Chickam Chicks, Two Months Old!

Here is the first group of Chickam chicks, they turned two months old on July 10th. Picture time involved more aggrieved screaming (mostly from me begging them to calm down, shut up, for crying out loud) and struggling than previous years. When they did settle down, we got loads of judgemental looks. We paid through the nose to get all pullets, so no rooboys in this batch!

 

In the same order as their baby chick pics, here they are:

 

Supernova, a Mottled Java. A critically endangered breed, now I think I know why--Supernova is a total drama llama and screamed and ran every time we even thought about reaching into the brooder box. Once you caught her she calmed down...but criminy, catching her involved loads of chicken drama that I hope she grows out of once she realizes we aren't gonna eat her.

Derp.

 

Next is Mayhem, the first of a pair of Russian Orloffs, a threatened breed. Mayhem is the larger of the two, and right now has more barring on her back feathers and black feathers on either side of her comb. Both Mayhem and Havoc are growing in their face fluffies and are super cute. Mayhem was a VERY good girl during picture time, standing very still.

 I mean, very still, she literally stayed in whatever position we posed her in. 

Which of course led to getting her beak booped.

Havoc, Mayhem's sister and another Russian Orloff. Havoc had to be handfed a bit when we first brought her home, but has bounced back and is a healthy girl.

 

 

 

 Moose, a Salmon Faverolle, on the Watch list. Another fluffy-faced breed. I think Moose has at last worked out how all those toes go, and is very sweet big sister to the younger chicks.

 Moose being cute, and channeling her inner Blaziken, our little disabled chick from last year.

 

Rainbow, a blue English Orpington and one of THREE Orpington eating machines we got this year, God help us. Further, any time you see 'English' in a chicken breed name it strikes terror in your heart, because you know you're in for a truly gigantic chicken, they make 'em plus-sized over there. She's sweet and really goofy, and she and Doughnut are competing to see who can be the most friendly.

 

 

Zigzag, a Jubilee Orpington and while not as peopletropic as her Orpington sisters, a fun girl.

 ...who screamed her head off during picture time.

 But finally settled down.

Doughnut, a chocolate Orpington (and who of course we call 'Chocolate Doughnut'). She LOVES people and always ran over for pets while she was growing up.

 

Next is Enzyme, a Prairie Bluebell (can't wait till she comes into lay and gifts us with blue eggs). Enzyme wins Butthead of the Year, the only way to get pics of her was for the kid to hold her, otherwise she'd leap away and scream. Weird, because any other time Enzyme is a good, calm girl.

 Silly chicken.

 Lastly is Huntress, a Bielefelder. She decided she no longer needed her leg band at some point and removed it herself.

 

That's it for the older set of chicks! The little ones we hatched are 6 weeks old, and turn 8 weeks old on July 25th. Next week they start spending the daylight hours out in the small run to get used to being outdoors & the adult chickens.

It is just blazing hot right now, and not really optimal for introducing chicks to the flock--it's been 100+ degrees for the last week or so...I think I'm gonna adjust things and next spring move our hatch date up by two weeks. 

My, The Birds Are BIG This Year

 Saw something out in the front yard yesterday morning...

I kinda thought the bird seed block was disappearing awfully fast.

Crunch, crunch, crunch...

This little buck was a LOUD chewer, and stood there and stared at us like, 'Yeah, whatta ya gonna do about it?' 

Just before this he'd been stripping the little marble-sized apples off my tree, and helpfully removing the lower branches. By the time he was done, he left us four small chunks of the bird block on the ground.

Oh, and don't mind the screen door. One of our Howling Nevada Windstorms kinda destroyed it, we're on the hunt for a new, much sturdier one.

 

 

Year 17 of Chickam!

On top of the nine hatchery chicks we got in mid-May, here are the chick hatched from eggs from our flock!

 

In order of hatch, here they are--and lets just say that Mjolnir, our buff Orpington rooster, is WELL represented here:

Lemon Zest (mom: Luna), egg #6. We got so many blondies this year, we food color-spotted some of them. Lemon Zest got green head/chest spots, and is clean legged.

 Jay Jay (mom: Brick), egg #6. Green head/chest spots, feathered feet/shanks. 

Ishkabibble (mom: Bobo), egg # 4. Reddish-blond with a dark stripe down the back of her head and neck, heavily feathered feet & shanks. She was an assisted hatch , mostly I think due to the oblong shape of her egg--she couldn't rotate to unzip. Her name is fake Yiddish, and originally meant 'Don't worry', then changed to 'Should I worry?' then 'You should worry', and these days basically means, 'What, me worry?'.

