Sunday, April 10, 2011

A horrible tragedy just happened today... =(

Well, we got some work done outside. It was a beautiful day. Unfortunately we suffered a double tragedy as well. =( We kept a 4 ft by 2 ft wall board in the door of the chick coop, sort of as a baby gate. It fell in on three of the chicks killing 2 of them. Ruby and Nemo (Jade), our two golden sebrights. ***cries*** My poor babies! I buried them together. They were close to each other, with lots of love between them. Then they died together. It was only right to bury them together. The third chick was unharmed, miraculously! It was a great day... until this happened. We continued our work, and made sure to get that "gate" board out of there. The weekend of the 22nd, we are putting up their run. I can hardly wait. RIP my precious babies.... =(


Friday, April 8, 2011

Update!

Well, our 6 chicks that are in the coop are exploring more!  They seem to be happy out there.  Hopefully the temperatures will start staying warmer.  We're supposed to see around 76 on Sunday.  The temperatures are fluctuating from 70's down to 50's with upper 30's to low 40's at night.  I wonder how much longer we should keep a brooder light in there.

                                               Shatel

                                                Eagle

                                                Diamond

                                                  Nemo (was Jade)

                                                Ruby

                                               Ricky (was Aurora)




Angel (or Angelico as I plan to call him should he make it) is doing good.  He sure has the will to live!  His head is a lot more sturdy, so maybe he'll get back on his feet soon.  The vet suggested we make a sling for him, so I did... he doesn't like it.  lol  But it's to help encourage him to use his legs.



Precious has been making some great effort of getting back on his feet finally.  He hasn't succeeded much yet, but at least he's trying.  We gave him a bath on Wednesday.  He wasn't sure what to think of it, or the blow dry afterwords.  But I think he enjoyed it.  Then we let him loose in the kitchen.  He didn't go far at first.  Then He made a quick run for it into the front room (a whole foot and a half or so).  Then he collapsed back down to get off of those sore feet.  Poor baby.  He took a couple of steps tonight in his cage.  But mostly just bounces around on his "heels".  I taught him how to drink from a water bottle tonight too.  The kind you'd use for a rabbit.  He wasn't sure what to make of that either, but quickly learned how to get the water out.  So much for all the spilled water in the cage now!  YES!!!!  lol  He made a HUGE mess in the cage yesterday.  We just gave him fresh food and water, and he spilled ALL of it!  Now, no more spilling the water.  He can still spill the food, but that's not as big of a deal.  He'll eat it right up.




Now for the NEWS!!!  We just got ourselves 3 new baby Mille Fleur chicks!  Yay!  There's supposed to be two girls, and one boy.  Hopefully we got it right.  lol  The darkest one is supposed to be the boy.  I've decided to name one of the girls Jasmine... but not sure which one yet.  Now to figure out which will be Jasmine, and name the other two babies.  They are VERY cute!  And MAN!  I forgot how small they were!  They were hatched under a broody hen.  Beautiful girl.  Silkie and frizzle cochin mix.  She was black, small, and very pretty.  Yes, the millie's are purebred.  The lady also has auracana's.  Maybe we'll get some from her some day.  Just not right now.  lol




Our cochin eggs are due to hatch in a week.  I can hardly wait!  And in May... 12 more babies coming to us!  10 silkies, and 2 speckled sussex.  Precious may never be able to be a show bird now, but I know he could produce some show worthy babies!


Gloria and Mable have different personalities now that Precious isn't out there with them.  Gloria is our white rock hen, and Mable is our light brown leghorn hen.  Gloria seems to be the boss now, and Mable follows her everywhere.  And Gloria is now watchful when we collect eggs, which was one of the jobs Precious Boy did when he was out there.  I really can't wait to get him back out there.  It's been 2 1/2 weeks already.  =(  And I have plans for after he's back too.  About 2-3 weeks after he's back out there, and they're doing their "thing", I plan to collect some eggs to put in the bator.  I'd like to have some of their babies.  I want girls, so any boys I'd get I would sell.  Unfortunately, they may end up meat birds since they'd be mutts.  =(   And that makes me feel really bad.




