"Surprise" Chicks

I've titled this "Surprise" Chicks, but rarely am I surprised by the chickens these days. I had a few hens broody in the the one coop, in  a place tricky to get to, so I kind of knew they might be sat on some eggs. 

So when I heard a chirp the other morning I knew that our flock would be getting a little bigger. The three hens had fought and sat on each other for a few weeks and managed to hatch out 6 chicks. These are pure bred Indian game as the eggs were white (our hens that aren't Indian Game lay brown eggs), so it will be interesting to see what birds we get from them.

Yet More Chicks!

We're certainly taking advantage of having our own breeding flock at the moment! More eggs hatched this week.

From 25 eggs we had 25 hatch but unfortunately two chicks weren't good. but that's still some great odds. A dry hatch is the way to go, no messing with water. Switch it on and forget it until it's time to get them from the cradle 2 days before.  

These are all Indian game and the plan will be for most of them to go in the freezer unless anyone wants to buy hens. So for once I'm hoping for lots of cockerels! 

The 6 juveniles hatched out 3 weeks ago got moved into another pen, we had to borrow a heat plate for a few more weeks but they're not using it much. 

They've been loving the grass, and so spend a fair bit of time squaring up against each other - does this mean more males I wonder?

 My youngest has been spending hours just watching the chicks. It's funny as we hatch so many sometimes the children don't pay that much attention once they're hatched but this time they've been out their loads. It's nice now they're all at an age I can trust them with them as well and don't have to watch them constantly. 

6 Chicks Hatched

Now I would have preferred a better hatch rate but considering the incubator jammed and it was some days before I realised it wasn't turning I'm surprised we got any! So we had 7 hatch, one unfortunately had to be dispatched but the 6 that are left seem healthy and happy. 

No matter how many times we hatch chicks out I'm always excited. These are some pure breed Indian Game, after setting up the breed flock last year (and doing some miles to do it!). 

 

We'll have to see what we get from this batch. The hens they came from are mixed colours run with a dark coloured cockerel so it'll be interesting to see if there is much of a mix. We might put another set of eggs in the incubator straight away to hatch some more, as these are much slower grown than Ross Cobbs we will need to keep some hatching through the year to supply us with meat. 

Anyone else hatching eggs at the moment?

Meat Crosses Hatch

This year we've been plagued by bad hatch rates, I've kept changing my methods but I think having posted eggs really doesn't help things. 

These chicks are from our own eggs, with a Indian Game cockerel over some Colombian Plymouth Rock hens. 

What a difference in hatch rate!

Indian Game Chickens In Their New Pen

The young chickens we hatched out in February moved into their new pen this week.

The new pen is huge and so far they seem to love it.

Chicks At Three Weeks - Sure Don't Grow Like Ross Cobbs!

 This is a terrible picture but these guys are so jumpy and quick on their feet it's hard to take one!



After having Ross Cobbs for the last few years I can't believe how slow growing these are in comparison, shows how long it's been since I hatched some of our own here!

New Chicks!

I completely forgot to post about the chicks we hatched out the other day! 

These hatched out the Monday last week (17th). A mixture of eggs we got from an extremely lovely couple from Abergavenny who keep and show many breeds of chickens.

Day Old Chicks In October

Each year (or the last few anyway) we grow a small batch of 25-30 chicks to provide chicken meat through the rest of the year.

We chose to do this in the later part of the year for a few reasons. If we get them now and start processing birds in 8- 12 weeks then generally our work load will be lower. Also the much lower temperatures will mean that the birds can "rest" once prepared for a few days making the meat much more tender. We don't have the fridge space to do this in the summer.

Currently we're still buying in day old Ross Cobb chicks and this is something I'd liek to eventually move away from as they're not the easiest breed to work with. We've never had much problem with them going off their legs and things (common problems) but it's not something I want my stock to experience either.

In the future it would be great to have a breeding group of hens with a cockerel so that they could produce a much smaller, regular supply of birds through the year, without having to buy in any chicks. This is something I've talked about for years now and really need to get and do it!

