Moving the Chicks Out to Grass

When the 16 chicks hatched out of our incubator, as soon as they were dried off, we moved them out into the garage.  We have a makeshift brooder with a heat lamp set up.  I put newspaper on the concrete and then covered it with hay so that the chicks don't make too big a mess.  We always aim to move them out on grass in a natural setting as soon as possible. 

Besides, they share the garage with Ginger, our cat.  She aggressively hunts, recently killing a bird that got trapped in the garage.  I don't want her to eat our chicks.  Tricia did not like that I suggested that Ginger would do such a thing.  I didn't mean to impugn Ginger's character, but I don't trust her, fully, so I loaded up the 16 chicks in a tub.

We're moving the birds out to our chicken tractor that will be the chicks' home until the hens lay their first egg and the cockrels identify themselves as males.  At that point we'll move the hens out to the pasture with the rest of the flock and the roosters into our freezer.

Since it can still get chilly at night, I moved the brooder out and set it up in the chicken tractor along with the heat lamp dangling from a chain to keep the birds warm and toasty.

They seem to really like being on grass.  Their instincts kick in and they began scratching and pecking at grass seeds and grass.  Pretty soon, we'll have an onslaught of beetles.  They are attracted to light and so I catch them and feed them to the birds.  Good protein for them!

The chicks look healthy and alert.  We want them to get a good start.  They will start laying somewhere between 18-24 weeks.

Just this week, for some reason, we've lost 2 chickens to drowning in the water trough and one to predators.  I'm already itching to get the incubator running again to hatch out some more!

Learning A Life Lesson From an Old Saying

 "Don't Count Your Chickens Before they Hatch"

We've all heard that adage.  It means to not get too confident in your plans counting on the most favorable outcomes.  Getting your hopes too high leads to disappointment.  Temper your expectations.  

We put 42 (supposedly) fertile eggs in our incubator 21 days ago hoping to get some laying hens to replace those lost due to the deadly mink ordeal.  I immediately did the math.  Last year, if memory serves, we achieved a 75% hatch rate.  Assuming similar results, we'd hatch out 31 (roughly) chicks since you can't hatch out 31.5 chicks.  Of the 31 eggs about half would be roosters.  That would leave us with 15 hens.  All that assumes no mortality on hatched out chicks - a big assumption.

Of course, we could buy baby chicks from the store, but they're $5.99 a piece right now!!  Plus, I'm reading that stores are tracking people that purchase baby chicks and reporting their location to the USDA because of the bird flu situation.  Something doesn't sit right with me about that with privacy and all.  You know the old saying about the camel's nose under the tent and all that...  No thanks, we'll hatch out our own chicks.

On day 21 Tricia heard "cheep, cheep, cheep" coming from the room where we had the incubator.  Chicks were pecking out of the eggs!  I gently lifted the rotating cradle that moves the eggs from side to side out of the incubator and began taking the eggs out one by one to lay on the bottom of the incubator.  If you don't, baby chicks could get injured between the rotating cradle, even though it moves very slow.  You can see one of the chick's beak pecking out of the egg below.

Mission accomplished.  All of the eggs are laid out.  Now we wait...

Here is the first freshly hatched chicks all wet from the egg.  That's an ugly little creature if you ever saw one, isn't it?

Pretty soon, though, they dry off.  When they are dry, I move them outside into the garage, where I have our makeshift brooder set up.  Here is the mugshot of the first chick.

And here is the profile shot of the same bird.

I poke their little heads down in the water so they'll drink.  The water has a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in it.  Then I set each one down in the brooder with some non-medicated chick grower so they can start scratching and eating.

I run back to the incubator where more have hatched out.

We gathered the eggs over 3 days, so gradually chicks hatched out over the next 3 days.  Here they are under heat lamps in the brooder where they'll grow for a week and we'll move them outside into this same brooder that we'll set up in a chicken tractor.

When the dust settled, we only hatched out 16 eggs.  That is a dismal 38% hatch rate.  We'll likely get 8 laying hens to add to the flock.  We'll also get 8 roosters that we'll butcher and put in the freezer for chicken & sausage gumbo.  That's not fantastic, but it's 8 more hens to add to the flock, so we're not going to belly-ache about it.  And we'll remember to not count our chickens before they hatch.  We'll also remember, "If at first you don't succeed, try try again."

