



After a couple of days we moved her to the brooder's coop where she will be able to sit on, hatch, and raise  her baby chicks in peace without the interference of the other chickens (who can potentially cause harm). We also made sure she has a small feeder and waterer close to her nest so she won't have to get up much to keep herself nourished.

We are so fortunate to have a broody, because now she will do most of the work for us! However, there are still some things to remember when you have baby chicks even with a mama hen:

1. Make sure chick feed is available at all times and water is clean.

2. After about a week, remove all the other eggs that didn't hatch underneath mama.

3. Check to see if all the chicks can fit underneath mama- if not, they may need a lamp for extra heat.

4. Introduce treats very slowly to the babies and don't give too much. Last time we had a broody, I gave mama some blueberries cut up into teeny tiny pieces and some shredded cheese occasionally. She was soooooo excited for treats and clearly voiced to her babies how good they were. The babies would rush over every time and fight over the pieces- mama usually doled them out or showed the chicks how to eat the treats :)

5. Check in on mama and babies as often as you can. Its important that they remain safe and to avoid any problems you will have to keep a close eye on them.

6. Allow mama and babies to go outside to free range while supervised (by you). Mama needs a chance to teach babies how to forage, take a dust bath, and catch bugs! 

7. After about 4-6 weeks or so, try separating mama from the babies for a little while. See if she pitches a fit or if she is happy to be back with the other grown ups in the regular coop. It may be time for the babies to grow up the rest of the way on their own.

We plan to keep our chicks in the brooder coop until they are almost grown and can go into the other coop with the rest of the flock. They will still be able to socialize with the other chickens due to the adjacent pens.

Our broody is hunkered down for the long haul- her chicks will hatch out in about two weeks!!  Do any of you have chicks yet?

Breeding My Flock Part 3: Spring Mating

It's time for another edition of the "Breeding My Flock" series! I know you are super excited to hear about my plans for mating the chickens, right? ;)



Unfortunately we lost a few hens recently to a predator that I was planning to breed, so I'll have to make due with the ones we have left. I'm still a little saddened by the loss of my favorite sweet hen.  I have decided to keep Pennyroyal, Rosemary, and Lavender in the coop together with Reggie for a week, followed by those same three hens in the coop with Cori for a week.

I'm breeding both roosters because both carry good traits and Cori actually has better coloring and a straighter tail. My hens are fairly good in terms of the Standard, but could stand to have less "smut" in their coloring and yellower beaks. My cocks in this flock need a lot more work: they need more of a U-shaped back, longer and fuller tails, less beefy combs, and need to be smaller overall in weight.

I'm not sure how this will go down--because it will be one heck of a task to get the other two hens and rooster out while keeping the ones I want in. Additionally, Reggie is going to FREAK OUT when he sees Cori in there with his ladies and he can't get in to "save them." I admit though, it is rather comical to see a rooster in distress and carrying on about protecting his girls from another rooster--you will never see them run and fly so fast! But very chivalrous and sweet.

the mounting process in action- cue Marvin Gaye sexy music....

the poor hen gets pulled on at the head and clawed by chicken feet on her
back, but it's how the rooster holds on :)

After the eggs have been laid for each week, I will mark them with a sharpie to know which ones I need to leave in the coop for setting.

Next comes the hard part, I must be patient and hope that a broody hen will see that nice big pile of eggs and sit on them. It may take a couple of tries before one "sits tight." She may sit for a few days, but then become tempted by treats or fresh air and get up off her nest. But once a hen "sits tight," new chickies will hatch within about 3 weeks!

I sure hope I have a hen who wants to mother soon in my flock!

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Missing Hen :( Predator-Proofing our Coop

We had a hen go missing recently :(  We came home one night and there were only 6 hens in the coop with Reggie. When she didn't appear the following night, and the chickens were acting particularly strange by not leaving their coop/pen to forage and frolic in the woods, we knew something was wrong.

A day or two later my husband went walking around the woods when it was light and found a couple of clumps of feathers--not a good sign. He found another little clump over by our neighbors yard. It seems that some sort of predator caught our hen and then carried her off somewhere, because we never found her body.

Why is it always the sweetest ones that get taken?


