The first (and only) chicks of the year

The Crested Cream Legbar cockerel went to cockerel heaven a few weeks back now. This means that we are no longer able to produce pure Cream Legbar chicks, which is a shame as they are a lovely looking bird and lay the most wonderful blue eggs.
However, the young cockerels are just too 'rampant' at a very early age and do their very best to maraud about the chicken pen upsetting all the other inhabitants. Typical loutish teenagers really.
Not only that, but they don't make a particularly meaty meal at the end of it. Here the comparison with teenagers has to stop.

Our Cream Legbar cockerel has, however left us with the legacy of several blue egg laying hens (blue eggs, not blue hens), which together with the other eggs makes for an attractive half dozen eggs.

Now, if there are any egg colour genetic experts out there, your input would be most welcome. For the question is, will the mixed offspring of the Cream Legbar hens, whether first or second generation, still lay blue eggs? Or will the cockerel's genes dominate? Or will the eggs come out a different colour altogether?

We don't need any more chickens at the moment, since we are getting up to 16 eggs a day already (plus duck, goose and guinea fowl eggs) and it's still only March.
But some friends of ours wanted some hens to lay blue eggs, so a month ago Sue placed 12 blue eggs in the incubator. The day before I headed to Latvia, they started hatching and we ended up with 6 healthy chicks.
The picture above shows them all packed up in a little box ready to head off in the car to their new home. It would appear that 5 of them come from our barred cockerel and 1 from the white cockerel. Let's hope that most of them turn into hens and that some of them eventually lay blue eggs.

A Secret Stash of Blue Eggs

Spot the birdy

It's been an absolutely beautiful day here today and Sue and I have busied ourselves to make the most of it. Jobs knocked off the list have included winter washing the orchard trees, spraying the polytunnel against red spider mite (more on these two in the next post), planting up winter aconites, snowdrops and grasses, cleaning out the chickens (Sue) and starting to rearrange and plant up the extended herb bed.

It all finished with a beautiful sunset against which I was lucky enough to watch a barn owl hunting, a perched little owl and a little egret fly right over the farm for the second successive night. The barn owl was probably the same individual which had flown from the old ash tree earlier in the day and which has been spending more and more time hunting on the farm of late.

As for the little owl, I saw it for the first time in a while last night. I guess that they are nesting at the moment, as they always go incredibly secretive. Anyhow, as I was pottering away in the herb bed this evening I became aware of a right old racket going on behind me. I could hear multiple blackbirds, great tis and blue tits all very agitated. I knew from experience that there must be a bird of prey somewhere and expected to see the barn owl perched back in the ash tree, but to my surprise it was the little owl which was the subject of such outrage. It was perched out right at the top of the tree. I remember this sort of behaviour last year and wonder if it is not a sign that chicks have hatched. That would cause the adults to have to be out hunting more and potentially keener to keep an eye on what is going on outside too.
The owl stayed in the tree for about an hour and as the sky turned flame red it started calling and was answered by another. All good news.

But it was an altogether more tame bird which provided the find of the day by Sue. My Crested Cream Legbar girls (chickens, in case you're wondering) came back into lay about a month ago. It's easy to tell which are their eggs as they are blue. A friend of ours is keen to have some of their offspring, so we put the first four eggs aside ready to go in the incubator but then...nothing. Not a single further blue egg. In fact, the only blue eggs we have seen since are tiny little specimens, presumably laid by the younger birds just coming into lay for the first time.
I had a sneaking suspicion that the girls were in fact laying, just not where they are supposed to! They spend a lot of their time scratching around near the stables and I did discover a couple of their eggs in there, but as soon as I took them they stopped laying there. Mistake on my part.

And so, today, Sue was in the right place at the right time to observe one of the girls creep stealthily under a large prickly pyracantha bush which grows right next to the patio doors. There she sat and with that was solved the mystery of the disappearing blue eggs. She finally moved off to reveal a stash of ten eggs. The plan now is to leave them until we can take a dozen for the incubator and leave some to encourage the hen to keep on laying.