Next spring, we plan to sell fertile eggs.  We'll have plenty of them too.  Mille Fleur, blue silkies, golden sebrights, ameraucanas... and mixed breeds.  I'm still not sure what breed Aurora is... but I'm sure he's really a Ricky... so unless I'm proved wrong, we are now calling him Ricky.  I was thinking Ricky could be a Java?  I guess it will be easier to tell his breed when he's full grown... or at least easier for those who know breeds better than I do.  I'd like to get some more golden sebright girls, and some girls for Ricky.  I learned the sebrights only lay about 1 egg per week, which isn't many.  Especially if you only have one hen and one roo.  =/   And poor Ricky doesn't have any girls of his breed, so I REALLY want to get him some.  (If anyone knows what breed he is, please tell me.)

Well, that's about all the update I have for now.  More to come at a later time!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Just candled our eggs!

I'm sorry... I just got SO excited while we were candling!  lol  Out of 14 eggs, we have 4 or 5 for sures, 4 or 5 maybes, and the rest seem to be no go.  I did promise some pictures, so here you go!  (Captions will be under the pictures this time.)   =)
 

                                                              Look!  A baby!!!!


                      was hard to tell with this one.  We saw some veins, and possibly movement?



                    We saw something moving in this one... but obviously  the camera missed it.  =/



                                                                    Another baby!!!!
 


                                             You can kind of see the veins in this picture.  =/



                                                          Look at the baby!!!!  Awwww!!!!!



                                                       Another one where we're not sure.....



                                        Awww... last pic....  You can sort of see the veins...  =/


Well, I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  We won't be posting any pictures again from these guys until around the 15th.  So stay tuned! 

We checked on our chicks, and they were a little cold.  They were huddled together under the heat lamp, so we added two heating pads.  They were happy about that.  They seemed to be more comfortable after that.  We'll be checking on them again here in a little bit.  My poor little babies.....

Little Angel is getting settled down for the night.  I have to say, he did get aggravated at us with all the turning the light on and off when we were candling.  lol  He kept yelling at us.  lol 

Our adult roo, Precious Boy...  We took the bandages off again, and decided we only needed to rebandage 2 of the 5 toes.  I know they're still sore, which may be why he's still not trying to walk on them.  Poor baby.  We're working on MAKING him get up and move around so he can learn to tolerate the pain, and be more on the road to recovery.  Hopefully soon, he'll be healed up and walking around again.  But for now, he's enjoying being spoiled and pampered.  lol  (But don't tell his girls that!  It's just not manly!  lol)  As for his girls... they're getting feisty.  They keep trying to run out the man door.  They know Precious was out that way and want to find him.  I have to hurry and swoop them up, when we open the door, so they can't get out.  But otherwise, they are doing great!  Still laying good, eating good...  Speaking of eating... Gloria is GREEDY with the treats!  Poor little Mable only gets a little bit, while Gloria hurries to gobble it all down.

I heard it's good for chickens to keep a turkey around because the turkey will eat parasite that could make the chickens sick.  I don't know if that's true or not, but it's making me consider getting a turkey hen for each group.  Does anyone have any info about this that could shed some light?

Well, I'm going to go now.  Have a good night all!  And don't worry... I'll keep you updated as I can on everyone.  =)

The chicks are in their new coop!

As you may know, we built a coop ourselves for our little bantam group.  We put the chicks (except Angel) out there.  I know I'm going to worry about them nonstop, and check on them all the time.  We do still need to get some nest boxes and perches out there, but for now it is good to go for little ones.  Here are some pictures of them in there.  They're pretty much staying under the brooder lamp.  It's still pretty cold out, especially at night.  And, we're learning that we'll need to add some more hens of these breeds so we can have a better supply of their fertile eggs when it's time. 

Without further ado....  Our babies in their new coop:










Aren't they tiny?  I hate having them out there, but they needed more room.  Sweet little babies.  Angel is still in the brooder.  We are going to give him a week to get better.  If he's not better by Friday, we'll probably have him put down.  We have a lady that lives in town that raises Mille Fleur's, so we'll be going to her house to buy two or three of her hatchlings.  Plus we have 14 bantam cochin eggs in the incubator.  We'll be candling them tonight to see how they're doing.  I'll try to get pictures of some of the eggs to post on here as well.  =)