keeper-of-chickens

[keeper-of-chickens]

Like without it being a joke etc. Curious if this is a real thing people say directly or just a myth made up by Big Parent to sell more movies

[keeper-of-chickens]

Here he is!!! Introducing.... Clucky Jones!!!

He's a very sweet boy 🥰. You can see him hiding behind me in the first picture there. He's still not totally comfortable with our flock yet, but he's getting better every day ☺️. Hopefully he'll fit right in and make our flock complete!

[keeper-of-chickens]

Here he is again!!! Still kind of shy of the other chickens, he is hiding in the nesting box.

NAME MY NEW SON

I compiled a list of suggestions from friends and family. You choose the name!

[keeper-of-chickens]

NAME MY NEW SON

I compiled a list of suggestions from friends and family. You choose the name!

[keeper-of-chickens]

New coop setup!!! With a fully enclosed run!!!

This is honestly so amazing, it's exactly what I wanted my ideal setup to be! There are still a few final touches, like staking down the frame and adding enrichment items to the pen, but overall it's done!

We've had so many losses from predators in the old setup, and this should all but eliminate that. Not to mention this will keep the wild birds from being able to fly in and eat leftover food on the ground, so it cuts down our risk of bird flu.

Also, I am super excited to have sand as a substrate now instead of shavings. It is SO much easier to clean! We used builders sand, which is fairly coarse and has small pebbles amd things, so it can actually work as a dust bath and a source of grit as well. Plus coarse sand has less dust so less risk of the birds having respiratory issues. I'm still going to install a ventilation fan just to make sure though.

One of my favorite things about the coop (besides the outside accessible nesting boxes!!!) is the storage space in the front! It's large enough to store my essentials (food, extra sand, the poop scoop etc) without taking away too much space from the chickens. It could even be set up to house a broody and chicks if we ever wanted to!

We are pretty comfortable with the amount of birds we have, but will be adding one more rooster for the flock soon! He's the son of a rooster we hatched in '23 and gave away to a friend, and both roosters are descendants of our original rooster, Handsome (the best boy 🥹) so we are continuing the line of our flock.

We've had this setup for less than a week and I'm honestly still so excited about how great it is. I'll probably post more stuff once the toys have come in, I can't wait to see what the girls think!

[keeper-of-chickens]

"I only shoot bucks because I want more deer" THERE ARE TOO MANY DEER HUNT THE DOES AS WELL

[keeper-of-chickens]

Latte!

[keeper-of-chickens]

Really showing her dino heritage 😂

[keeper-of-chickens]

My incubator babies are 5 weeks old now!

[keeper-of-chickens]

Mid drink lol

[keeper-of-chickens]

What do you mean you hatched an egg you bought at the SUPER MARKET

Ohohoho

So there's this company in the UK, right. They brand themselves on producing fancy free range eggs and as part of that they have breed information written on the carton.

I did some snooping and found that every miracle news story of a supermarket egg hatching in the UK traced back to duck eggs, specifically the Braddock White duck eggs produced by this one company for the supermarket Waitrose.

And one day my mum brings them home and says "I bought these to eat but aren't they the ones that hatch?"

And it's spring and I'm hatching a ton this year so in they went.

On candling we had three fertile eggs! That's a fertility of 50% - the same as shipped eggs from a breeder!

Hatch day comes and we get 2 ducklings, Curie and Becquerel. Sadly, Curie contracts duck septicaemia from an infected navel and doesn't make it, but Becquerel is a healthy bird and growing like a weed.

I had put 4 breeder eggs in a week after them in case just one hatched, so Becque now has two Khaki Campbell cross friends called Tsuki and Hoshi so she isn't lonely.

And as of today's 7am Quacking - Becque is a female! Which means she's capable of laying eggs and therefore I have pirated a duck.

[keeper-of-chickens]

Swift is a week old today! 🥳

[keeper-of-chickens]

Meet Swift!

This is baby Swift! She is one of 20 chicks we have hatched this year, and unfortunately she was born with no eyes.

Poor Swift has had a rough start in life. In addition to being blind, the broody hen who hatched her rejected Swift and her siblings, so they are all being hand raised by me. That's probably for the best in Swift's case, because she requires a lot of special care right now.

Chickens are not believed to have a very strong sense of smell, and instead rely on sight to find food most of the time. This is obviously a problem for Swift, and so I am hand feeding her daily at this point in her life.

Here you can see me attempting to feed her mashed chick food!

Today Swift is 6 days old, and for the first time she was able to eat enough food to fill her crop! It was a very special moment for me, because up until now I wasn't sure at all that she would make it, but if she can eat she has a chance!!!

This isn't a post asking for donations or anything, I just wanted to share with all of you how special Swift is, and how rewarding it has been (and continues to be!) for me to care for her.

[keeper-of-chickens]

Meet Swift!

This is baby Swift! She is one of 20 chicks we have hatched this year, and unfortunately she was born with no eyes.

Poor Swift has had a rough start in life. In addition to being blind, the broody hen who hatched her rejected Swift and her siblings, so they are all being hand raised by me. That's probably for the best in Swift's case, because she requires a lot of special care right now.

Chickens are not believed to have a very strong sense of smell, and instead rely on sight to find food most of the time. This is obviously a problem for Swift, and so I am hand feeding her daily at this point in her life.

Here you can see me attempting to feed her mashed chick food!

Today Swift is 6 days old, and for the first time she was able to eat enough food to fill her crop! It was a very special moment for me, because up until now I wasn't sure at all that she would make it, but if she can eat she has a chance!!!

This isn't a post asking for donations or anything, I just wanted to share with all of you how special Swift is, and how rewarding it has been (and continues to be!) for me to care for her.

[keeper-of-chickens]

Holy SHIT it's been a rough 24 hours! Everything was going super well, with hen #1 ending up with 7 total chicks from her clutch, and then disaster struck! Hen #2's eggs started hatching 3 DAYS EARLY!!! This normally wouldn't be too much of an emergency, but unfortunately, hen #2 seems to like eggs more than chicks, and she immediately tried to kill them.

We were able to rescue the 3 that had initially hatched, and then 2 more over the next 12 hours or so, and luckily for us, hen #1 has been happy to accept the extra chicks. If too much more time passes, however, it may no longer be a viable option to keep giving her chicks that are increasingly behind her own, so we'll explore more options as the situation develops.

To top it all off, one of those first 3 chicks to hatch has been born without eyes. It seems otherwise healthy, but it may present a challenge to raise and care for if it can't watch its mother to learn how to eat. I'm actively doing research to see how to best care for this baby, but if anyone out there sees this and has any resources or advice related to that, I'd be grateful.

[keeper-of-chickens]

Baby update!