Investing in the Future

I've heard that egg prices at the grocery store are pretty high due to this bird flu thing.  Our birds are healthy, the days are getting longer, and today they laid 17 eggs.  We eat all we can, give some to the boys and sell the rest.  But, since the minks decimated the flock last year, we haven't really recovered.  We were down to 9 hens.  That's the lowest amount we ever had, I believe, since we started.  Fortunately, we had another batch of hens in the chicken tractor in our yard when the mink started their killing spree.  The ones in the yard were spared.  I think I counted 24 hens this afternoon.

I figure it is time to increase the numbers of the flock.  I searched the hatcheries online from whence we normally order day old chicks.  Holy Moly!  Straight run (probably 50-50 hen/rooster ratio) are $4 per chick, and all female chicks are $4.65 per chick.  That's steep.  We opted to save 42 eggs from our flock.  This means we forego eating them and forego selling them, but delayed gratification is where it's at.  After about 4 days, I had enough saved to fill the incubator.

42 eggs in all will fit in the incubator.  It will be a mixed bag, for sure.  We have Rhode Island Reds, Golden Comets, Aracaunas, and Barred Rock birds.  They are all mixed up, though.  No telling what we'll get.  Last time we hatched some out, we got a 74% hatch rate and about 50% were roosters.  The roosters are butchered and made into chicken and sausage gumbo.  The hens are incorporated into the flock and begin laying eggs at around 5 1/2 months from hatch.

I placed the eggs in the incubator and plugged it in.  The incubator has an egg turner that slowly shifts the eggs.  This is helpful as it keeps you from having to rotate them.  I added water into the reservoir at the bottom that serves to keep the humidity just right in the incubator.  The goal is to try to keep the eggs at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I had just turned it on, so it took a little while to warm it up, but we found that the thermostat was set perfectly.

So there is the scoreboard.  We know when they were put in the incubator and how many, and when the chicks should hatch out.

We've learned there is truth to the old adage, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."  In three weeks, we'll certainly check in on the chicks and report our hatch rate to you.

The Momma Hen

The first broody hen we had setting on eggs hatched out 4 chicks.  We do have another broody hen that is setting on 7 eggs.  Just yesterday, we saw that she hatched out 4 chicks.  Evidently 5 hatched out originally but 1 died and two eggs must have been not fertilized as nothing hatched.  We'll wait until those chicks are a few days old before moving them.

Since the meat birds are in the freezer, our chicken tractor has vacancy.  It's a perfect place to move the first momma hen and her four chicks.  It is interesting to watch her instinctively teach her little biddies to scratch to look for bugs, worms and seeds.  They are all very active.  We did have to put some guards so that the chicks couldn't get out.  Two had gotten out by squeezing under the bottom the other day.  Had Ginger, our cat, seen them, well, it would have been disastrous for the two chicks.  For Ginger, it would have been a great day for a two piece chicken dinner.

The momma hen is a good mother.  If I walk in the tractor, she perks up, fluffs out her feathers and makes ominous, threatening noises.  Her little chicks huddle nearby and she provides protection like any good momma would.

I watched her as she methodically scratched at the grass.  Then she pecked and pointed with her beak.  She had unearthed a beetle and the little chick that was paying attention scored a nice meal.  The is teaching them life lessons that they'll need to survive.  These chicks likely aren't even hers.  She was broody and we just grabbed a few eggs and put them under her.  She sat on them for 21 days, hatched them out and now cares for them as if they were her own.

Yesterday, we had driving wind and rain that came through in the late afternoon.  I went out and held the chicken tractor down.  Once the winds subsided, I went back inside.  A little later I thought of the chicks.  Oh no!  If they get wet, they'll get hypothermia and die!  I went out to check on them and all were just fine.  The momma hen covered them with her wings.  She was soaking wet, but her little chicks were warm and dry beneath her, safe from the storm.

It would be nice if the little chicks were all pullets, but normally about 50% are pullets and 50% are cockerels.  We will probably get 2 little hens out of this batch to replace those that were eaten by minks.  For the roosters, well, they'll end up in a pot for supper in about 6 months.