The secret stash

So I guess this is a tale unfinished. Hopefully it will have a happy ending.

Elvis a mum again!!

This is becoming a bit of a recurrent theme on this blog.

Just over three weeks ago Elvis started to sit on her eggs and peck any hand that came near, so we placed ten blue eggs under her, in the hope that this time we might get a few more female Crested Cream Legbars.

They were due to hatch on Saturday evening, a special birthday present for Sue, or Sunday morning. Late Saturday afternoon the guinea fowl were inquisitively hanging around Elvis's coop. Goodness knows how or why, but they always seem to know when a hatching is imminent. I guess they could hear the pipping of the chicks inside the eggs.
When I went to lock up the hens on Saturday evening, I too was fairly certain I could hear a chick and on Sunday morning the first fluffy heads were poking out from under Elvis's feathers.
But Elvis was still sitting tight, so presumably there were more eggs waiting to hatch.

Fast forward to today and I was finally able to count seven chirpy chicks. Elvis had added one of her own eggs to the blue ones we had placed under her.


Elvis has hatched a right motley crew.

Only one, though, is a female Cream Legbar. The good thing about Cream Legbars is that they are autosexing - that means that, unusually in the chicken world, male and female chicks actually look different and can be told apart. As for the rest, well I guess the lady Cream Legbars have been mixing it up a bit with the other young cockerels, for none of them looks pure. We're not too bothered - if we were, we would have isolated the Legbar trio before collecting eggs from them. Goodness knows how one of them seems to have come out pure white!

Ducks demand recount

Can you spot the odd one out?

Think you've spotted it?
I'm afraid I'm not sure if I can help you. I think it's the bottom middle but, on closer inspection, there may even be two odd ones out! I couldn't even tell in the flesh, let alone from a photo.

So you'll imagine my surprise when the penny finally dropped. Eight of these are not what I thought they were.

Let's take a step back a week:
January's nearing its end and the chickens are laying more and more eggs every day. The Crested Cream Legbars, which lay beautiful blue eggs, have been laying very well of late. That's to put it mildly, for I am beginning to suspect that two hens are somehow conspiring to lay more than two eggs per day! I'm not quite sure, for I collect eggs several times a day and don't always remember what I've collected. Furthermore the morning eggs could, in theory, have been laid late the previous day. All other possibilities seem impossible though. The other hens do not lay blue eggs. The young Cream Legbar hen is still a chick and could not feasibly be laying eggs yet. And it is pretty unlikely that Spike the Cockerel has started to lay!

Now fast forward to yesterday:
This morning I found a blue egg lying all on its own in the mud. This is very unusual behaviour from one of the Cream Legbar hens.

Yesterday afternoon:
I collected another three blue eggs. Something is clearly up.

Then I realised. I can't believe I have been so short-sighted. Ducks! Not the three white ducks, who lay white eggs, but the black Cayugas... who lay blue eggs. Or, more precisely, the young Cayugas, the ones who are due to be going off to the poultry house in the sky round about February half term.

Once I'd realised, it all fell into place. For Cayuga eggs have a strange, dark film on them, a bit like dirtied eggs but it won't quite wash off. They're a subtly different shape to hen eggs and usually much larger. I guess it was because they are being laid by ducks just coming into lay that had me fooled, for the size difference is not yet marked.

So it appears that Chickens 8, Ducks 1 may well have been wrong. It was probably Chickens 6, Ducks 3. That's actually more eggs per duck than per hen.

Chickens 8 - Ducks 1

No, I have not taught the poultry to play football!
I am talking eggs.

These three girls have laid well all winter thus far.
They were, however, rather confused when their water turned solid!

For the last couple of months we have been extremely grateful to the white ducks. For, thus far, they have somehow conspired to lay throughout the winter. I am rather perplexed by this, for I thought that ducks were much more seasonal layers than hens. Maybe it's because they are three girls. I don't know.