There is no guaranteed way to totally prevent predators from getting to your chickens, especially if you allow them to free range, but there are some things that you can do to make the casualties a little fewer. We know in the back of our minds we will probably lose one or two a year to predators, and that is because we would rather them be allowed out to free range getting healthy greens and bugs, rather than be relegated to the pen and coop all day. They live far happier lives and to me that is worth it.

So far, to secure our pen and coop and deter predators we have:

1) added a carabiner latch/hook to the back door (so raccoon hands can't undo the latches!),

2) surrounded the pen with a solar-powered electric fence,

3) topped the pen with netting,

4) placed an owl on top of a little stand to ward of hawks in our backyard,

5) raise Dominiques partly because of their feather patterning that blends in more with the landscape, making them less visible to predators,

6) Keep the chicken feed in a separate spot from where the chickens are

Additionally, you can:

7) Consider burying underground piping at the edges of the coop or pen to discourage predators from digging underneath in order to get inside. You can also bury hardware cloth several inches under the ground.

8) Build strong, sturdy walls of the coop and pen (use hardware cloth) and make sure the supports and strong as well so that they can't be torn apart by larger predators. 

9) Invest in a wildlife camera. These are not very expensive, and you can spot from the footage what comes around at night so that you will know how best to deal with the problem. Remember, everybody wants a chicken dinner! 

It is so important to take steps to keep your flock safe from predators as much as you can, and it is important that the chickens know and understand where their "safe spot" is. For ours, it is underneath their coop in their pen.

Honestly, as much as I have enjoyed raising our last batch of chicks by hand and love how they are so friendly with us, we can tell a strong difference in safety instincts between them and the ones that were raised by their mama hen. The ones raised by their mama hen around grown-up chickens are faster to run from predators and much more skittish with us, and I think can detect overhead predators as well as ground threats a little better. They are better foragers and have more "street sense" if you will.

the hen with the hurt foot/leg...notice that it is curled under. She is also molting :(

In other chicken news, we have a hen with a hurt leg/foot. I noticed her limping pretty badly over the weekend, so we isolated her into the brooder coop and pen. We aren't sure if anything is broken, but it doesn't feel like it. Perhaps she just sprained something and we are hoping in a week or two she will feel better. I put some crushed baby aspirin in her water and I'm going to give her vitamins and electrolytes. She also happens to be molting, poor baby :(

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Farm Girl Blog Fest

Merry Christmas from the Roost!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous Holiday season!

The flock of course also wishes you a Merry Christmas, although they did not like their Santa hats very much. Do you know how long it took to get this picture?!? This poor girl finally gave in fighting the hat and sat in exhaustion on the railing, completely defeated by the humans that were making her play dress-up.

As a reward Santa brought them lots of yummy chicken treats :)

With Peace and Joy,

Breeding My Flock: Part 2

Today we had our chickens NPIP certified!

The NPIP program stands for the National Poultry Improvement Plan and is recommended for all breeding flocks. State agriculture employees will come out to your farm or house and test your flock for several diseases, including Pullorum, Avian Influenza, salmonella, and others on-site.  Here in North Carolina, it only costs a whopping $5 for your flock to be tested as long as you have fewer than 50 birds!

The lady who came to do the NPIP testing swabbed the mouths and drew blood from each of my little flock of 9 Dominiques. Poor babies!  It was very quick though, and before they had much time to protest they were released and set free to forage. They also each received metal leg bands. Of course, Rosemary was her usual pouty and mean self, throwing the biggest hissy fit of them all screaming her head off while the NPIP lady tested her. Way to set an example for the younger girls, Rosemary. 

With NPIP certification, we can show our chickens at any show without having to do testing or vaccinations immediately before the show, and we don't have to worry about passing on diseases to others if we plan to sell offspring from our breeding program.

Breeding your flock of chickens requires planning, attention to detail, and persistence. It is not something you want to let naturally happen and get out of hand if you are trying to maintain a particular breed standard. You must decide to either cull or not breed the birds that have flaws or defects that you don't want passed on to future generations. If you missed my first post on breeding, click here.

For us, that means choosing our top 3 or 4 hens that we will let mate with each rooster, only because although one of the roosters has a better comb, the other has lighter feathering (better for future pullets) and a less-crooked and longer tail. We plan to put these 3 or 4 pullets into the breeding pen for a couple of days at a time with each rooster. Hopefully this will produce enough fertilized eggs for us to put together for a successful hatch.