 Mace Wungdu (mom: Brick), egg #7. Blond with feathers legs & feet, red head and neck spots. 

Yeti (mom: Takoyaki), egg # 2. The only non-blond in the hatch, she is grey with a tan face, clean legged. 

Sunshine (mom: Luna), egg #5. Blond, clean legged, with green spots on her wings ONLY.

Ick (mom: Arson), egg #13. Blond, clean legged, blue spots on her wings ONLY. Ick as another assisted hatch. She had twisted herself up in the inner membrane of the egg, then pooped all over herself and required a major cleaning job. She comes by her name honestly.

Sorry to say that Ick died suddenly a few days after this, a victim of the chicken owner's catch-all term, 'Failure To Thrive', which basically means 'Who knows What The Hell Happened?!' She never progressed--when the other chicks had full wing feathers, she had none, and in a single day went downhill and passed, despite handfeedings every 30 minutes.

Mother Nature does that, sometimes... 

 

That's it for this year! 

 

INCOMING!

LOCKDOWN DAY!

The 10 Chickam eggs got their final turn last night at 11PM, and today got moved to the bottom of the incubator in preparation for hatching. Larger eggs to the back, smaller eggs out in front.

 

This is the first hatch for our new Vevor incubator...although not really a fair test for it, for reasons I'll get into further down (because it's not Chickam without some kind of damn drama). But this is when we raise the humidity to 65% (from 50%), and open the incubator five times a day for about a minute, to get fresh air in there. No longer turning the eggs signals the chicks to rotate into hatching position, then they pip the aircell inside, THEN they'll pip.

One of the eggs, #4 (on left, in front), peeped at me when I moved it. That's Bobo's egg, she's a tiny black bantam Cochin. Our bantam eggs have always hatched early, sometimes as early as the first day of lockdown! I checked carefully both visually and by feel, and nobody's pipped yet.

We had a 4 hour power outage last night, a repeat of ANOTHER 4-5 hour outage at around day 7. Just like for the first one, I placed a hot water bottle in the incubator and was able to keep the temperature at an acceptable 99.7 to 100.5 degrees...but it shot the humidity ALL to shit, spiking it at 80-90% (eggs at that stage want 50%!). I had to keep opening the incubator every 15 minutes to vent it off.

Of the two big girls who had gone broody, Gretchen refused to sit on test eggs, but Sticky did--so we held her in reserve in case the power didn't come back on before our bedtime. Sticky being a 1 year old, zero-experience mom, I didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket (sorry) by giving them to her unless we had no other choice.

I'm not sure what effect those two events had on the hatching eggs, if any.  If the humidity is too high for too long, water fills the air cell...and when the chicks pip into it for air to breathe, they drown. There's no way for me to tell if water has filled the air cells, and nothing we can do about it, anyway. So we just cross our fingers and hope.

I'm not going to move the camera off the chicks until one of the eggs starts actually unzipping--eggs can pip up to 24 hours before they start to unzip. Watch or follow the Chickam account on BlueSky for updates:

Chickam on BlueSky

Watch the chicks now at the link below, eggs are due to hatch this Saturday & Sunday, May 31st and June 1st!

Chickam! 

There's a kid-friendly chat feature there (anyone NOT keeping things kid-friendly will get banned, no second chances), and as always you can submit a name for the chicks--one per person please--we'll pick names out of a hat as chicks hatch. 

Chickam Eggs For 2025 Candled!

For those who don't know, on the 10th day of incubation we candle (shine a bright light) through the eggs to check for embryos--and weed out any duds.

So far I'm cautiously optimistic that the 5 hour power outage we suffered on the 2nd day of incubation hasn't affected our eggs. We really won't know until hatch day, May 31st - June 1st. 

 

But here's what we have!

Out of 15 eggs set, we have 10 with embryos, another one is an unknown because of a shell to dark to definitively see through (it stays in anyway), and 4 duds that never developed (eggs from Boudica - gold laced Wyandotte, Arson - Light Brahma mix, and two that were possibly from Gretchen - lavender splash Orpington).

 

Here's the 2025 Chickam roster of 11 eggs, with mamas listed if we know them. Turns out camping in the coop for two days obsessively watching eggs fall out of hen asses paid off!