The black ducks, the Cayugas, stopped laying way back, but they will be earning their money very soon when some of them become meat birds!

As for the hens, they have mostly been having a rest of late. There have even been days with no eggs at all from them, though they have been averaging out at two or three a day.

But we have started seeing two blue eggs a day now, so our pair of Cream Legbar hens are doing the business. We have also been seeing some tiny brown eggs, presumably the younger hens coming into lay for the first time.

The weather, it has to be said, has been foul of late, but it seems that the days drawing out a little has been enough to kickstart the hens into laying again. For the last two days, we have collected eight eggs each day, which is plenty for us and a couple of regular customers.


Plenty of eggs.

Plenty of cakes!

Let's hope we don't get too many of these though!


Meanwhile, as the young hens come into lay, the young cockerels are coming into their own too. They have begun to crow and to make advances toward the hens. But these direct challenges to the chief cockerel are not tolerated for too long.
One of the young cockerels looks disturbingly similar to Cocky, our old cockerel who passed away at the end of 2013. It's very tempting to keep him (don't tell the other cockerels I said that) but that would give us all sorts of issues with interbreeding. Some would say there's enough of that on The Fens already! Tongue firmly in cheek of course.



Clearly the offspring of Cocky.



Meet Spike

So we'll probably plump for the Crested Cream Legbar cockerel to do the job. He has developed his skills with the ladies, finding them tasty morsels and warding off danger in return for certain favours.Once we finally take the decision, I suppose we had better give him a name.
In fact, might as well do it now. Spike. That suits him. Yes, Spike it is.

As soon as Blogger allows me, I'll post a picture of him. It's playing up again!

The cockerel situation was slightly relieved this week when I managed to sell one of our Poland cockerels. (Photo at Blogger's whim) They are a very pretty breed, a very old, traditional breed, but pretty useless apart from that. A chicken fancier's bird rather than a producer of decent size eggs or meat birds. The woman who bought him from me was after a black cockerel to breed with her white hens, in pursuit of chocolate coloured Polands.

This Poland cockerel is on his way to pastures new

  I'm sure he'll enjoy meeting some new girls anyway.

Elvis moves out (again)

Elvis watches over her growing chicks

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Elvis. But for those who don't know her (yes, her!), Elvis is a small black hen who has been with us since we moved into the farm. She is a Silkie, a breed of chicken which oddly has black skin.
For us, the important thing about Silkies is that they make wonderful broody hens. We have hatched many eggs under Elvis and she makes a brilliant mum. She has raised chickens, guinea fowl and even a brood of ducks. We haven't yet tried to put a goose egg under her!

Back in the first days of November

So it was back in October that Sue placed eggs under Elvis and in the last days of that month she hatched out four healthy chicks. Elvis has been a devoted mother to them ever since and they have grown into four healthy and very feisty chicks.
Maybe because it is winter, Elvis has stayed with this clutch longer than usual, but yesterday morning when I opened up the houses she came strolling out with the other hens.
The four chicks had spent their first night alone.
And today Elvis spent most of her time on her own, occasionally flirting with the younger cockerels. It probably won't be too long before she decides she wants to sit again.
Maybe time for that goose egg!

Elvis - A Mum Again!

On the last day of July 2013 Elvis had quite a surprise. For she hatched out some chicks with rather strange bills and rather odd habits, like constantly jumping into water and waddling around in a line.

 

 

For those of you not familiar with Elvis, she is our broody hen. She is a black Silkie and she was one of the hens we inherited when we moved in three years ago. Elvis has an incredibly strong maternal instinct. So much so that she rarely goes a few weeks between sending off one group of youngsters to fend for themselves and sitting tight on whatever eggs she can find.

At this stage, gathering eggs becomes a risky affair, as she will just sit tight and peck viciously at your hand. At all other times Elvis is a very affectionate hen.

We have now lost count of how many clutches of eggs Elvis has hatched, but after her surprise at delivering us six ducklings last time, Sue decided she could have some more chicken eggs to sit on. So she got a few of the blue Crested Cream Legbar eggs and a few eggs from the other hens. Sue gave her eleven eggs to sit on altogether.