In a few days we'll move the other broody hen with her four little chicks into the chicken tractor.  We'll raise the little ones in the tractor until around 20-24 weeks old.  That's when they'll lay their first eggs and we will move them out to the barnyard in the general population.  By then the momma hens will have taught them everything they need to know.

Fine Feathered Friends

 “I dream of a better tomorrow where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three weeks ago yesterday we put 10 eggs under a broody hen.  If she wanted to set, well, we'll let her set.  We need to make up for the 30-something odd hens we lost to the minks.  Fortunately, since we've been locking them up every night behind a hardware cloth lined cage, we haven't lost any.  We have about 30 hens left.  

Yesterday after church, Tricia said, "Hey, it's been three weeks.  I wanna go check and see if the broody hen hatched out any babies."  She came back in and said, "Yep, I see three baby chicks so far." 

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  - Matthew 23:37

That is such a touching metaphor.  You can see how the hen protects her chicks.  When we walk up, the chicks scurry under her protective wings.  She fluffs up her feathers to make herself look larger than she is and makes noises to let you know not to mess with her.  

It's a dangerous world out there for a newborn chick.  There are many predators lurking around on the ground and in the sky.  Rats, Snakes, Red-tailed hawks, minks...  There's even danger from "friendly" animals.  The cows don't look where they are walking and if a baby chick gets under their feet, well, it's not pretty.

Our plans are to move the momma hen and her chicks (however many hatch) into a dog kennel that we'll line with chicken wire and let them get a little bigger before setting the babies free in the barnyard.

We have three other hens that are broody.  We'll let one of those start setting on a nest of eggs, too.  Realistically, we will have to hatch out a BUNCH of eggs to make up for the ones lost to minks.  Some of them will be roosters and we'll butcher them.  But the hens - we'll incorporate them into the flock. Sure, we could put a bunch on the incubator again, but these girls are feeling motherly.  We might as well let them hatch out their eggs naturally, the way God intended it.

Feeling Motherly

It happens every year.  You go to gather eggs in the afternoon and there is a hen sitting on eggs.  You reach underneath her to grab the eggs and she pecks your hand, "bushes" up her feathers to make herself look twice the size she is, and she makes some weird, threatening noises.  What's going on with her?  

She's broody.  That means she's decided she wants to sit on a clutch of eggs and hatch them out.  Her biological clock is ticking and she wants to be a mother.

Right now we have four of them (out of 31) that are broody.  If you take the eggs out from underneath them, they'll still sit there.  They will sit atop a ceramic egg or an unfertilized egg.  Poor girl.  She wants to be a momma so bad, she'll do anything.  Here's another broody hen:

And here's yet another.  She is in full "fluff" mode, here.  She's very protective of the eggs she's sitting on.

Tricia and I decided to let one of them set.  We gathered 10 eggs and put them underneath her in this little cage.  This way, we can lock it up at night so that she isn't eaten by the minks.  As cunning as they are, they haven't figured a way to make it through hardware cloth.

Today when I went to feed all the chickens, this broody hen got off her nest to eat.  There were only 5 eggs remaining.  I don't know what happened to the other 5.  We suspect she ate them.  Hopefully, she'll stick it out for another 3 weeks and hatch out 5 biddies.  We'll wait and see if her motherly wishes come to fruition.

Foul Weather Wednesday

We knew it was coming.  We expected it.  Last night we watched the weather report.  We like to make fun of how weather forecasters miss it, but they nailed this one.  We woke up at 6 AM and were having coffee when we checked the weather.  Fierce storms had just gone through Lake Charles heading east (toward us) with a massive front line with damaging straight line winds.  

We put down our coffee and got outside with the quickness.  I'll show you the bad news first.  It's not really bad, just unfortunate.  We were blessed.  We lost a medium-sized pecan tree in the pasture.  It blew across the fence that separates us and our neighbor to the east.

The pecan tree broke off a Chinese tallow tree on the fence line before going down.  This might look sad and unfortunate to you.  It is.  But what it really looks like is a lot of work!  We'll have to get this all cleaned up.

With that out of the way, let's rewind and I'll show you where Tricia and I hunkered down as the storm passed over.  It was IN the chicken tractor.  When we put our coffee down and got outside, our first thoughts went to our Cornish Cross meat birds.  They are two weeks old.  The chicken tractor is staked down, but rain water quickly saturates the ground.  If straightline winds are strong enough, it'll pull the stakes right out of the ground and flip the tractor over.  