Let me know what you think. Would 25 chickens provide your chicken meat for the year for your family? These birds do get big and one breast will generally provide our family of five with enough meat for a meal.

Meat Chicks Out Of The Brooder

The meat chicks grow at an amazing rate and what started out as a lovely roomy brooder soon becomes cramped. Also becasue I think they sent me more chicks than I ordered (29 instead of 26) and that means space was getting tight.

This week I turned off the heat from the heat plate to get them ready for living outside.

Brooder Extension

On my last post Jo mentioned that she didn't have anywhere to keep chicks under a heat lamp.

This is initially what put me off getting day old chicks. Every brooder set up I saw was in a shed or a barn and I don't have that kind of space available unfortunately. I've even had friends keep them in their dinning room before now but that isn't something I fancied as they soon start to smell!

Meat Chicks At Four Weeks

The meat chicks have left the brooder (the heat has been off for a few days now) and they're in a their pasture pen.

The boy giving up his play pen...

The children helped me set the pen up and open and shut the gates as I moved the birds one by one. 

I have 19 left out of the 20 as one died in the first few days of having them. I've also got one that is much smaller than the others and not as active so I wouldn't sell it life insurance just yet.

The chicks took to it straight away, they were eating the grass and just moving around within minutes. 

This is the third pen of this type that I've built and I really like using them and I love the idea (and practice of) moving chickens onto fresh grass everyday. No need to muck out, manure spread evenly on the field to improve my pasture and the birds get fresh grass and bugs everyday reducing the need for worming.

They are helping really...

I spread some straw at the back of the pen for the first few nights and I have no intention of moving it for a few days, just to let them settle in and get used to a colder environment. 

Watching

When I went out to check tonight they'd all huddled together but outside! I moved them all to the straw area and they soon settled down again, using each other for warmth to start with. I've added a couple of perches and during the day there are already a few that like to hang out there. 

The growth of these birds has been eye opening! They've gained weight like mad, but there is a real difference between them all some are much bigger than others. 

Who else has used pasture pens (chicken tractors) to help fatten meat birds? 

Any tips?

Day Old Chicks - Meat Birds

I'd been thinking about rearing some meat birds for a while. I decided to do it when batch of eggs I'd tried to get a hen to hatch out failed earlier in the summer, we always hatch some chicks out every year as I think it's great for the kids so I was really disappointed. 

So I decided to buy some day old meat chicks and rear them in a brooder, this is far more work than just raising them with a broody chicken, as she takes care of all their heating needs, but I haven't got any broody hens so it was my only option - short of sitting on them myself. 

To do it I was going to need a pen and also a means of keeping the chicks warm. 

Heating plate

Doing some research online I came to the conclusion that heat lamps were quite energy hungry and an "electric hen" or heating plate might be the way to go. Here they get heat from above with the plate as they would with a mother hen and it's only 42 watts rather than a big heat lamp. Also the risk of fire is much lower (I used to hate when we had heat lamps in the sheep shed when I was growing up on the farm - all the straw and hay around them made it so dangerous).

Chicken coop not in use

I then set to work on finding a pen to house them in. I have a few coops not being used at the moment as my laying hens are in their pastured chicken tractors. I decided to move the better of the two coops up to my yard with the tractor and then make a few alterations to it. 

I adapted the pen, I made up a mesh screen and a mesh door above. This meant that I can leave it open in the day and the kids can see the chicks without them escaping. 

I also made a mesh screen for the nest box and hid the extension reel in there. 

No shortage of wood shavings for bedding around here at the moment - advantage of being a carpenter. I shall make an extension for the pen as the chicks grow and they'll go outside at five weeks old into a pasture pen. 

Day old chicks 

The kids were so excited when I turned up with them on Wednesday night! lots of jumping around! 

The chicks took to the heat plate straight away and know to go there to get warm, having the mesh door open gives them plenty of air flow and light as well as hopefully hardening them up a little faster. 

First drink! 