By the end of week two, Elvis was somehow incubating seventeen eggs, so it was time to isolate her from the other hens. At this time of year, we are hardly getting any eggs from the chickens, so we could ill afford to lose half a dozen which were destined never to hatch.

Then it was just a case of waiting, and last Sunday as I locked the chickens away I could hear the tell tale high cheeps of newborn chicks. The next morning, Elvis had moved off the nest, leaving a very smelly poo (they always do this) alongside the unhatched eggs.

 

 

Unfortunately only four chicks successfully hatched. A further two were fully grown but hadn't managed to escape their shells. One of these was actually still alive, so Sue cracked the shell some more and placed it back under Elvis. But Elvis always knows the best thing to do and she had left this egg behind for a reason. Although it got out of the shell, it didn't survive much longer.

Usually we have a much better return for naturally incubated eggs, but I guess it's late in the season so some of the eggs may never have been fertilised in the first place. Also, Cocky is getting a little older now. We'll have to see how he performs next year.

As for those four cute little chicks, we have one archetypal pale yellow ball of fluff. Very cute! The other three are Crested Cream Legbars, the ones that lay blue eggs (the females, that is!). These are very unusual in that the chicks are autosexing. This means that there are clear plumage differences between the sexes.

The females are darker and have a dark stripe running down their back and behind their eyes. The males are lighter with a light dot on top of their head.

Unfortunately, I think we only have one Cream Legbar girl. But at least Elvis is all clucky again.



 

 

More hot air

Missing Items
Now the camera's gone missing.
Presumably in the same place as the toothbrush charger (missing for over 3 weeks, the key to the garage (we have a spare) and one of my gloves.
I tend to put things away in safe places on days when the building work threatens to be particularly dusty.

A Crash Landing
And boy, could I have done with having the camera on me today as I went down to give the chickens (a generic term to include ducks, geese and guinea fwol) their afternoon feed. The guineas were going mad and I couldn't quite work out why, at least not until I looked over my shoulder into the field behind me to see a hot air balloon scraping along the ground, burners desperately trying to lift it back into the air. It did so for a few seconds, but then back down and it wasn't long before the balloon sagged and deflated.

A hare raced across the field and five roe deer flushed out of the dyke where it landed, then stood at the end of my land for several minutes looking inquisitively toward the strange invader.

It was just too far away, and I was a little too busy, for me to do anything apart from be a rather amused onlooker before continuing with my chores. We do seem to be on a fairly regular hot air balloon evening route and one has gone down before, but not this close.

Big Eggs, Small Eggs, Blue Eggs, Brown Eggs, Duck Eggs...
Vying with this for my attention was a rather late second collection of chicken eggs.

Late because I did a Wisbech run today. We are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, between Spalding, Wisbech and Peterborough. I try to save up all my jobs to do in one town, to minimise on driving. So today it was the pound shops for cheap seeds, the bank for cash, Topps tiles to ask some technical quesions, which they couldn't answer (but I did meet a tiler), and B&Q for tile adhesive and grout.
I was also following a tip-off on another blog that Aldi are selling fruit trees for £3.99 each - a ridiculous price. Even if one in three doesn't make it, it's still a good deal. So I purchased another apple tree (Gala), another cherry (Morello) a Greengage and a Peach tree, as well as a trio of long-stemmed raspberry canes. The trees were going like hotcakes, unlike the ready meals!

Anyway, back to the chickens.
They're laying in all the houses at the moment. You're never quite sure where you'll find the next egg nestled. And they come in many different colours now. The Crested Cream Legbars have finally started laying rather small but very blue eggs. We separated the trio off from the others in anticipation of the females coming into lay, but more urgently because the cockerel has been having some rather drawn out and bloody battles with Cocky, the established cockerel who rules the roost. They keep getting out though, so half term's work will be patching up the fencing and doors and clipping all the chickens' wings.