A potential chicken Christmas card photo- what do you think? 

The most controlled way to breed is to use an incubator, but I'm a sucker for watching mama hens raise their babies, so I will probably place these eggs in the nest box, mark them with a sharpie, and wait until one of our hens decides to go broody. I will collect the new eggs laid on top of the batch we want to hatch out (they will be the ones that are unmarked). Once a hen decides to "sit tight," on her nest, it takes about three weeks for the babies to hatch!

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Breeding My Flock series where I will *try* my best to discuss how genetics plays into poultry breeding.

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Fresh Eggs Daily

Turkey Coop Progress

What's that you say?? Yes, friends, you read it right: WE ARE GETTING TURKEYS!!!!

I am so excited to be adding some new animals to our little homestead in the early spring. We are choosing a heritage breed, called Bourbon Reds, to raise primarily for meat. Not sure how they will interact with the chickens, but hopefully everyone will learn to get along :) 

image source, attribution

We are planning to use the partially enclosed, partially open area behind our shed for the turkey pen. We will enclose this area with poultry wire, and we've made a roost for them to sleep on that is underneath the sheltered portion of the back of the shed. We plan to keep the poults here in the pen for the first several weeks until they learn where home is, and then we will let them out to free range. I have heard from many turkey owners that turkeys are just as happy to sleep every night roosting up in trees.

poultry wire will be applied to the metal posts

The back of our shed is partially sheltered--perfect for the turkeys to sleep under

home-made turkey roost out of bamboo

I expect the turkeys to spend most of their time out in the woods that surround our property, and we will just pray they won't all get eaten by predators!

turkey coop looking out-- see the chickens in the background? They will have to learn to share their foraging space!

Once next November rolls around, they should be quite large and ready for processing. We plan to dress one out for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas :) If we are lucky we might have an extra breeding pair we can use for next year! Did you know that something like 98% of all turkeys in the United States are artificially inseminated? Apparently over the years we have nearly bred the natural mating and reproduction process out of these birds, who rarely get to reach one full year in their life-span.

 I guess it's time to stock up on the turkey poult feed before the prices shoot up. Do any of you raise turkeys? How different do you find them from chickens?

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Breeding my Flock: Part I

Want to learn about breeding your flock of chickens? Well, so do I!

I thought we could learn together so I am starting a series of posts called "Breeding my Flock" that discuss the successes, failures, and particulars of breeding a line of chickens (in my case Dominiques) in order to best preserve that breed's standard of perfection (or at least come as close as possible, ha!).

 A well-managed breeding program is sooooooooo important when raising chickens. If we didn't have good, thoughtful, careful breeders, the number of distinct recognized chicken breeds (over 100) would  dramatically decrease pretty quickly.

I have many many challenges in my young flock of Doms, but I am trying to learn the things I must do and in what order to attain those characteristic features that identify my stock as American Dominiques. Here are a few problematic things I've noticed:

(FYI- I will no longer be naming any more roosters that we hatch unless they pass the test and are keepers for the breeding pen. All roosters that don't pass will be culled and go to "freezer camp" to be used for yummy meat and chicken soup :))

"Sassafras"

One of my hens, Sassafras (shown above), has a single comb. This is a recessive gene in the Dominique and an obvious defect, because Dominiques should have a rose comb.

"Lavender," has a crooked toe. She is super sweet though and probably the friendliest.

One of the hens has a crooked toe (shown above on her right foot), a genetic defect. She will not be bred.

"Peppermint" aka "Pepper"

Another one of the hens, Peppermint or "Pepper," is totally wrong, with much too dark feathering and dark grey legs rather than yellow legs. She will not be bred either.

The alpha rooster, Oregano, or "Reggie" will probably be used for breeding, but his feathering is a little dark for my hens since I am hoping for lighter pullets in the future.

Cori is standing here in mid-crow. Cock-a-doodle-doo!!

My beta rooster, Coriander, or "Cori" is not the most popular guy with the ladies. Bless his heart, he doesn't get lovin' very often and when he tries the girls will scream and try their best to run away. Occasionally he succeeds. Even cooping him into the breeding pen with the girls may be a challenge to get fertilized eggs. If Cori tries to mount the ladies inside the pen with Reggie in view, Reggie WILL HAVE A FIT and probably tangle himself in the netting trying to rescue his girls (he did this once already).