In the midst of the thunder, lightning, rain and winds, this is where we were:

The tractor had a tarp over it and we were inside, trying to hold it down while the wind tried to pick it up.  It turned it sideways and several times, I thought we were toast.  We were praying and I had a fleeting thought that if someone's roof comes off to the west of us, we will wake up in heaven.  

The birds (and us) were soaking wet.  They were shaking and had their eyes closed and had hypothermia.  We've got to get them warmed up but there was one big problem.  The electricity, we could see, was out in the house.  We loaded them in buckets and set up the brooder in the garage.  Tricia began to try to warm them up by drying them off with an old t shirt.

I got our solar generator out.  Fortunately it was 100% charged.  We plugged in both heat lamps and the beleaguered birds began to rally.

The power stayed out for about six hours, but the solar generator did a wonderful job and we didn't lose a single bird out of the 32 in total.  What a lifesaver!

In no time at all the birds destroyed the garage, pooping all over the place.  I had to bleach the garage to clean up the area in the afternoon.

Somewhere around 3 PM the lights came back on.  Hooray!  Not only that, but the skies turned blue and the sun came out.  What a change!  A neighbor came by and said the winds had been clocked at 80 MPH.  He laughed when I told him we rode out the storm with the chicks.

We moved them back into the chicken tractor once we were pretty sure that the storm had passed over.  I think they enjoy being back out on grass.  We count in a blessing that we didn't lose any birds.

In what started out to be a day on which the weather was foul, we counted our blessings, because everything turned out alright.

Cheep! Cheep!

For the Sunday after church meal, my wife was planning on making Chicken Etoufee.  We always like rice & gravy for lunch.  She informed me that when she reached into our deep freeze to get a chicken out to thaw, we were down to our last bird!  We still have a few bags of the roosters that we butchered from the birds we hatched out, but as far as the meat birds we raised, they are almost gone.

Tricia told me that she had seen some Cornish Cross meat birds at Tractor Supply.  Normally, we order them by mail directly from the hatchery, but hey, if Tractor Supply has them, we'd save on shipping.  Saturday afternoon we went to Tractor Supply.  They had 7 Cornish Cross (straight run) left.  We said, "We'll take 'em!"  She told us they normally get more each Wednesday AM.  I made a note to check back on Wednesday.  Seven birds won't last us very long.  We put the seven little birds in our brooder under the heat lamp.  The fence on top puts a lid on (pardon the pun) the temptation that our cat, Ginger, might have in getting a chicken dinner under the heat lamp.

I was passing through Jennings today at lunch and pulled into Tractor Supply Company.  They had just received an order of 25 Cornish Cross meat birds this morning.  I said, "I'll take 'em all!"  She boxed them up for me.  They were all eating organic chick grower 18% protein.  At $2.99 per bird with NO shipping, this was a better deal than ordering by mail, where they were $3.30 per bird before shipping.

One box had 12 and the other had 13 chicks.  They all appeared healthy and happy, moving around and making "Cheep, cheep" noises.  Here's what they looked like when I unboxed them.

I picked one up and put it in my hand.  This is when they are still in their 'cute' stage.

And here is a profile shot, just like Olan Mills used to do:

I added the new arrivals in with the other, larger 7 birds.  Those seven are probably a week older.  The younger chicks weren't intimidated.  They ran around like they owned the place while their 7 larger counterparts watched their brooder be over-run by the new chicks.

I added more food and filled their water container, adding a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  This weekend, weather permitting, I'll move them out into the chicken tractor.  Hard to believe, but in 8 short weeks, we'll be butchering them and they'll move into the deep freeze, hopefully before our remaining inventory is exhausted.

Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch (Part II)

Our first batch of chicks are five weeks old and are growing and very active.  They are out in the chicken tractor.  We decided to get a second batch going on the incubator to replace those in our existing flock that were lost to predators or just old age.  So on March 10th we put 42 eggs in the incubator from eggs collected on the 9th and 10th.  That meant on March 31st, we'd have our next hatch as long as we kept the incubator at 100.5 F and the humidity right by keeping water in the reservoir.