We got our first dark brown egg from Chocolate for a while today too. I don't really understand why she started laying, laid an egg a day for four days, then not another one for several weeks. Maybe the weather? Maybe that's just how things work.

Mini Guinea and Little Legbar - In Memory

 

Friday 9th November 2012
The calm sunset gave no hint of a shocking start to the day.

A shocking sight met my eyes this morning as I picked my way over the soggy ground to let the chickens out. For there, dead on the ground, was one of the Cream Legbar chicks which we raised in the house. These two chicks never became very streetwise in the big world with the rest of the chickens, but I didn't expect this to happen. In fact, last night I took a picture of the Elvis coop at roost to show how the young chicks had finally been accepted by the others. You can see one of the young Legbars front right - it's the barred plumage tucked under the wing of the older female Legbar.

I had assumed that the other was somewhere in the melee with Elvis, but how wrong could I be?

Little did I know when I took this piccie
that one of the chicks was missing.

 

It must have got itself stuck outside somewhere.

These two had become very friendly to me, as have previous cock Cream Legbars, but I always knew that one day they would have to go so they never acquired names and I always kept a distance.

 

 

But lightning struck twice last night. For I could only count ten guineafowl keets. I had suspected this last night, but wasn't sure in the gloom. It didn't take me long to find MiniGuinea lying dead too. For some days it had been struggling with the damp and the cold nights, often needing help up onto the roosting fence to spend the night protected by the warmth of its siblings.

 

Since we have lived here things have often seemed to balance out in sometimes cruel ways. These two sad losses closely followed the joyous birth of our third piglet litter.

I have become more hardened to it now. MiniGuinea was always facing an uphill battle and just never grew quickly enough. Always the weakest, the wet winter weather found it out.

 

The hardest part was telling Sue.

 

Chicks growing up fast

Thursday 11th October 2012

Main event of the day was letting Elvis's brood out of their run to join in the fun with all the other poultry. I kept an eye on them for a while, just to make sure none of the cockerels took a dislike to them, but it was quickly clear that they are strong and independent little things. I have witnessed this at feeding time, when they literally climb over my hands and arms to be first into the feed bowl!



Elvis keeps a watchful eye over her brood.



The chicks were very bold
and quick to explore.



Priscilla and her 3 chicks.
They've started to get their wing feathers now.
I should be able to work out their parentage soon.

Meanwhile, Priscilla is quietly getting on with raising her three chicks. They are in the high-rise coop for now, as Elvis has the other coop with a run.

The 2 Crested Cream Legbar hens along
with the ridiculously hair-styled Polands.

The previous chicks, the two Cream Legbar hens, are doing very well too and are taking on the form of proper hens. It won't be long before I separate them off with the Cream Legbar cockerel to make a trio. The trouble is, the two enclosures I can put them in are taken up. The ducks have one of them, though they'll be moving into the veg patches once I've cleared the beds a bit. The other has been adopted by the guinea family, still with eleven fast growing keets. However, they all roost in a row on top of the fence rather than in the house now. Seven keets have to rough it out while four get the shelter of their parents wings.



On the left: we still have eleven healthy keets.
On the right: Two Cream Legbar hens, two Polands
and the stripy one is one of Priscilla's last brood.
How quickly they grow!

 

Friday 12th October 2012
A grey morning following yesterday's rain.



Keets reunited.

Friday 31st August 2012

Chickens lay chocolate eggs
Today something really amazing happened. We have had family staying for a while and the children have been collecting the chicken eggs for us. Well, today the chickens only went and laid a couple of Kinder Eggs for them! In all our time keeping chickens they have never laid even one of these for us!