The rest of my girls are so-so in terms of being up to the breed standard of perfection. For all my hens I need to work on their overall shape and slope of the back.  I will outline these next hens below:

"Parsley"

Parsley is actually not too bad, but her feathering is getting a bit "smutty" and dark for my preferences. Her comb is better than the rest, but she has a little too much "poof" in her rear and her tail could certainly be better.

"Sage"

Sage is not too bad a specimen either. Her tail is much nicer than some of the others, but again, her coloring is a bit "smuttier" than I like and her comb is rather beefy and not as flat on the top as it should be. I would like to see a better "U" shape slope to her back.

"Pennyroyal" aka "Penny"

I think that Penny has the best coloring in her feathers of all my pullets. She also has nice bright yellow legs. I am eager to see how her form turns out once she is fully developed, but she is definitely one of my best pullets in terms of type and breeding.

Last but not least, there is Rosemary, whose overall form and type is probably the best. That is, before she became an old hen and and a mama. Since then, her tail feathers have never really been quite as good, all the yellow has gone out of her legs, and her feathers have sort of "grayed" since her youth. Poor Rosemary, she is just getting old......but still very useful for breeding!


Important features to work on in breeding (for Dominiques):

1. The slope of the back

2. A nice comb (sits straight on the head, flat, with upward turned spike)

3. Tail spread

4. Overall size and shape

5. Bright yellow legs

6. Short, stout beak

7. Good feathering (dark tips on barring, no green sheen or other colors, with nice "lace like" effect)

8. Dominiques in general are on the smallish side for standard fowl. It's important to keep them from weighing too much or too little (around 5 lbs. for hens, 7-8 lbs for cocks).

These goals will obviously differ depending on which breed you are working with and trying to improve. Another thing you have to think about is their temperament-- is it characteristic of their breed? For instance, Dominiques should naturally be excellent foragers, very curious, hardy, and good layers and mothers. If I was trying to decide between two that were very similar, I would perhaps pick the one that exhibited its breed's qualities better than the other.

In Part II of this series I will discuss my plans for breeding this winter/spring and how to overcome some of the problems discussed above.

Linking to:

Homestead Revival Barn Hop

Clever Chicks Blog Hop

Our babies are laying!

I came home on Tuesday after a horrific weekend (more on that later) to two, tiny, bite-sized pullet eggs sitting in the corner of the babies' coop. They are laying!!!!!!

The babies' eggs compared to Rosemary's eggs.

Albeit the eggs are miniature, but I'm so happy at least one of my girls, maybe two, are entering maturity. No matter how long you have had chickens, it's always a thrill when one of your young pullets lays her first egg. These are some recent snapshots of the babies, which have grown incredibly since I last posted about them:

This little girl is super sweet, and she has already been letting Reggie have his way with her. 

these two were purchased from a different breeder, and because their mama hen raised them they are pretty afraid of us (except when treats are involved!) and do no like being handled. 

This little girl likes to continually be under or near my feet. I think she is getting pretty attached :)

I completely forgot to post about their ugly, in-between teenage stage of chicken life. Maybe that's for the best :)  I will say that this bunch raised by hand are especially friendly with us, and don't mind being picked up and petted at all. They run up to me when I come outside and like to jump in my lap when I sit down on their level. Awwwww.

We have decided to continue our herb and spice naming tradition and these girls will be given the names of:

Lavender,
Sage,
Parsley,
Peppermint ("Pepper" for short),
Pennyroyal ("Penny" for short), 
Sassafras

I think I will only need to band a few of them because several are already easy to distinguish from the others. One has a single-comb (recessive gene), one of them has a crooked toe, and one is much darker than the others with grey/black legs instead of yellow legs. All of these traits are defects that will make them unable to be shown. But that's okay, I still have three others that could make decent show birds if I ever decide to venture into that the world of showing chickens.

hunting for bugs....

I am looking forward to seeing how much larger the eggs get as the girls grow up. When the other pullets start laying, we will be overrun with eggs. Perhaps around 35 a week!!! We plan to eat a lot, bake a lot, and give away a lot. We also have a local food pantry that our church is helping to get up and running to which we will be able to donate our extra fresh eggs.

What do you do with your extra eggs?

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