Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Catching Up

Obviously, I am the worst chicken blogger EVER. I will try to do a quick rundown on how things have been going with my chickens.

At this moment, I have a total of 24 chickens. 23 hens and one rooster. Sadly, I lost my polish rooster, as well as my Legbar rooster. Houdini, the French Black Copper Marans is still alive and kicking and king of the castle. He is truly about the best rooster a girl could ask for.

We had a scary incident in which I lost Indy, the Cream Legbar, and nearly lost Shirley (the mix) and Carrie (the Speckled Sussex). They got into some moldy food and got botulism. They were unable to walk for a good week. I put them in the time out coop, and made sure they could reach food and water, while still laying on their sides. Indy died, but the other two eventually recovered and are perfectly healthy.

In the late summer, Shirley went broody, and I let her hatch a batch of fbcm babies. I sold them when they were a couple months old to an old friend of mine. The lady who bought Sue, the FBCM rooster from me, ended up having me hatch a batch for her as well.

Right around New Years, one of my friends from high school was posting on facebook. They had a Barred Rock chicken adopt them. Nobody knew where it came from. He doesn't keep chickens, so he wasn't set up to deal with it. His daughter fell in love, and named it Phil. I agreed to take Phil in. Turns out, Phil is a young pullet. I'm pretty sure she began laying a couple weeks ago.

Here is Phil just after she got out of quarantine, next to Godzilla, the RIR.

Phil still doesn't really perch on the perch unless I stick her up there.