The kids are loving them and got to check on them many times in a day! But they also know that these birds are to eat and both have expressed an interested in helping me prepare them when the time comes, I won't force them but if they want to help then I'll let them, maybe with plucking to start with. 

So now I've just got to keep them alive, healthy and well fed for the next 10 - 12 weeks. 

It's another small step in the self sufficiency learning journey that we're taking here. 

Chicks In October

My girls were far more excited about this mishap that I was. 

A hen has managed to hatch out a clutch of eggs on the 11 of October - the Perils of free ranges hens I guess. 

Rubbish photo - I'll get some better ones later! 

Although it's always nice to have some new chicks this has given me some housing issues as there is no way free range chicks will last more than five minutes around here. So last night I gathered them up and put them in my broody coop. The young pullet and mother that were in there already aren't ready to go into the big wide world yet so they got shoved into my little greenhouse, problem solved - for now! 

If it doesn't go too cold too quickly these chicks have a chance but it's far too late for them really, I might add a bit of insulation on the pen they're in for a couple of weeks and make sure they have plenty of bedding.

What's the latest you've had chicks hatch and survive?

Chicks Hatched

Three new chicks to add to our flock!

This hen almost got her neck pulled the other night as I'm fairly sure she killed the first two chicks that hatched and then I had to dispatch a third that had a bad leg, luckily three more have hatched and seem healthy so the hen lives on, I won;t let her hatch eggs again though.

I certainly don't hatch enough chicks to be self sufficient in chickens but it is a great thing to do for the children, they love going to see them and watching them. Maybe when I have more time I'll start hatching and breeding chickens a bit more, it's something I'd like to do and I think it could be a good paying hobby, but at the moment I've got far too much going on. 

Who else has been hatching eggs this year?

13 Tips For Hatching Eggs Using A Broody Hen

A friend of mine is hatching some eggs using a broody chicken so I thought I'd do a quick post with some tips for success and then any anyone else has got can be added at the end.

This aren't set in stone but it's what I do to hatch eggs and helps increase your odds of a successful hatch - 

- Make sure she's been broody for at least a few day before you give her eggs to hatch.

- Separate the hen off from the rest of the flock and get her settled for a day before you put eggs under her.

- If you leave her in the same pen then the other hens might bully her off the nest or they might fight and an egg get damaged, although I know many people still hatch eggs without removing the chicken from the flock I just find it easy to manage as well.

- Also use the day before to make sure she stays broody, sometimes moving her into a new pen will break her broodiness (annoying if you've brought eggs for her to sit on!).

- Make sure the pen you give her is nice and safe from predators and has a nice dark nest for her to hide in. I use a little chicken arch for the purpose (or chicken tractor if you live on the other side of the pond) with some hay for her to build her nest with and a covered run.


- When collecting your eggs to hatch out, the fresher the better, and better if they're all the same age. Make sure none are damaged.

- Don't get too greedy on what your hen can hatch out. Look at the size of her and think about how many will comfortably fit under her. Lift her up and see how big of a warm area she has under her. I normally go for about 8 or nine eggs for an average sized chicken with normal sized eggs.

- It takes on average 21 days for a egg to hatch but I have had eggs hatch on day 20 so it pays to keep checking towards the end.

- It's worth candling the eggs halfway through to see if they're is any signs of development, a bad egg at the end can smell really bad!

- Every day during the brooding I make sure the hen is chucked off her nest and shut out of the nest box for ten minutes. She doesn't like this but then she can then have a (huge) poo away from the nest and have a drink and some food. I give her constant access to food and water the rest of the time but at the far end of the run so she has to get up to eat.

- A good hen will be dedicated to her eggs, if you see her eating and walking around lots you might as well take her eggs away as it's doubtful they will hatch. Also a good hen will be desperate to get back to her eggs after you've taken her off when she has a drink and some food.

- When the eggs hatch the hen will really come into her own, she looks after the chicks, not you. You don't need to provide extra heat, just drinking water (with stones in to prevent drowning) and some chick crumbs for them to eat (they don't need any for the first 24 hours). I move mine on to fresh grass each day and after a few weeks I add a little wheat to their food mix to get them used to what they're going to eat.