Two days before the hatch, we were to remove the egg rotation tray and set the eggs flat on the floor of the incubator.  BUT, one chick decided to hatch out early.  Tricia quickly removed the rotator.  If you don't remove it, you run the risk of the tray crushing the baby chicks.  On the 30th and 31st, the chicks started breaking out of their shells.

As they dried off, we'd put them in a box and bring them outside to the brooder and set them under a heat lamp.  We originally had Barred Rock chickens.  Then we got some Rhode Island Reds and then Aracaunas.  Then we purchased some Golden Comet hens from one of Benjamin's friends.  Golden Comets are a cross between Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns.  They are prolific layers of brown eggs.  Now, our flock is Heinz 57!  There is a lot of diversity out there.  

Here is one little hen, we hope.  It looks like a Golden Comet.

Here is one of the Golden Comets from the first batch.  We're only going to keep the hens.  We will butcher and eat the roosters.

Statistics from the first hatch:  (42 eggs)

Put in incubator            Hatch Date        Hatch        Lived

2/6/2023                    2/27/2023                25                19

3/10/2023                    3/30/2023              27                26

With the second hatch, we took the 15 eggs that did not hatch and went out to the compost pile.  We busted them open to see what happened.  Of the 15 that didn't hatch, only 4 were not fertile.  10 were fully developed, but did not make it out of the egg, for some reason.  1 was not fully developed.

Our neighbor came over and talked to us.  He raised quail at one time and would hatch out thousands of quail.  He told us that he swore by setting them in the incubator based on the stages of the moon.  He also mentioned that the time of day you set them in the incubator determines to a large extent the sex of the chicks.  I'm not sure about that.  I couldn't find anything to back that up.

However, I did find in the Farmer's Almanac that chicks that hatch just before a full moon would be stronger and have a better chance at survival.  It even had the best dates for setting eggs.  March 7, 8, and 9 were the best days.  Well, we set them ALMOST exactly on that date.  I checked back to the best February dates and we set them ALMOST on the best date, too.  For some reason, we're only achieving roughly a 60-64% hatch rate.

Hopefully we'll be able to get most of these to maturity - either for egg layers for for gumbo!

The Hatch!

We've had 42 eggs from our hens on the incubator.  We watched the roosters and saw that they were "being romantic" with the hens.  Then we collected eggs for three days and filled the incubator with them.  Our little incubator has a rotator that automatically turns them.  We monitored the temperature and ensured that it stayed at 100 degrees.

At one point all of our chickens were Barred Rocks.  Then we got some Aracaunas because we like the blue and green eggs.  Then we got Rhode Island Reds because they are a prolific brown egg layer.  Later people gave us some hens and roosters they no longer wanted.  Over the years our flock has become a 'melting pot' of sorts.  

On Friday evening, we removed the egg rotator and just laid the eggs on the floor of the incubator.  The rotator could crush them.  Saturday we started to hear baby chicks.  For the next 3 days, the chicks hatched out.  You can see we have black chicks, white chicks, red chicks and yellow chicks.  We also have some that are brown and black.  They're all cute little things.

As they dried under the heat of the incubator, we moved them and the broken egg shells out to make room for the chicks yet to hatch out.

We brought them outside to our little brooder we have set up in the back yard.  It's neat to watch their instincts.  One day old and when we put the heat lamp on, it attracted bugs.  The baby chicks immediately started eating bugs.

After 3 days passed, we gave up hope for the remaining to hatch.  There were 17 eggs (of the 42 that didn't hatch out.  Feel blessed that you aren't smelling what this smells like!  The eggs and liquid in the bottom of the incubator is really, really smelly.  I brought these out to the garden and put them in the compost pile.

One of the 17 eggs that didn't hatch, had a chick inside that couldn't quite make it out.  She had pecked, but couldn't complete the job.  The other 16 must not have been fertilized, although I didn't want to break them open to confirm.

Here's a cool looking little chick!

This one, I think, is a cross between a Rhode Island Red and an Aracauna.

So out of the 42 eggs originally put in the incubator, 17 did not hatch.  That left us with 25 baby chicks.  Four of those babies died.  We currently have 21.  A 50% survival rate.  Here's the other thing we learned: Half of those will be hens.  So only 10 of those will actually be egg layers.  That's what we're trying to do is add layers to our existing flock to make up for those that have died of old age and predation.  We may have to get another batch of eggs in the incubator!