Seven Eggs from the New Coop

100% production from the new coop, yesterday! Seven eggs from the seven new girls, and it's not even spring.

  We also got 12 eggs from the big house which has 13 hens, so 99% production in total yesterday.
We're going to be leaving a notice about eggs for sale when we go the library today. Wish us luck!

--Side note I am still working on getting more inventory made. I just finished knitting the wings for the second black and yellow rooster. He needs a face, tail, and a signature.   

                 Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Don't Loose Chickens to Hawks.

Despite, the nice weather we're having here Mom and I haven't been able to let the girls outside for very long. Why, you ask? Hawks. They're not that bad most of the year, but every winter hawks from up North inundate the area. Which wouldn't be a problem if they only hunted mice and small birds and left the chickens alone. Unfortunately, they do not.
We lost our rooster to hawks last year, (That's how we ended up needing Abe) ever since then we do everything we can to avoid losing anymore chickens. Here are four pieces of advice for keeping your chickens safe.

   -Don't let them out when there are hawks about. Listen for their tell-tale screech, watch for large shadows flying over head, or large birds perched in neighboring trees, telephone wires, or fences. Don't let then out that day unless you can stay outside and around the flock while they are out.

  -Put a cover on your run. Putting wire on top of your run can also detour other predators.

  -Fishing line. I've heard that stringing fishing line over your run will detour hawks. They see the line shining in the sun and don't want to mess with it.    

  -If you can't put a cover on your run and the fishing line doesn't work at least make sure you don't build a run that is long and narrow. A hawk can swoop right into a long narrow run and get your chickens.


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Pasture Time for the Little Girls

   The weather's nice here. Mom and I were able to start back up on our daily walk. We decide to let the little girl's in the new hen house have some supervised free-range time in the pasture. They were a little skeptical, but seemed to enjoy themselves. I think they will get used to it rather quickly.

   Quail, Lee(leopard), Miracle, and Ducky behind the hen house. 











   Tooie is crowing now and the eggs from the new coop look fertile. Speaking of eggs We almost hit one hundred percent production from the younger girls yesterday. I picked six eggs from the new coop. Only one didn't lay that day.
                            

Possum trying to figure out how to work the gate.

             


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The Younger Chickens are Laying

I am excited to announce that, despite the cold, almost all the younger girls are laying. Maybe all. I'm not sure about Quail. I'll know for sure when we get two blue eggs or seven eggs out of the new coop in one day. We've been getting three to four eggs in varying shades of blue and green every day. Amy and Mary, the Ameraucana girls, haven't started laying again after their molt, so all of blue and green eggs you see are the new girls.

Some of the eggs are fertile. I heard Tooie crowing last night. Our little Cockatoo is now a fully fledged rooster.

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New Chickens: Nancy

*Note I was out of town yesterday and apparently picking a time and date under schedule doesn't make blogger publish the post then. I sorry for any inconvenience.*
   If you recall we had two new arrivals: Tooie, and a hen. This is the hen's story.  She is part Turken, also known as a necked-neck chicken. I say part because she has some feathers on the bottom of her neck (Thank Goodness.) and all the Turken pictures I have seen show a completely bald neck. I have no idea what the other part is. Something that lays very dark eggs, I guess, because not long after we got her we started getting a very dark egg almost every day.





   "I will never complain about Abe again. Ok I probably will..."

     We originally put her in the new coop, but she was a horrible bully to the other hens. Sunday morning found her standing on top of Handful pecking her. We couldn't have that. I caught her and threw her in the old coop, with her victim's larger and meaner parents; hoping they would, 'fix her wagon'. The minute I put her in the run Pecky started a fight with her. Abe was having none of that. He jumped in and started mixing it up with her. A minute later the Turken was running into the middle of the other hens to hide. Unfortunately, for her, she chose to hide next to the boss hen. The boss hen started pecking the Turken with Mohawk backing her up. The Turken ended up hiding in a nest box, her brief reign of terror over. Not that she doesn't try to restart it from time to time. Abe has to keep a constant eye on her.
    
  Here is a picture of her amongst the older girls, as you can see she is a large hen. We ended up naming her Nancy. No word yet whether she calls herself Lill.

Friday is Chinese New Year, here's hoping for a bat-tastic year of the horse.

                 Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

New Chickens- Tooie

  On the second day of frantic construction on the new coop mom and I got a call from my Aunt. Her step-daughter who also has chickens, needed to find a new home for her three new chickens who were having a bad time with the pecking order. Mom asked if they could wait until the end of the week, because we were out of cages and the older girls are horrible about the pecking order. Plus one of the three was a bantam rooster; Abe would probably kill him. She said she could keep them in an old gerbil cage until then.

   By the weekend it was down to two, (nothing had happened to the other hen) but she started getting along better in the flock and was able to stay. The other two, not so much. So that Saturday my aunt drove up with a pet carrier containing a bantam half-Silkie rooster and a necked neck chicken. More on the necked neck next Thursday, today's blog belongs to the rooster. That's him in the door way, isn't he cute? We named him Tooie short for Cockatoo.

