New Life.

It is 6am and I am listening to new life announce itself with pride. Overnight I we have gained two Serama chicks. Well one hatched just before bed and one hatched at some point in the past hour or so. Peering into the incubator I see that another is about to join us. I was lucky enough to witness the first chick hatch while Sleepy was playing on Battlefield 3.

I find myself wondering, what on earth it must think is going on, with all that gunfire and cussing coming from the adjoining room.

This tiny chick is a prime example of fight of the fittest. You only have to look at the way that it pounces from its protective shell to see that it is oh so very keen to start the great adventure called life. I had been hearing the little blighter all day, in fact its peep was so strong that I started to think that a young bird had somehow gotten into the house and found myself looking for it - only for Sleepy to tell me that it was coming from the Polyhatch.

Right now, I am enjoying the 'quiet' of the early hours. The road outside is busy, but the noise is insignificant. The only thing I can hear this morning is the sound of life. I hear the cracking that tells me that these wonderful creatures, who were just yolk and white only 20 days ago, are ready to burst forth. This is soon followed by the piecing sound to announce their presence.

This really is an amazing experience. How can he sleep through it?

Wailing Quail - as promised

Sorry, I thought I had published this already.

This is the noise that our quail make sometimes for hours at a time. To me it seems reminisent of squeaky brakes on a bike :/

We are expecting our first duck on Monday so, hopefully if all goes well, I will be posting on Tuesday with pics.

Wailing Quail!!!

A week ago today we hatched off our first ever batch of quail.

The first Texan A&M to hatch.

They were the most amazing hatchers. Unlike chicks who tend to take 12 plus hours to show their little faces, quail just seem to go POP and they are out of their shells. Not only this, but they are also up and running (not walking but running) within 30 minutes, some instantly!


They don't waste any time in getting around and eating and drinking and they are steady on their feet in just a hour or so; it normally takes a chick a day to become completely steady on their feet. These little bundles of joy come out of their eggs looking so fragile and small that you are worried about transferring them to their brooder - until you see them move. They are nimble and agile and, quite frankly suicidal! I have given up trying to pick them up.

A few minutes old

Picking them up seems far too risky to their 'fragile' little bodies as they just run. Yup, as soon as you get them off of the ground they run out of your hand. Of course this is no different to how they behave in the brooder, they run everywhere and you often find yourself laughing as although they are very talented sprinters, stopping is not a skill they have been blessed with. They allow their surroundings to work as their braking system.

 Right, why did I choose to call this post 'Wailing Quail'? Well, we have two little buggers who sit under the light calling to it for hours at a time! I mean, I am entirely unsure when they find time to breathe between "peep, peep, PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!" It is very frustrating. Try concentrating on say updating a website or a blog with that going off in the background.

Our front room has become the hatchery and brooding area since the temperatures have dropped and our front room is directly nextdoor to our bedroom! The electric hen that we have is not suitable for quail or other very small birds so they are under a lightbulb. This presents us with the problem that they are in, what they think is, daylight 24/7/ which means that peeping goes on 24/7 for stretches (so far) of up to four hours at a time! You can imagine how I am feeling at the moment - apart from tired! Although saying that I am sitting here waiting for the little wotsit to start so that I can video the evidence and, low and behold, it is silent! I will post the evidence as soon as it has been documented - I can't see it will be too far behing this post to be honest, but you never know.

The Quail Killer is already limbering up in a bid to silence the culprits on a more permanant basis, but you can rest assured that this is not now and will never be allowed. He has been told that if he want silence in the front room he must build my shiny new insulated hatchery and quail shed with avairy attached!

Goodbye My Mate...

I hope that you remember our miniture black silkie from my last post. Well I am afraid to say that she passed on yesterday. She was a special little hen who let absolutely nothing phase her and even stood up to the bullies in the pen.

Rest in Peace My Little Friend

She will be missed, not only my me, but also by Cybil her little friend who was glued to her side at all time and now wonders around the pen looking lost. I am sure she will recover though. She has many other friends to choose from.

Catch-up Part II

Right, we have talked about the Polands and Sarge's sudden urge to rule the world. Now I think we should introduce you to the other breeds we plan to raise come spring.

We have bantam silkies waiting to mature. None of these have been named as of yet, as we would like to see their personalities come through when they have their own run and that is still a couple of months away!

The white bird in this picture is ours and
now has beautiful gold flecks all the way
through her feathers.

Our red cockerel.

I Love silkies. I plan to have a few hens in spring as they will be my main method of incubating eggs. Having seen the difference between the chicks we hatch and the chicks Rockiy hatched this year there is no comparison. A broody hen is a gem indeed.

We will also be breeding these beautiful birds. I plan to breed the bantam and the large fowl, but we are going to take our time to find the right large fowl birds. As I said in the last post we have two gorgeous partridge silkies of which at least one is a hen, so we have a start. We also have a miniture hen who is just beautiful, and again we plan to wait to find the right breeding stock.

Our Miniture Silkie Hen

Next are the Cochin, We have three hens and a cockerel. The cockerel was a gift from a friend and the hens were Birthday Boy's gift this year!