 

1 - Peanut (Americaunas, dark shell, so unsure if viable)

2 - Takoyaki (Giant Cochin/Americanas mix, hatched 2024)

4 -  Bobo (tiny black bantam Cochin'd'Uccle mix)

5, 6 - Luna (silver-gray bantam Cochin mix)

7, 8 - Brick (gray/lemon bantam Cochin mix)

9, 10 - Large White eggs - Apricot? (Danish Brown Leghorn)

13, 15 - Arson (Light Brahma mix)

 

We're disappointed that Gretchen and Sticky weren't mamas this year...but in exchange they have BOTH gone broody and stand a great chance of being recruited to be Chickam mom this year!

For dads we have: Mjolnir the buff Orpington, Eggroll the blue laced red Wyandotte, and Bacon, a bantam Belgian D'anvers. I'm betting Bacon will be daddy for the bantam hens--the big girls are too optimistic of a climb for him. And the big boys have trouble locating the...um...needed area to sucessfully 'daddy' for the bantam hens.

But they've surprised us in the past!

 

 Next stop is hatch day!

When we go live, you'll see the livestream to click on here:  Chickam 2025 Live Stream

 

 

Morehens Disease, But With Dignity...And Rationalization

Our Chickam eggs are in the incubator, and due to hatch May 31st, +/- a day or so. Tonight I'll candle the eggs to see how many embryos we have...or ANY, given the 5 hour power outage we had two days into incubation (because it just isn't Chickam without some kind of damned drama).

But to our suprise, one of our local feed stores got in a batch of heritage breeds...most of which are are on the Endangered List. Yes, some American chicken breeds are in danger of extinction, check out this dismayingly long list: Livestock Conservancy Conservation Priority List.

 

So I'm rationalizing today's chick purchase as 'doing our part to save the breed'.

It's not because they are SO cute and fluffy. It's not.

Well, okay, maybe.

 

Anyway, here's today's Morehens Disease outbreak. The feed store had helpful one-page info  sheets. These chicks hatched 5/14, so are 5 days old today (no names yet, I'll update when we name them). And yes, the prices wouldn't normally be this outrageous. Production breed chicks go for $2 to $4 each...but thanks to these being special breeds...and $10 a dozen egg prices driving the demand for backyard chickens...oh, well. Hopefully all these are hens.

 

I may run a livestream on these guys starting tomorrow (the 20th)...and as two of our larger breed hens have gone broody, they might get a mama starting on the 24th, the plan being to add our hatched chicks to the group under her on the 31st. I've never tried that before, so if things go south with her rejecting the new chicks, mama would get bounced back out to the barnyard.

 

Supernova, a drama llama Mottled Java, Critically Endangered:

 

Mayhem (the larger chick) and Havoc (the smaller one), Russian Orloffs, Threatented: We got two, because Orloffs are seriously awesome! The smaller one is struggling a bit, so is getting round the clock assistance in the form of icky Nutri-Drench drops (what the heck do I need with sleep, anyway?):

  

 

Moose, a Salmon Faverolle, Watch:

Favs are also famously awesome clowns--even more so than any other chicken. Check this out: Peaches Is Loud 

 

 

 

Favs are feather footed, fluffy headed...and have 5 toes. They look like an AI generated chicken with all those toes, and ours hasn't yet quite worked out what to do with hers.

And because we can't lay off the ridiculously fat, fluffy eating machine breeds, THREE Orpingtons.

Rainbow, a Blue English Orpington:

 

Zigzag, a Jubilee Orpington:

 

Doughnut, a Chocolate Orpington:

Hard to see in the pics, but if you look them up online, they honest to Pete are the color of milk chocolate!

That's it.

For now.

But next week the feed store is getting some Prairie Bluebells. 

Update, 5/26

...and I have pretty much zero self-control.

So today the kid and I picked up a gray Prairie Bluebell chick, her name is Enzyme! They lay blue eggs! This one yelled a LOT during picture time, and is giving me some quality stink eye. But she does have lovely gray eyes, BTW:

 

 And a Bielefelder chick, named Huntress. She came with the leg band--a good thing because she looks a lot like the Orloffs:

 

 

Both of these girls are a new breed to us, and neither is an endangered breed. I was after a brown Prairie Bluebell, because I love that Creole coloring--but all they had was gray. But the Bielefelder has that Creole coloring, so I got it after all!

 

See how I rationalized that second chick?