  At first he had trouble getting along with the girls. They were bulling him. Mom only half joked about keeping him in a birdcage in the house. But the girls stopped bothering him so much. So we're leaving him in there. Mom still talks about the bird cage though.

     He's a young boy, he hasn't started crowing yet. But it's only a matter of time. He's not a actual Silkie, he has true feathers, but he does have the extra toe, -weirdly enough it's right under his back toe-  a tuft on his head, blue-ish skin, and feathered legs that are characteristic of Silkies. He is a little fellow, so I'm not sure if he'll be able to father any chicks by the girls, maybe when we move we'll get him some bantam girls.

     He loves grass. Every time I see him eat some I swear he's going to choke, but he somehow manages to swallow the spaghetti like strands. 


  And that is the story of the new chicken coop's rooster.


Note: The USPS is raising the price of stamps on the 26th. I will be raising my cost of shipping then and adding the cost of a tracking number to all my items.   

         Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Frantic Constuction

If you recall my last couple of blogs for 2013 were cancelled due to Frantic construction. My mother and I were building a second chicken house. We had been putting it off hoping we would be moving  soon, but the girls couldn't wait anymore, so we finally got to work. We started on Monday and the following Friday night Possum, Barbie, and Handful slept in the house. The next day they were joined by Miracle, Quail, Ducky, and Lee. (The girls from the 'Surprise Chicks') 

    The hen house is a metal building out of a kit. The instructions were hard to understand, but with a couple of redos and a lot of swearing we muddled through. The run was made out of panels from Barbie's dream chicken house and some chain-link we stretched between two posts we buried. The girls are happy and have eaten every bit of grass from it. Barbie laid her first egg on the day after Christmas. 




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Rooster Ornament

     After a week long hiatus I'm back, sort of. Thanks to copious amounts of orange juice I'm not as congested, but I'm still getting chills and fevers and have developed a cough. My brain is a little  better, but unfortunately still isn't 100%. I am afraid to look at what I wrote last week. I was having trouble reading, not to mention writing, and wasn't making that much sense when talking. But am a little better.

   Anyway... I had most of the rooster finished last week all he needed to have his wings sewn on and for his tail feathers to be picked out and glued in. It drove me a little crazy-er, but I finally finished him.

   I sure wasn't which one to make first, until I saw the gold and black swirling Red Heart Fiesta yarn in my stash. I think it looks like a Golden Wyandotte which is why I crochet him a pea comb.
  The Pattern is a modification of my chick pattern with a comb, wattles, and an ornament loop crocheted on and of course feathers glued in. I used foam balls instead of stuffing, because it will hold it's shape better. I think they are perfect for Christmas and will be great for Chinese New Year. Which is a couple of year from now.
 
  Each rooster is 4" (10.16cm) tall from comb to bottom, 2.75" (6.985cm) wide, about 3.75" (9.525cm) from his beak to start of tail, and dangles 4.75" (12.065cm) from the ornament hook(included).
  Each rooster has 7 rooster tail feathers (from my own farm raised roosters) securely glued into place, is hand knitted out of 100% acrylic yarn and has a foam ball in the body and one in the head to keep their shape. Made in a smoke free environment.
  The pictures are of the Gold and Black version, but they are available in Gold and Black, Black, and Red. I will post pictures of the others soon.
  No two roosters will look exactly alike. Each is signed with a small 'J' on the bottom. Custom orders are available but I am limited to the color feathers I have on hand.    
  *This is not a toy. Allowing children or pets to play with a rooster ornament may result in damage to rooster and possible harm to pet or child.
     Here is a link to the listing so you can buy your own: https://www.etsy.com/listing/169909098/rooster-ornament


            Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!     

A lamp for the chicks

This is a post I meant to write a while ago but all the Halloween stuff kind of pushed it to the wayside.

    Anyway, not long after we put the 'Surprise Chicks' into the brooder pen we got a cold front. We got nervous about them, but there were too many and too large to move back in the house so we put a heat lamp in there. It attracted a lot of bugs. And after the two nights we were able to leave the lamp off.

 




   I was worried that having a light on them all night would mess up their sleeping habits. I shouldn't have. Thanks to the cooler weather we've been able to sleep with our windows open without sweltering, and I can hear the chicks shuffling around. All night.

 It's been a couple of weeks and sometimes I still get up to check on them; sure that I'm going to find a opossum or a coyote trying to help themselves to a squab dinner. Nope. Just a bunch of teenage chickens looking at me like I'm crazy.
  The first time I thought it was because the moon was close to full and it a very bright night. A few nights later I learned that was not the case. They are even louder on pitch black nights. They bashed into things more and there was a bunch of screaming, like they were being attacked, as sleeping chicks got stepped on by chicks blundering around in the dark.
   What are they doing at night you ask? Eating. Their feeders are empty every morning.      
  Adult chicken might sleep pretty soundly, but teenagers will keep you up at night. And wake you up early as the young roosters try to crow. It sounds like someone being choked, loudly.

