Tag: raising chickens

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Frustrating Chickens

Although these livestock animals are among the easiest and most useful, these can be frustrating chickens too. Mine certainly are right now.

Why Chickens?

I like chickens. My parents raised chickens in our backyard. We had fresh eggs.

There were problems like the rooster that attacked my father one to many times. They escaped from their yard only to be herded back by our collie/German shepard dog shadow.

Now I have chickens because they provide eggs, meat and manure. The manure is difficult to use as it has so much nitrogen it burns most plants. Asparagus likes it.

Gray Easter Egger chicken no longer a frustrating chicken
Easter Egger chickens seem to live very long lives. Gray One is at least five. She occasionally lays a blue egg in spring. She is retired the rest of the year. I like these hens for the colored eggs. Good homesteading breeds I’ve worked with are Buff Orpingtons, Speckled Sussex, Barred Rocks, New Hampshires and standard Cochins.

Dangers

People aren’t the only ones who like eating chicken and eggs. Foxes, raccoons, opossums and hawks love chicken. Crows attack young ones. Black snakes love eggs.

Every morning and night I count my hens to be sure none are missing. I lock their door at night to keep out unwanted visitors. Black snakes, weasels and minks can get in, if they want to.

So far my chickens have not had many predator problems. Even the grey foxes sometimes living around the house have mostly left the chickens alone. Of course, I bribe the foxes.

Pippi, one of my frustrating chickens
My chicken Pippi is a cross of, I think, Easter Egger or Araucana and Columbian Wyandotte. The hen hatched only this chick and abandoned her. She was forced to survive on her own. the garden is so alluring and a major place she tries to get into.

Frustrating Chickens

After thirty years of use, the chicken yard was barren. During the summer it is really hot and has little shade. So I let the chickens out during the day.

The chickens love this. They chase down and devour anything that looks edible. I wish they didn’t like the little snakes and spiders.

Here and there the flock establishes dusting areas and dig holes. Lawn mowing gets very bumpy.

Any gate left open is an invitation for invasion. Gardens, especially with mulch, are favorite places to attack. Any tomato with color and within reach is fair game.

What really makes for frustrating chickens is trying to find hidden nests. It’s amazing how easy it is to look at one and not see it.

Will I give up raising chickens? No. I’m already trying to decide which chicks I want to order next spring.

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Frustrating Chickens

There is a fair sized flock of chickens in my hen house. They are there to eat pests and lay eggs. This year they are frustrating chickens.

Eggs almost ceased to appear last summer. From what I’ve read and heard, this was a common problem for many. There are probably lots of reasons.

Too Many Roosters

Someone dumped off some roosters down the road last summer. They moved into my flock and proceeded to beat up both my two resident roosters and my hens.

Frustrating chickens, all talk and no eggs
Purrsey rooster was dumped off and joined the flock. He is a proud bird and thinks he should rule the roost. Unfortunately the hens don’t appreciate all the uproar between the roosters. I’m hoping this will settle down more next year as the roosters get older. His name is because he sounds like a cat’s purr when he calls hens over.

All but one left. The damage was already done. My hens were traumatized which is not good for egg production.

Black Snakes

There are several big, and I do mean big, black snakes that live under my barn floor all summer. Eggs are a favorite delicacy.

However, the snakes also eat some of the thousands of mice, any rats that attempt to move in and discourage the copperheads. So I put up with losing a few eggs.

The problem last summer was a younger black snake, a mere five footer (The big ones are seven feet and six feet.). This one was determined to get to those eggs, even sliding under the hens in the nests to wait for the egg to arrive.

The hens were not happy. They moved out to the hay trough, the tall grass, anyplace but the nests.

Heat

Like much of the country, the Ozarks had a heat wave go by. The chickens hid in the barn, under the trees, next to the barn, anyplace there was shade. They still panted as chickens can’t sweat. One older hen went hoarse.

Egg production ceased.

Older Hens

My flock is mixed ages. I tend to add six to eight pullets each year. The others stay until they die of old age.

Older hens lay larger eggs, but fewer of them. They tend to stop laying after molting in the fall and not start again until the end of January.

Mr. Smarty, another rooster for my frustrating chickens
Mr. Smarty is a very proud rooster. He thinks he should be in charge and is most upset that I am. He is a Columbian Wyandotte.

Light Problems

For years I’ve used lights to lengthen the days for my hens to encourage them to lay longer in the fall. The new LED lights don’t seem to have the right colors of light, so this doesn’t seem to work very well any more.

All of this adds up to frustrating chickens and a shortage of eggs in my kitchen.

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Averted Tragedy

Last night one of my new hens, one of my winter layers didn’t come in. All night I thought she was picked off by a fox or a hawk. This morning she was the lucky one that averted tragedy.

Accidents Happen

Rural living is an invitation to accidents. Machines don’t work as expected. Wire snaps. Wood or metal beams fall.

Livestock has its share of accidents too. Some end tragically. Some are averted tragedy.

Trapped Goats

As told in “For Love of Goats”, we had a young doe slip down into the crotch of a tree. My companion found her and lifted her out. Otherwise she was trapped, unable to get her hooves on anything to let her push out of the tree.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Part of “For Love of Goats” is a series of memoirs taken from my many years raising dairy goats. Kids are often in trouble. They can get trapped, lost, hurt. The best account is averting tragedy for the kid in trouble.

