Final Chicken Blog

 

               This will be my final blog post. I have had fun writing about my chickens and expanding my knowledge of them. For my final post I decided to figure out what types of chickens I have. I spend a lot of time with my chickens so I thought it would be good to know how to treat each chicken differently; so that each one could be in as good of health as possible.

Let’s start with the rooster the white and brown one. He is part Golden Phoenix and part Rhode Island White. Which is why he is a couple different colors. The big black and white chicken is a Silver Back (“Chicken Breeds”).Golden phoenix is the pheasant looking chicken. The ten brown chickens are 10 Sex-links (“Types of…Chickens).

 

Work Cited

"Chicken Breeds." BackYard Chickens. Huddler Lifestyle, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.

"Types of Chickens. A Review of Different Breeds of Chickens." Types of Chickens. A Review of Different Breeds of Chickens. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.

Horses and Chicken Feed

               Saturday my horses were out and Greaser (the brown boy) likes to dip his head into the chicken pen and watch them. He is fairly tall so it’s easy for him to hang his head over the fence and look in. He will stand their watching them as they cluster together and peck the ground. Greaser also like to try and nudge me out of the way when I am trying to put in feed in for the chickens. He likes the corn in their feed.

               I often wonder what’s in my chickens feed. I think their feed is nearly all corn. Corn all day has got to be boring for them. So, I decided to find out what is actually in the chicken feed.

Main Feed:

Alfalfa meal (high protein, good for winter), Corn (mainstay for chickens, store whole), Field peas (for protein, to avoid soybean use), Wheat, Oats and/or Barley (less than 15% of total diet together),

Things Sometimes Added:

               Aragonite or feeding limestone (for calcium), Oyster shell (calcium, free feed), Salt, Probiotic (feed them fermented dairy foods, or fermented vegetables), Crab meal (small amounts provide protein and minerals), Flax seed (omega-3), Mineral supplements, Kelp (mineral source), Fish meal (helps boost protein and omega-3s), Cultured yeast (B vitamins, minerals and digestive enzymes)

(Ware)

There are quite a few things in the feed that I didn't know was there. I often throw out some other stuff to the chicken though. Leftovers from dinners I collect for them and toss out. I’ll throw out stall bread crust, orange peels, and old lettuce or squash of the sort. The chickens love it; it’s their favorite thing to get new flavors. They’re not picky about what I give them, they will peck then eat whatever is thrown in as long as they can swallow it. That’s what’s cool about chickens.

 

Work Cited

Ware, Lauren. "How to Make Your Own Chicken or Poultry Feed." How to Make Your Own Chicken or Poultry Feed. About.com, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2014.

Cooler Nights

               The nights have quickly turned to darkness. My chickens have started going to bed the instant it is dark. They pile into the coop about five to five thirty. This is not okay because it  is increasing difficult to watch my chickens the darker it is outside. They don’t do much inside the coop. They sleep on top of one another, piled up in a box to stay warm. It’s a bit funny because the small pheasant hen lays on the bottom and the two biggest chickens (the black hen and the rooster) sit atop the group. 

               My dogs have fun watching the chickens. The coop is right up against the fence so the dogs look at them all day. The Shepard runs up and down the fence, barking and jumping at the chickens. She does this every day non-stop, it’s a game to her. She never gets tired or bored. The chickens don’t mind they just taunt her by getting as close to the fence as possible then jumping away. Even if we open the gate she does not go outside the fence, she still stays on the inside of the fence and barks at them. The three little dogs mostly sniff the fence and eat the eggs I drop while bringing them to the house.

The Pecking Order

My chickens love to peck each other. They peck one another until their feathers come out. They will pick and pull on their back, wings, and neck feathers. They leave little bald spots of redness on each other. I don’t know why they do this. At first I thought it was from having a rooster and that caused the chickens to pick at each other. One of my friends has chickens and no rooster, and they don’t pull out feathers. This might also happen since I have different types of chickens and they pick on the odd one out. But, this does not make much sense because there is not a singular pecked chicken, they have all been missing feathers at one point or another.

I have a book called “the Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency” which explains many factors for why chickens peck each other. One is that they my feel overcrowded within their space. Which may be true, my chickens do have ample room to walk the walk, but they might feel crowded inside the coop in the winter. Another reason this may happen is from introducing new chickens. I know I have had to re-stock some of my lost chickens at times. But none of my chickens have ever killed one another. Chickens die every once in a while, Friday one of my brown chickens died she was about five years old. This sucks but it happens. I am thinking it was just old age for her but my chickens have died in many different ways. One time we must have had a coyote or bobcat getting in and eating chickens, luckily that stopped. Finally, the last reason could be from having an aggressive chicken, such as a rooster. This is the best explanation I found and it is called the Pecking Order. Pecking is just a way of showing dominance and is also a way for chickens to pick bugs off their skin. This is even more common with one or more roosters. Were roosters may shun each other for dominance. King Crazy Chicken III is not so bad, his grandpa was the original crazy and he was definitely mean.

I will still look into expanding my chickens area for more comfort. I was already thinking of putting more room in the coop so during the winter the chickens don't feel stuffy inside. The week itself was not so eventful until the brown hen died, so now I will have to hatch one more from egg I think.

 

Work Cited

Warnock, Caleb. The Forgotten Skills of Self-sufficiency Used by the Mormon Pioneers. Springville, UT: Bonneville, 2011. Print.

Life of a Chicken

In my previous post I did not say why I am observing my chickens. Well, I have a project to do for my AP English class. We have to observe something that is relatively accessible and fun to observe, that also makes us look a little more openly at the environment around us. I eventually decided to observe my chickens. They are something I usually look over, they do get plenty of attention as they regularly have problems like escaping from the pen and not being able to get back in, and providing plenty of eggs to eat. Now I give them a little more consideration and thought as to what they do within their pen.

My chickens eat their feed but so do other animals. There are always little birds that fly in during the day and eat some seed then take off as I walk out. We also regularly have quail fly in and take some food from the chickens. And even doves look for food there in the coop too. But then there is my goat Fey, which will sometimes push her way under the pens fence and eat the feed. It’s a bad move because she must then wait for me to let her out if she does this. She recently stopped when we put a thicker hog wire fence around the pen, and squeezing under became much harder.

The chickens are followers of each other. If something lands, scratches, or runs the rest trail close behind. The chickens are always looking for something to peck, whether it be themselves or the ground. I usually throw out some seed to them in the afternoons so they won’t peck each other. But they move as one all going where one other has went. If one flies up to the coops roof, the rest will try to fly up there too.

Introduction

For my first blog post I would like to introduce you to my chickens. I have fourteen chickens in total. Thirteen hens and a single rooster. There is one big black hen, I have had her since I got my first chickens. There is a small pheasant looking hen, she is the egg sitter. She stays in the coop and looks after all the eggs, squawking at you if you try to take any of them. There is also eleven brown chickens that are our egg layers. They lay about eight to ten eggs a day and all look and act exactly the same. Finally, there is the one big rooster. He is King Crazy Chicken III, grandson of the original rooster I had which was a little nuts at times. He is white feathered but has a dirty yellow neck with brown and black splotches on his back. He acts like a king within the pen crowing at all hours of the day, not just mornings. These are my chickens and they are an interesting site to see within my own backyard.