- This is when they're most vulnerable to predators so make sure they're coop is covered. When I hatched some out this year the magpies didn't leave the side of the pen for three weeks and I've no doubt I would have lost them if they weren't under wire.

So there are a few of my tips. I know that free ranged chickens wonder off and come back with a clutch of chicks quite often but it's not a very planned way of hatching them and can be a little unreliable! 

Using a hen in this way really is, in my opinion, the easiest way to hatch out chicks simply because once they're hatched the hen looks after them for you and they harden up to the outside world much faster -without a incubator or heat lamp in sight!

What are your top tips for hatching eggs?

"Weaning" The Chicks

Thursday night I took the mother hen out from the chicks that we hatched back at the beginning of May. 

I'm never quite sure when to take the hen away from the chicks, last year I just left the hen in with them but this year there's been lots of fighting and bickering. These chicks are six weeks old and the hen had started to lay again, a sure sign she's not interested. To prove the point when I took her out and put her back with the other laying hens she made no fuss at all. 

The chicks seem relieved and are enjoying a quieter few days where they're not being bullied or pecked. They all look really healthy and are growing well, but much much slower than a commercial breed that would be killed at 8 weeks old (check out Sunnybrook farms post here and see the picture of one of his commercial breed chicks at 8 weeks, even though they've been brought up outside).

When does everyone else remove the hen that hatched the chicks or do you leave the older bird in with them?

Six Chicks Hatch

I try to hatch a few chicks every year. It's good to grow my own replacement chickens, not to mention the fact that the girls, the wife and me love them!

These ones couldn't have been better timed if I had tried. After a rubbish week we came home and had six little chicks hatch the very next day, the girls thought it was wonderful.

 The six hatched out nine eggs so I was quite pleased, the cockerel is still proving his worth. Yesterday I was talking to a farmers wife that commercially breeds chickens for hatching eggs (we're talking thousands upon thousands here) and she was telling me that as the age of the chickens increase they increase the number of cockerels in the pen to maintain the right level of fertility. Really interesting but it also raised a question for me and that's the fact that we don't often look at the complete life cycle of chickens we buy, these were kept indoors but the hatching eggs that they lay and subsequent chickens could have been for free ranged meat birds. Does that still make them free ranged?

I still have a few more broody hens so I'm tempted to buy some hatching eggs off the internet of a different breed - what's your favourite chicken breed? I'm tempted to go for Light Sussex as I used to have these when I used to hatch some as a teenager.

Chicken Colditiz

Last week when I went on my days pruning the customer we were working for had a rather extreme chicken coop, he called it Guantanamo Bay but with all the wire it reminded me of a chicken colditiz castle.

Chicken Colditiz...

He resorted to these measures after the fox kept taking his chickens and then crapping on the roof of one of the coops, just to give him the finger as he left!

The pen is made out of Heras fencing, with chicken wire dug into the ground all the way round and then an added barrier at the top facing outwards to stop Mr Fox climbing in.

A pretty extreme chicken pen to erect, but I'm sure we all feel like building something like this when we have animals attacked by predators. Hopefully his will keep his birds safe but it does make me think I should increase the security on mine!

What's the most extreme pen you've ever built to keep predators at bay?

Chicken Weeding

I'm a firm believer in everything on our homestead has to earn it's keep. 

That even goes for the chicks, although they're too small to lay any eggs or be really productive but I can get them doing something - weeding!

The chicks and mum needed a bigger home

 They needed moving out of their ark, but with the predators around here they still needed to be contained so I thought I'd build them a temporary pen in the veg garden. That way they can eat down (and muck) a veg plot and save me some work.

The plot on the end has gotten a little over grown!

The pen didn't take long to put up as I got given some fence panels a couple of years ago and they're great for making something like this. I built a little coop for them to sleep in last year that's perfect for the size they are at the moment.

building a makeshift pen out of some panels I was given

Happy in their new place

Doesn't even look too bad in the veg garden

Anyone else using "animal weeders" in a controlled way?