There was another such incident. This time a doe was stepping over a fallen tree. It had two trunks. The ground was a hillside covered with gravel.

The doe slid down the tree trunk into the crotch and got stuck. When she didn’t come in that evening, I went looking. It took two of us to slide her up out of that trap.

The next morning that upper trunk became firewood.

Trapped Chicken

I have extra water buckets placed upside down along the fence into the goat barn lot. The buckets I’m using sit on top of these, easy to grab to fill at the hand pump.

This morning the bucket had fallen onto the ground. When I picked it up, my lost hen was under it. She was eager to get back in the chicken yard where she promptly grabbed the vole the flock was arguing over.

Avoiding Tragedy

No matter how careful I try to be, accidents happen. Some do end in tragedy. Most do not. There is reason for this.

When my flock goes back in their yard at night, I count them. Three of this kind, three of those, seven of the other, until all are accounted for.

The same is true for the goats. I make sure everyone goes out and everyone comes in.

The chickens are locked up at night. The goats are in their barn.

I much prefer taking precautions to having another averted tragedy tale to tell.

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Lost Chickens

My chickens are a motley crew that spends much of its day out foraging for grass and bugs. So, when I received a report of lost chickens, I took it seriously.

These chickens were over the hill by the creek, a place none of my chickens had ever gone. This was suspicious.

Trying to Count Chickens

My present flock has 31 hens and two roosters. I went out and started counting. I found 29 hens and the roosters, so I had no lost chickens.

That meant there were strange chickens down the road from me. Where did they come from? Did they belong to anyone?

My nearest neighbors in that direction are a mile and a half away. They have no chickens.

Chicken Investigation

I put a scoop of scratch feed in a bucket and started off down the road. It’s a nice walk, even if I didn’t find any chickens.

And, there by the creek, I found these lost chickens. Four roosters. Why would someone dump out four roosters? Potential chicken dinners? Potential money at the small animal sale?

Herding Chickens

There was a time when I pounce on a chicken. I even ran down a fox one day to rescue a hen. I don’t do things like that any more.

Instead, I called these roosters and tossed out a little feed. They were hungry and came right over, not close enough to grab, but I was their new best friend.

We made it over the hill before I ran out of feed. I tried herding them, but they bolted up the hill. I went to get more feed and they went back to the creek.

Lost chickens found
These dumped, lost now found roosters are about a year old judging from their legs. Their spurs are not big. Their legs are neat and clean. They are nice looking roosters. The hens object to having six roosters arguing over them and have taken to hiding during the day or staying near the resident rooster who protects them from the newcomers.

Second Encounter

The next morning, I was headed into town. On a whim, I put a sack of scratch feed in the truck. And met the roosters on their way over the hill in search of their new friend, the one with food.

I parked the truck and started moving the roosters down the hill from handful of feed to handful of feed. We arrived at the barn gate and these roosters were glad to see all those hens.

Unhappy Chickens

My flock was settled. The two roosters had an uneasy truce helped by the fact one was very old, for a chicken.

Now four new young roosters have moved in. The six compete for the hens. They serenade the place all day.

My original rooster feels threatened and gives chase whenever he can. Even the four new ones fight and chase each other. They are no longer lost chickens.

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Winter Eggs

I like eggs and use them year round. That means my chickens need to lay winter eggs even though they normally wouldn’t.

Chickens are what is called a long day bird. This means they naturally lay eggs when the days are growing longer or are long as in spring and summer, then stop in the fall. Since chickens lay eggs to raise chicks, this puts hatching at the best time of the year.

Domestic chickens don’t usually raise their own chicks. Some breeds don’t get broody and try to set. Other breeds are a disaster breaking the eggs they try to set.

Columbian Wyandotte laying winter eggs
The Columbian Wyandotte hens settle down into a nest pretending they are invisible. They seem to like staying in the nest. Perhaps they are warmer sitting there. They do leave winter eggs behind.

Instead, domestic chickens are supposed to have one mission in life: laying eggs. That leaves the tie to daylength a problem for people like me who want winter eggs.

Using Lights

I have two ways to encourage winter production. One is using lights. This developed thanks to my goats.

Over the winter I milked after dark so the barn lights were on until long after the sun had set. Now I milk before dark, but walk out to turn the barn lights out later on. (This is one of the adjustments to getting older.)

Not All Lights Work

When the first energy saver lights came out, I put them up in my barn. Changing light bulbs out there is a nuisance and these were supposed to work for years.

Egg production almost ceased that fall. It didn’t start up again until mid-January with longer days.

I went back to incandescent bulbs and had eggs the next winter.

My next experiment was with Daylight LED bulbs. A friend assured me these do work. They didn’t for me, although I suspect I needed more wattage.

Rhode Island Red hen laying winter eggs
I find the Rhode Island Red hens are nervous and easily upset. This one was sitting quietly until I aimed the camera. She began to panic. I left so she would settle down again as I do appreciate those winter eggs.

Raising Pullets

My second method is to raise pullets each spring. If the chicks are hatched in April, the pullets should start laying about October into November and continue laying over the winter.

There may be other approaches that work. These two work for me and result in plenty of winter eggs.