11/6/13 marks Bats Bizarre's one year anniversary! To celebrate I am offering a coupon code for free domestic shipping. From 11/4 to 11/11 use coupon code: ANNIVERSARY for free domestic shipping on any purchase to be shipped within the USA.
 Here is a link to my shop's homepage: www.Etsy.com/shop/batsbizarre/    

                   Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

The New Chicken House

   We where out of cages, and the Surprise chicks were out of room. We didn't want to put 'Possum, Handful, and Amy's girl in with their parents because the peaking order is so horrible and we have a thing about putting all our hens in one house. Mom and I were trying to figure out what to do when it hit us: put my old play house in between the house and the garage and use the two 10'x6' fence panels to make a run.

                    The panels were going to be part of a second chicken house we planed on building, but didn't, because we might be moving soon and were afraid taking the building apart would weaken it.

    We've taken to calling it Barbie's Dream Chicken House, and have named the girl from Amy's brood Barbie.

   Here is a picture of the nest Handful made for herself complete with egg, which for some reason looks blue in the picture. 'Possum who is the same age as Handful isn't laying yet, but both of the Ameraucana girls took a while to start laying.

  The cats love it. Bird watching, particularly close up chicken watching, is one of their favorite things to do. And the chickens in turn seem to enjoy cat watching. Whenever they see a cat laying on the cinderblock or in the dirt near the pen they run up it and hang out. When they aren't watching cats they are usually ruining Mom's heirloom Amaryllises and Pineapple plants. The little flock is all together for the picture to the right. Possum is in front, Handful's facing her, and Barbie is to the right with her back to the camera.

   A couple of days ago when the cold front blew in Persephone, who's favorite place to hang out is the roof, jumped off the garage roof onto the play house and hung out in there while Mom and I finished setting up the light for the little girls. Before we were done Sephy was out. As you can see in the picture she was looking at the roof from the top of the chicken house so she might have jumped straight up onto the roof. We're not sure.



In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

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The Chicks

Unsurprisingly the 'Surprise chicks'  out grew their cage. Thanks to a little creative chicken shuffling we were able to put them in the brooder cage. We separated them; putting the ones we think are girls (very little comb growth) to the left and the probable roosters to the right. The photos are in that order too. We have five in the right side and six in the left, and are hoping that some (most) of them were mistakenly placed in the rooster side, while all the ones in the hen side are in the right one. (We can dream can't we?)

There is a cold front coming in soon and we will probably run a light out to them.

This is one of the few chicks that we've named; she is a pure blooded Ameraucana. She looks like a quail. Her name is Charlotte. She's probably going to look like 'Possum when she's grown.

    The mostly white chick to the right is Mira, short for miracle, she was the first one to hatch. She's a Buff Orpington- Ameraucana mix.

I call this one Barn Owl because of her markings.

I put an old rabbit waterer in the hen cage I wasn't sure chicks could learn to use one. Leopard, who has lost her spots, was nice enough to demonstrate that they can while I was taking pictures. 

It was nice to deal with chickens that weren't terrified of cameras.







 In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

The trouble with Roosters (Warning: it's awful)

    If you hatch your own birds or buy a straight run from a hatchery (a mix of males and females.) (Anyone else think it should mean a 'straight run' of either males or females? Anyway.) if you do either each chick has a 50-50 shot of  being a boy. If your luck is like mine it'll seems more like 70% when you buy a straight run, my theory being that more people buy all girls than all boys and the hatchery ends up with the exes of boys for the straight one shipments. Which is why I try to buy pullets (girls) when I buy chicks. There is still a chance of getting a boy when you buy all pullets, but I'd like to think it's lower than 50%.

     Unfortunately, we've been having a better than 50-50 shot at getting roosters when we hatch.  Three of Amy's chicks are most likely roosters, including that tricky Bared Rock. I won't stop hoping for hens until the caged birds crow, but I fear it's only a matter of time.

   The trouble with roosters is manifold. They don't lay eggs, they get into fights, bad tempered ones will attack you, and the worst one of all: they may kill your hens.
      We had a horrible time with Rhode Island Red roosters. When I was younger (9 or11) We put some young chickens in with the flock. Two were half Rhode Island Red roosters They "jumped" the hens, fond the weakest one and took turns jumping her until Mom grab one by the neck. The hen later died from her injuries. The rooster died immediately from his.
  Last year, we had two roosters that couldn't have been more than a quarter Rhode Island Red. We didn't know they had any Red in them until they got older and started looking exactly like one. When they were about two months old Mom and I went to feed the chickens and saw one of them on top of a buff hen. We put him in a separate cage and mistakenly thought the second one was a hen because it looked like the offending rooster had been jumping him as well. (his tail feathers had been ripped off.) While we were setting up separate cages I heard a commotion and saw that the second rooster was jumping the injured hen. The hen didn't survive. We later ate the roosters.

  So watch suspected roosters carefully. Rooster's often grow combs faster than the others and get taller faster. If you hear crowing remove them from your flock  immediately unless it's only one, its the one you plan on having as your rooster, and you have the hens in a large enough pen.  It seems worst with ones that mature early. (two month is early.) I've had roosters that were of different breeds and matured later and they were fine. But that might have been their temperament.

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