Goliath is a beautiful Splash Cockerel. Needs work to make him a bit tamer, but he has great potential. Then we have Sybil who has had problems with growing back feathers and will not be used for breeding but will be kept for egg laying. We also have two other hens a white and a blue. They are such a wonderful breed their shape and size is gorgeous! Pictures to follow soon...

Catch-up

Wow! It has been a long time since I last posted. Well I plan to post more often again now I will have some time over the winter. We have been so busy with chickens; hatching them, growing them on and selling them. Oh and not selling them too ;).

We still have the five trouble makers roaming the garden (when not on lockdown), but we now also have a few others ... We have expanded the group of five to seven. Rocky went broody and raised two little girls so they are now a permanant part of the flock.

The chicks as they were at week one and still with Mum.

Then we have our breeding stock of Polands for Spring. The demand has been so high that we have had to increase form four to seven and plan to get another hen as soon as we can find the right colour.


We have Alwyn who is a smooth feathered chamois, then we have his girls Havisham - pure white frizzle, Cruella - silver laced frizzle and the new girl when we get her.

Havisham

Cruella

Alwyn

We also have Boris (named after his hair-do) and his girls Morganna, Marion and a creole hen yet to be named.

Marion

Boris

These are my babies and they are treated as such. Boris - who is rather skitsy - is slowly starting to allow me to touch him, but only when he is in the mood. Morganna is no where near tame as of yet, but she will come round. Havisham has such an amazing hair-do that she can never see where she is going so we are trying to get her used to scissors (not an easy task, they just seem to know that they are dangerous!!!) so that we can give her a hair cut.

This beauty doesn't have a name yet, we are waiting for her full colours to show themselves.

Morganna

Right what's next? Oh yes, what other birds do we have. Well for the time being I am raising a couple of partridge silkies and an appenzeller in the hope that at least one will be able to go in with Alwyn every now and then to cross breed and give the Polish girls a break.

Sarge has fully matured into a beautiful and very good-at-his-job cockerel - and boy do we know about it :( He decided a couple of weeks back to show me who was boss and failed epicly. He is now in permanant grumpy mode. Every now and then he wonders up to me, feeling frisky with a run full of girls not playing the game and takes his stress out on me. He has realised that he has spurs and is fairly good at using them I have to say. I have been known to squeal very loudly as he charges me ready for the kill! He has on two occasions now felt contact with my shoe in a bid to keep him off of my legs! It seems to have worked he has not even tried to challenge me in ten or more days.

Sarge on patrol

I will up-date again in a day or two with pictures of the other birds we plan to use for breeding in Spring and I will also tell you all about my Serama!

Sarge's Day

Moving the growers' run today proved to be somewhat of an adventure for the young birds. We decided that we wouldn't worry about the chicks getting out as they were about to be fed their cooked lunch (which they go mad for), so getting them to go back in should have been easy.

Grazing in the big wide world.

Well, having moved the run, we sat back and watched them mingle with our layers. This was interesting to say the least. The small silver laced hen, decided that she was obviously much bigger then she appeared and not only squared up to one of the big brown hens, but jumped at her and started pecking her back - it could have been a fully blown fight, but the poor brown hen just didn't know what to do - she just stood there in amazement - I laughed and laughed.

Standing so straight obviously makes you seem 10ft tall

Well, getting them to go back into the run was a piece of cake, I put bowl of mashed potato, steamed veg and boiled egg into the run and they shortly followed. Time for a head count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ... hmmm, only 8 and there should be 9. I glanced around the garden to see Sarge, our fearless cockerel (unless you are a fully grown hen, then he is a whimp), chasing the white crested black poland hen around the garden. With that it started squarking and squeaking as it seemed to be running for its life - again I laughed.

The terrorised hen with hits buddies.

I sat and watched, whilst half-heartedly scolding Sarge, as the tiny, terrorised avian ran for cover under a large shrub. I sent The Chicken Hunter in after it, while I fed Sarge to distract him and filled the growers' water bowl. The Chicken hunter was successful and we secured all 9 chicks back in their run and let them enjoy their feast.

Although it was probably a scary experience for the hen, Sarge is very rarely able to rule anyone, so I am sure he enjoyed the whole experience.

Mud bath

Oh dear!

Having gone out to check food and water levels in the rearers’ run, I discovered that Polands like the mud! It appears to have been used as hair gel for their crests; enabling them to keep their feathers out of their eyes.

Maybe he will start a new trend?

My little pride and joy immaculately gorgeous chicks are now a bunch of filthy pre-pubescent slobs!!

You might say that I asked for it moving them off of the grass, but I did this to avoid cleaning up their muck while we had guests over for the weekend - I assure you I will not be making this mistake again!

My pure white cockerel!!!

The Annoying Burbler, has insisted on constantly pointing out that they are chickens and chickens are supposed to be mucky, but i disagree. These are designer chickens, they are show birds - they are not the mud wrestling commoners to which he refers! Although I must say the silver laced hens are holding up pretty well (their colour prevents you seeing the mud).

The 'clean' silver laced sat with the not so clean chamois.

