IT WORKED!!!

Well, we did the ol' swaparoo on Friday night, and at first it seemed dicey: she seemed to be pecking at them ("seemed" because we did it at midnight in the dark with no light) as if warding off an alien invasion and we thought the ruse was exposed. We shut the door and let nature take it's course, but within a few seconds all the squawking and peeping and rustling noises ceased and all seemed to calm down...as if she figured out that she had to take her chicks underneath her. And I never heard any injured and dying chicks noises. So, we went to bed (but slept very little) and when we woke up the next morning...


TA-DAAAA!!! Happy chicks and a happy mommy!

So as of this writing three days later, all is tranquil and everyone seems to be doing their job just right. When it gets cold, she lifts up her skirts and the babies crawl right under there and snuggle up. When it's warmer (or when I open up the hatch to sky) they come tumbling out to take a look around. Very, very cool.

New Chicks Arrive...

Here they is...wallow in the proshness!

These are Americaunas. Americaunas are a pseudo-breed developed by crossing the South American Aracauna (which tend to produce stillborn chicks overly) with various and sundry north American breeds to weed out the bad gene.

Aracaunas and Americaunas are the only chickens that lay blue and/or green eggs!

Unfortunately, the breeder shipped our local feed store a "straight run" rather than sexed chicks. meaning they could be hens or (shudder) roosters. The feed store said to keep the receipts because they guarantee their sexed chicks when advertised as such: if any of these three turns out rooster, they will buy them back!

Which I'd be okay with as I'm sure they'd find a good home that wouldn't eat or abuse them. Americaunas are very desired for breeding purposes because of the blue egg thing.

Broody Hen Isolation Action...

So, when you go about doing the surrogate hen thing, there are a few considerations:

1.) You stick some FAKE eggs underneath her first while she's all broody.

2.) You swap out the fake eggs for the real chicks (Indiana Jones style) in the middle of the night when momma hen is way out-of-it and when she comes to in the a.m. she thinks she's hatched the eggs.

3.) The babies can't be too old (three days or less is the general rule) or there's a chance that momma chicken will see through the ruse and kill the chicks as not her own.

4.) The momma and babies have to stay isolated from the rest of the flock during their early weeks or sometimes, allegedly, the other adults will peck the newborns to death out of some kind of competitive spirit.

So to that end I had to basically build an all-new henhouse...adjoined shotgun-style to the original house. My original plan was to stick broody hen in the new condo, and then later on open up the adjoining wall so that it's all one coop and big enough for the whole flock including the newbies.

Part two of that plan will still go down eventually, but after putting the new chicks in (see my next post) I realized it would be greatly beneficial if broddy hen had use of the fenced-in, open-air "run" part of the OLD coop so that she could stretch her legs and more importantly feed on ADULT food when it became time for her to start taking nutrition again. Plus it would give the chicks a way to acclimate to the outside world when they were ready without fear of predation.

So right quick I had to modify the new henhouse to accommodate our three other adult chickens instead: that mean building laying boxes, roosting poles, and a slip-proof entryway plank. Here's a pic of Mr. Bawkbagawk trying out the new laying boxes/roosting poles prior to installation.

Prepping for New Arrivals...

Well, hell: I've been damn lazy. Haven't posted any blog entries since the ladies started laying many months ago. Not much to report, really up until now. Had a bit of a problem with mites but other than that it's been very eggy around here.

HOWEVAH: Beaker has gone broody again so we decided to take the plunge and get some new chicks for her to raise as a surrogate mommy. The back story is that "going broody" is something that certain breeds are prone to (like our Orpingtons) which basically means that their instincts tell them to get ready to incubate eggs...even if (like us) there are no roosters about and thus no fertile eggs. It's nuts: they fluff up in a big ball and make these scary-ass noises when you come near 'em. But they don't hurt you at all. All the blood goes to their underbelly so their combs and wattles get very pallid. They stay in their coop and do not eat or drink at all for the most part for about a solid month (I swear!). here's a pic of it: she's already done it once before.

So when the do this, you can actually use them as a surrogate for new baby chicks! The advantages being that you can buy chicks that are already sexed as hens, and you don't have to raise them in cardboard boxes under heat lamps: mommy chicken does all the work! There are some rules to follow which I'll go into over the next couple of posts...