There’s nothing like raising animals to enable you to see the entire cycle of life happen before your very eyes. In the past few months we’ve had the joy of watching our chickens create more of their own and the sadness of the passing of two of the Ameraucanas (from unknown causes).
A few months ago, Chris and Sharon built a smaller addition on to the main coop. The intent of this space was to be able to use it as an infirmary if needed and hopefully a nursery. After it was built some of the hens and one of the roosters were placed in there to give the others more space.
The first experiment was to provide two dozen fertilized eggs to Kristina’s uncle who took them back to Oregon and placed them in an egg incubator. Unfortunately, none of the eggs hatched because the temperature on the incubator was too hot.
Brooding Mama Cochin
However, here at Mount Royal Farms, it quickly became apparent that one of the Cochins had become “broody” and began to sit on her eggs and those of her coop sisters and not want to move. She was allowed to keep her eggs and sit on them. After a few weeks it seemed as if nothing was going to happen, then one day a tiny crack appeared in the shell of one of the eggs. This first chick did not survive the process, but then another hatchling appeared and suddenly…we had our first home-grown chick!
Chick #3
Chick #4 on her way out.
Over the next week five more chicks hatched, the last one struggling for her first 24 hours to survive. But don’t worry, she made it and her story is documented in the videos Chris took which you can watch below.
In this first video you can see her on a heating pad, right after she came out of the shell (with a little help).
And here she is after only 24 hours!
The chicks look a little like baby penguins at first…
Here at Mount Royal Farms we are thrilled to have our “six-pack” of chicks and can’t wait to watch them grow!
It’s been a few months and it’s time for an update on the Mount Royal Farms brood.
All the girls are doing quite well and are now producing about 9 dozen eggs a week! The eggs vary widely in both size and color, ranging from small to extra-large, from pale blue and green, to pink, copper, and brown. Now that there are so many eggs, the girls are starting to cluck for their supper. Chris has been able to bring extra eggs to his coworkers in exchange for their support of the coop. The hardest part is collecting enough egg cartons.
Eggs in the nesting boxes.
"Hurry up in there!"
There are four nesting boxes in the coop and quite often there is a wait while each chicken takes her turn laying. Sometimes one hen will push her way into one of the already occupied nesting boxes!
The chickens are now being fed laying hen organic feed, and in addition we’re blessed to have a friend who works at local farmer’s markets. Every week she gives us big bags of leftover organic vegetables and greens and the chickens are thrilled with the bounty. You can see it in their eggs because they have bright orange yolks.
Eating their greens. I love the black Cochens with their fluffy feathers covering their legs and feet. They look like walking pillows (see photo below too).
Breakfast at Mount Royal Farms.
There was a bit of a scare a couple of weeks ago when one of the girls, Twisty, got sick (photos of her at top and below). Do you remember the Ameraucana with the crooked beak? She stopped eating and clearly wasn’t feeling well. Chris brought her to an avian vet and it turns out she had some sort of infection (possibly from mites) but thankfully she wasn’t egg bound as we feared. She had a week of antibiotics and she’s just fine now! Phew!
Chris with Twisty, demonstrating how happy and healthy she is now.
Finally, I leave you with a photo of one of the Turkens, all grown up. There’s nothing wrong with this bird. This is the breed, Turken, and they have no feathers around their neck or shoulders. They may be a bit funny looking, but we love them just the same.
So much has happened in the last few months at Mount Royal Farms! The second group of chickens were moved outside to the coop and placed in a partitioned section away from the older birds near the end of the summer. They have continued to thrive, even “Tweety Bird” the tiny Delaware, is almost full [...]
Like clockwork, every day after 11am, there has been one small perfect egg waiting in the coop. This morning the four of us got together for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, biscuits made with the lard from our pig, and Sharon’s home made jams (apricot and fig/bacon/caramelized onion). The eggs were small but wonderful and dark yellow [...]
A note from Genevieve: I swear it wasn’t my fault. There it was: a sorta round thing that was just laying there. We all played with it, you know, rolled it a little. Scratched at it…and no one would admit to putting it there, but I think that Americauna that fancies herself some sort of desert [...]
The text below was written by Chris about the different breeds of the new chicks which came to Mount Royal Farms a couple of weeks ago. This brings the total chickens to 18, but there will be plenty of room out int the coop once the new chicks go outside. Photos by me (Kristina) as well [...]
See that Ameraucana chicken? That is one happy girl with lots of room to roost! Isn’t she beautiful? If you missed part 1 of building the coop, make sure you check it out. Once the foundation was laid, Chris and Sharon started building the framing for the external structure which is is 12×16 feet. It has full-sized doors with [...]
So much as been done in the last few weeks I’m not even sure where to begin. The short version is that the girls are now happily ensconced in their new home and there are 11 new chicks in residence! But how did we get here? In the last post I referred to the “Taj Majal [...]
The “girls” are now almost 8 weeks old and they are getting BIG. Here’s some updated photos from last weekend. Coming soon, more on the Taj Mahal of chicken coops. The building has begun!
The girls are getting big and that means it’s time to start building the coop. Chris and Sharon got started this week on the project and below is an update from Chris. The photo above is the space where the coop will go, before the area was cleared and the foundation dug. We’ll hopefully have [...]