Keets reunited
The seven keets already outside with their parents have flourished. It has been fascinating to watch how their mother and father look after them. Every evening Lady Guinea disappears into a deep tussock of grass and G'nea G'nea goes off on his own to roost with the chickens. In the morning they call to each other and he rushes out to join his family, foraging through the grass in the orchard and soft fruit patch. The little ones have learned to keep up with the parents, all staying together by constantly calling to each other. They are finding plenty of food for themselves, even leaping up into the air to catch insects disturbed from the grass. It is also notable that Lady Guinea has started to bring her family back in with the chickens, though she only trusts the older chcikens, with whom she grew up. In fact, Cocky often stands over the keets to protect them.
Fortunately the weather has been a bit fresher of late, so the grass has been a lot drier, particularly in the early morning.

So, having said that we'd decided not to place all our baby guineafowl in the one basket, today we decided that was exactly what we would do! Rearing the chicks inside pretty much guarantees their survival, but it is another job and they need plenty of cleaning out as they sure do produce a lot of odorous waste for such little fluffballs.


Today we carried the eight keets from inside down to the chicken pen and placed them on the ground. Lady Guinea quickly responded to their little calls so Sue released a couple of the keets into the midst of the others. This was the moment of truth. Would they be accepted or rejected and possibly even attacked?

Lady Guinea went straight over to the calling keets.

Well, it was as if they'd never been away. They mixed straight in and were welcomed back into the family. Pleased by this outcome, we reunited the rest of the keets and it was a true delight to watch all fifteen feeding under the feet of their parents, then slowly head off back into the orchard.

All fifteen keets. Confident little critters now.

Legbar chicks cast outside
That wasn't all the fowl action for the day though. We decided that the two Cream Legbar henlets could also go out, but into the protected environment of an enclosed run. We put them in with the Polands, who have been proving slightly shy of the other much larger chickens since I accidently let them out a few days ago.
I reckon they get picked on because of their ridiculous hairstyles. Apologies to any readers with similar hairstyles!

Way Hey! A new home.
Sue releases the Cream Legbar chicks.



The two Cream Legbar chicks in their new home with the Polands.

Cayugas and Cream Legbars

Sunday 12th August 2012
No mist or fog. Signals a change in the weather.

New arrivals

About a week ago I decided to give ducks a go, chiefly to become a major part of my anti-slug campaign. A bit of research revealed that what I needed were Cayugas - a glossy black duck which is quieter than others, docile and does not wander too far.

As luck would have it, I found a possible source fairly nearby, up at Frampton Fen.

Cream Legbars

Then a double dose of luck, for the same place also had two Cream Legbar chicks, both females.

Cream Legbar chicks are
autosexing. This means you can
tell males from females...
if you know what you're looking for.



I'd been struggling to find a local source for these and did not want to resort to eggs through the post again. After two goes at hatching these beautiful blue eggs, we produced a grand total of two cockerels (not entirely our fault as the second dozen eggs were infertile - I'm still waiting for them to be replaced). So the hope is that by next spring we will have  a breeding trio of Cream Legbars to give us blue eggs and our own source of Legbar chicks.

They weren't going cheap (sorry!) but hatching from eggs has in this case proved to be a false economy. Besides, blue eggs and legbar chicks in the future will soon repay the investment. To buy a trio (a cockerel and two hens) would cost in the region of £40 so we'll still save money, even after all our frustrations. And when we do eventually get those other replacement eggs we will have birds from three different sources which will ensure a better genetic mix.

The Cayugas

The ducks are more difficult to sex than the Legbars, but the experienced ear can tell the difference in their call once they reach a couple of months old. Andrew, the owner of the farm, caught four young birds for us and reckons we should have a drake and three ducks. And here they are, settling into their new home.

They took to their new surroundings like ducks to water!

They quickly muddied the water.
Ducks need access to water but, like the geese, there needs to be a very large pond which can sustain the mess they make or a small water container so that the water can be easily changed.

Females get some white in the plumage when they get older.
The white in these ducks' plumage probably displays some impurity.
However, I'm really not bothered by show standards,
as long as they eat slugs and quack contentedly.

Once they've settled in we'll move the Cayugas around the veg patches. Hopefully they will keep down the pests without causing too much destruction of their own. For now we'll leave them be to get used to their new home.