Keeping Chickens Newsletter September 2017

2 Old Chickens and 4 Ducks Named Bob

Angie : We have been raising chickens for the last 6 or 7 years. All of our chickens from our first year are gone. But we still have 2 chickens from our second year. These 2 chickens were 2 of 3 survivors of the Great Massacre. We lost over 30 chickens to some foxes in 1 weekend. Two of my roosters survived. I thought that was all I was left with. And then out of the weeds comes a Barred Rock hen with several baby chicks trailing behind her! She had been brooding eggs so she wasn’t even present when those foxes raided our hen house.

Today, she still lays eggs on occasion. They are a beautiful light brown egg with a few speckles. In fact, this is the same hen that laid the very first egg we ever got. She will always have a home here with us no matter how old and unproductive she gets! Our other old chicken is a big Australorp rooster named Kevin. He is the king of the hen house and just about the sweetest rooster there is and the one that will cause a lot of broken hearts when he is no longer with us. We all just love his sweet, loving temperament.

I have been wanting to tell you that we were given 4 ducks by our neighbors. At one point this summer, we lost all of our ducks. So being gifted with 3 hens and a drake is marvelous! We have not named them yet. They all came named Bob. I think we will be a little more original than that. There are 2 Pekin hens and a pair of Rouens.

These ducks are not used to free-ranging. We have started leaving their pen door open. Slowly they are starting to venture out into the world. It has been odd not to have ducks foraging in the yard. I look forward to the day when they venture that far out of the barn!

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George and his Girls

Alice: I have had chickens for the last 5 yrs, but grew up with chickens and animals at home. I have 12 chickens and 3 ducks. They are a brilliant way to help combat depression and generally make you laugh, with their antics and silliness. I love all my girls and my boy George, so called when he was younger all the girls used to run away from him! My children think that my girls get more spoiled than them.

This year I have had an increasing problem with rats pinching my chook’s food and we had a few bites to legs to have to deal with. I recently found this new chicken feeder called the Roamwild PestOff Chicken Feeder Kit – since using these feeders (I have 3!) not only have I not had rats, my birds are happier.

We don’t need to put traps or poison down which is great considering I live in an area with lots of cats and wouldn’t want any of them getting ill or worse! and my husband is very grateful he doesn’t have to sit up on rat patrol anymore! If it is raining the chicken feeder keeps it nice and dry and I have found that I waste so much less food. Also the 3 ducks can use them just as easily too. I hope you enjoy my pictures of my chooks, I have told them all about why I was taking their pictures, and they clucked in response! Alice, Maidstone, Kent, UK

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Forces of Chicken Keeping

Kelson : A friend in Australia has a Rhode Island Red chicken named Elaine. Elaine is a particularly inquisitive and mischievous hen, with a big personality. She has worked out how to open cat-flaps and dog doors, and she can solve problems. She is particularly fond of exploring where she should not be, and she particularly loves the kitchen and dining rooms in the house. One of the most memorable of her antics is now known as Elaine’s Famous Tomato Heist, where she flew up onto the house roof, walked right over to the other side of the house, and jumped down into the tomato garden which was surrounded by a 6 foot high chicken wire fence. Needless to say, Elaine had pecked every single tomato before she was finally caught. She obviously felt like some lovely ripe tomatoes, and she figured out exactly how to get them.

When it’s time to feed the chickens, Elaine’s owner has to be very careful to close all doors on the house. Elaine is a so naughty, that she will swim against the tide and often she will decide to miss out on the feed outside if she thinks she can sneak into the house and find something better inside. So, while the other hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, etc are all running madly for the feed shed at the bottom of the hill, Elaine will often be found sneaking back up to the house to see if she can find a way inside while all the commotion is going on. Sadly, for Elaine’s owner, she often succeeds.

Another of Elaine’s favourite tricks is to jump inside the car while the shopping is being taken inside the house. As fast as lightning she pecks through plastic bags to sample as much bread, tomatoes, fruit, and anything else she can before she is discovered. She has also been spotted dragging entire loaves of bread out of the car and into the garden. One of her cronies, Shirley, is almost as naughty, and together they make a terrible duo. Life is never dull when Elaine and Shirley are on the rampage.

These are the forces you are up against when you keep chickens!

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Hurricane Chickens

For many, preparations in anticipation of the arrival of the devastating hurricane Irma included securing their chickens and other livestock as best they could. For those able to bring their chickens inside, garages, bathrooms and bedrooms became temporary chicken shelters.

Carol Nevius : Makeshift chicken hurricane shelter.

and the following day : All is well, but my roo got loose during the transfer back to their regular coop. Oh well…most likely he will want to come back to his girls at dusk.

I shared a photo to the keeping chickens facebook page showing the efforts of one Florida Keys resident (one of the worst hit areas) to rescue some of the Key West Chickens. The large free-roaming chicken population causes both delight and despair to the locals and tourists of Key West (a lot of roosters = a lot of crowing) but generally they are a much loved feature of the area.

In North Fort Myers a local news report told how one woman was saving as many of her neighbors chickens as she could.

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Anyone For Chicken Sexing?

George Anderson : We all have wobbly bits. Clear differences between our wobbly bits make it easy – for those interested in that sort of thing – to tell man from woman. This is not true in the world of chickens.

I don’t know whether you can study to become a professor of chicken sexing. What I do know is that determining chicken gender is far more difficult a task that you might imagine.

Does chicken sexing matter? Yes, if you are commercially involved in rearing chickens. In fact the practice will be essential to the success of your enterprise. If you are breeding for eggs you will have no need of male birds and their early identification allows you to eliminate them as soon as possible. If you are breeding for meat as well as eggs then you’ll want to know as soon as possible how to separate the two so that you can treat them differently within your supply chain.

There are two main methods for sexing chickens: feather and vent. In feather sexing, the length of wing feathers is considered a reliable means to determine gender. The wing tip feathers are noticeably larger in hens.

The vent method is less glamorous by a country mile. This involves a two-step process. First squeeze the poop out of a young bird. Then look for a pimple sized bump which would indicate maleness. Apparently this is still difficult, even for professors of chicken sexing (if there are any).

Pinned down by people bigger than me and forced to choose, I know which method I’d prefer. Mainly because if I were down the pub of a lunchtime and asked what I did for a living I would be comfortable saying “I compare evolutionary gender differences in the feathers of now flightless birds.” This has to be more appealing than saying “Me? I squeeze poop out of chickens”

In the science-free past, it fell to folklore to offer methods for chicken sexing. Here’s my top half dozen.

1. Guessing: This gives you a 50-50 chance of being right but is no basis for running a commercial poultry business.

2. Penny Rubbing: Rub a penny on the back of a chicken. Toss it (that’s the penny, not the chicken). Heads it’s a rooster, tails a hen. Hmmm.

3. Shape: Round egg = hen. Pointy egg = rooster

4. Hat method: Wave a hat over a bunch of chickens then throw it to the ground. Only hens will run away. Personally this is simply an abuse of a perfectly good hat.

5 Ring dangling: Put a gold ring on a chain and dangle it over a chicken. If the ring starts a circular motion it’s a hen. In a line, it’s a rooster.

6. Water Method:
Two bowls, one with water, the other with water to which has been added a teaspoon of vinegar. Roosters will drink only from the plain water bowl.

7. Mischief Method: Select a chicken. Dip your partner’s head into a horse trough when they least expect it. If they’re angry when they emerge gasping for air, it’s a rooster. This method has been largely abandoned since it led to skewed results and a spike in the divorce rate.

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