I am considering flooring their run! I am certain this will prevent a replay of the horrendous sight with which I was faced. People have been known to laugh at the way I treat my birds. Apparently cooking for them is showing my more eccentric side and talking to them (as well as answering them) just makes me mad, but I say they are bigger and better looking than most birds of their age and they are also friendlier too, so I shall continue to do so.

Anyway, I think I will go and see how they react to a sponge bath. I may not be quite so popular in an hour or so!

It's hard not to play God when they are poorly.

Not too sure what to write today. The hatching process is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced, but knowing that at least one of the chicks (and probably 2) are not going to make it past their first week is horrible.

We have 4 Light Sussex, 5 Rhode Island Red, 2 Vorwerk, 1 Chamois Poland, 1 Creole Poland and 2 Buff Orpington hatched from a batch of 24. Not as good as last time but still more than 50%.

The little chirpers have been evicted from the house earlier than normal, because they just don't let you sleep. The noises that they make go on for 24 hours and seem to increase in decibels every few hours.

Anyway, the Polands are poorly, one was partially stuck to its egg (the egg was half the size of the other Polands) and the other has a weak spine and cannot stand for very long. They are both beautiful and the latter is a little fighter, determined to get where it wants to be, but when it comes to fighting for food, I have a feeling it isn't going to do very well.

We also have a Rhode Island Red that had not absorbed all of its yolk sac, but still has it attached so it has a good chance of survival.

I understand the nature of things and that it is a case of battle of the fittest, but it seems cruel to me. To give something a chance of life and then to make it difficult and almost impossible to succeed seem wrong. I automatically feel a maternal instinct for the weak ones, I want to take them away from the fully abled chicks and mother them so that they continue to grow, but then this would be unfair also. Who would want a chicken with a dodgy spine or a deformed wing? So I leave them to fight the strongest for food.

I think that with the next batch we will have a box for the weaker ones for the first 24 hours, and then we will introduce them to their siblings. The imprinting process last for 36 hours after hatching so they should be ok and if they are within hearing distance they will chat to each other so recognise their calls.

No pictures with this post, I will post them later, when we know what is going on with our little weaklings.

The First Egg!

The chicks had taken to eating each other’s feathers. Watching this I noticed that it was all completely consensual but they were drawing blood on each other. It had to stop.

Feathers missing from the head courtesy of a friend.

I called to The Referee to come and help me to split up the blood thirsty chicks, which we did and then headed to the pet supplies store to buy some Anti-Pecking Spray.

Having read all of the instructions on our return we took the chicks out one at a time and allowed "a fine mist to fall over them" - they thought we were killing them!

We put them back into their run and watched as they continued to peck each and eat the feathers!!! Well that had been a waste of money!!! 

I made myself a very large cup of tea and then sat at my computer and researched. Protein it kept telling me, they need protein. So I gave them a mashed up boiled egg (if you feed chickens eggs they must be cooked to prevent them eating their own eggs). They were wary at first, but then WOW they went mad. They were pushing each other out of the way and grabbing beak-fulls and then chasing each other around the run trying to get the biggest and best bit. It was hilarious. I mean you could do away with your TV and just raise chicks!

They have since had two more eggs and now it is a race to get into the bowl first so that you can claim the best bits before your siblings get a chance. But the good news is they are no longer eating each other's feathers - although 2 of the (what we think are) cockerels have taken to fighting and jumping on each other's backs - just to keep the other in line I guess. But this is much more preferable to cannibalism, I guess.

The big wide world!!!!

As here in the UK, we are suffering with a 2-day heat wave, I decided that it would be a good idea to allow the chicks (back feathers accounted for) to have some time in the outdoor sun. Their run had been especially built (and almost finished) for the occasion. It seemed a shame to leave them in the shed.

So yesterday morning I rushed to find something to use as a roof for the coop and decided on a simple sheet of ply; it fit perfectly. I then turned my attention to the run, the holes in the chicken wire I had used did seem on the big side. A stoat or a weasel could easily get in so I put some netting over that and all was ready.

In pairs, they were placed into the coop and the roof was placed on top. They screeched and screeched - and then silence. Mr. Knobbly Knees, with his shorts on, opened the coop door and we waited ... and waited ... and waited. They did not seem at all keen to venture past the safety of the four walls of their santuary. So we took seats (it seemed like a sensible idea).

Huddled in their coop.

As we watched them, they peered out of the run on numerous occasions checking to see what it was all about, I suppose. Every now and then they would be faced with a rather large hybrid hen on the other side of the wire. This must have been a scarey sight as they had never seen a grown chicken before and the size difference is rather immense!

Peering out into the big wide world.

Slowly they ventured further and futher (I think having their food in the run area helped here) and soon they were all outside having a good nosey about to see what was what.

Out for the first time.

As soon as they realised that the amount of space they had here was much more substantial than inside the shed, they took full advantage and spread their wings - literally. This is indeed a funny thing to watch. Their co-ordination is not what you would call good. They run, they jump, they fly and they land - normally head first and frequently on the feeder, on the ramp and against the walls of the coop. This, however, does not stop them from trying again. When they are all at it, it is advisable to wear a nappy - laughing becomes mandatory!!