Why Humans Suck, Reason #2856

So we've been having a pretty relentless heat wave, and the chickens are suffering. That means in addition to making giant chicken popsicles of raw fruits and vegetables for them to peck at, we go out about every two hours during the worst part of the day to hose off their surroundings--and them. They hate being sprinkled, but it cools them off and keeps them alive.

The kid and I were cleaning out the garage this week and ran across an old yard sprinkler, and thought the chickens could get some use out of it.

So out in the chicken yard it went!

OF COURSE it's a weird thing--this is US, remember.

It's a flamingo that energetically flaps its 'wings' when the water goes through it, spraying water everywhere. It used to be a summer toy for the kid, but if it helps cool off the chickens and keeps them alive, they should be grateful...right?

WRONG.

They ALL immediately high-tailed it over to the extreme far side of the yard, just as far away from Pink Flailing Terror Bird as they could get. In this case, they hunkered down next to the feed shed, which has always protected them and loved them and given them food. No amount of us telling them that this was just another version of Club Flamingo, or calling in sweet, soothing tones could induce them to go near the thing.

YAH THANKS WE HATE IT.

Notice the pointed, searing stare of blame they are laying squarely on ME. They know who is responsible for this, it's just another stupid, sucky human thing the stupid, sucky humans do.

When chickens are really POed at you they will turn their backs on you and pretend you don't exist, effectively shunning you. This technique works for your return after a two week vacation (because to chickens, you gone = you DEAD and gone and they will be righteously angry at you for scaring them like that), when you offend them in some way...or when you place chicken-frightening, weirdo spasmodic objects in their yard.
It's an all-purpose, group punishment that works for anything, really. Chickens HATE change and will chastise you accordingly.

Even Chonk disapproves, and voices her displeasure at her Brahma dignity being so ruffled LOUDLY.

Meanwhile, I can't really say that I blame them. Look at the smug little grin on that smart-ass.

After a while The Pink Terror toppled over--no doubt felled by the flock's group-think mind-kill powers--and we shut the hose off. Only after it stopped flailing did they approach to begrudgingly play in the mud puddle it made.
After all, a mud puddle on a hot day IS a wonderful thing, after all...

Excuse me, I gotta go make some Chicken Apology Popsicles now.

Chickam 10th Anniversary Chicks!

We ended up with a total of 8 chicks--5 are bantam Cochins from eggs I bought off ebay, 3 are from our own flock's eggs.

First, some pictures of Club Flamingo in full swing!

The marbles in the water dish are to keep the chicks from drowning, after about a week it's safe to remove the marbles. The water dispenser has electrolyte solution in it for the first few days, hatching is VERY stressful and the electrolyte solution is great for giving the chicks a bit of a boost. We feed medicated chick starter since our area has tons of wild birds and things like coccidiosis are a real problem.  The octopus gives the kids something to cuddle against since we have no broody mama this year. The flamingo lamp wasn't *quite* providing enough heat so we put in a second lamp, the base is weighted with rocks so the thing doesn't fall over and burn my house down.

Some of the chicks may get a food color spot on their chest to make it easier to tell them apart at this stage, the food color is harmless and will go as the chicks molt their chick fluff all over my house over the next few weeks.

Now for the chicks, in order of hatch from oldest to youngest with their egg number.

#37, Nora, a chick from our flock. I suspect that Cam is daddy and Pie or Rambo is mama.

#23, Fireball, a bantam Cochin

#21, Bobo, a bantam Cochin

 Bobo is wearing his superhero mask, please do not reveal his secret identity.

#24, Luna, a bantam Cochin. Luna is the chick that had pipped at the wrong (small) end of her egg and got stuck.  I had to assist her a bit by *carefully* removing the membrane that had dried and stuck to her face, then partially unzipping her shell about 1/3 of the way before returning the egg to the incubator and letting her finish up the rest.

#26, Pongo, a chick from our flock. I suspect that Milton our banty roo is dad, Popcorn or Tater Tot *might* be mom. Pongo's face isn't lopsided, just the dark markings on her beak are.

#19, Gumdrop, a bantam Cochin who is actually pretty big for a banty.

 

#25, Pickle, a tiny bantam Cochin

And finally #29, Zuul, a chick from our flock. Groot, our large Dark India Cornish roo might be dad, mom might be one of our Brahma mix girls--I suspect Cluckadorkle.

Zuul just had to poop during picture time...

All the chicks are doing great, there are still unhatched eggs in the incubator that I suspect are quitters. We'll run the incubator for another day, then remove any unhatched eggs and shut everything down.

Club Flamingo Is Open!

The incubator was getting crowded so we moved the two oldest chicks to the brooder box. More chicks will follow later as they get sturdy enough to get around. The stuffed octopus gives the chicks something to cuddle against, for the first time in years we have no broody hens right now! Club Flamingo's first nighters Nora (the large red/brown chick) and Fireball (dark gray bantam Cochin):

You can see Nora's face fluffies starting to come in.

First to hatch Nora, a chick from our flock. Dad is likely Cam, mom could be Pie, Rambo or Strychnine:

Nora NOT amused.

Fireball, a dark grey bantam Cochin.

It tickles me no end to have a short, round bantam Cochin named 'Fireball'.

More pics of the other 3 chicks hatched, and the three still to hatch, as they join the gang at Club Flamingo!

Club Flamingo Gets A Makeover!

So the other day I drug out and dusted off all of our Chickam supplies.

When I got to the flamingo lamp, our go-to traditional baby chick keeper-warmer and pseudomama...well, let's just say that the last 38 or so years have not been kind to it.

 Yeah...YIKES. My favorite part is the burn-yer-house-down spliced wiring.

It's current state is entirely my fault. I originally bought this delightfully gaudy thing around 1980, and it sat proudly on my desk for many years as a desk lamp. It's attributed to George Kovacs as its maker, and I recall when I bought it at Lamps Plus or someplace similar, it was part of a collection of other animal-head deck lamps. Well, one day the ceramic flamingo head shade suffered a catastrophic incident and got broken into a dozen pieces.

Heartbreaking.  Oh well, that's why epoxy exists...Sadly, the gap in the shade where the initial impact powdered the ceramic proved too annoying to work with while writing, and the flamingo lamp was banished to the garage, where it became a servicable lamp for my work bench. Eventually the plastic cover on the gooseneck also crumbled and my husband replaced it with a length of heavy-duty plastic tubing he had handy. Not pretty, but servicable.

And there it stayed until 1998 or so, when we ran our first baby chick hatch without a broody hen for a mama--and I realized that the battered ol' flamingo lamp, with it's adjustable gooseneck and who-cares-if-it-gets-pooped-on style, was perfect for keeping baby chicks warm.  Not to mention it was also perfectly hilarious.

Once we created Chickam and started webcasting the hatch and subsequent 8 weeks of the chick's lives, Chickam fans found the flamingo lamp entertaining and dubbed the chick box 'Club Flamingo'.

It wasn't long before Chickam fans started creating fanart...

So yeah--the flamingo lamp was lookin' beat, I knew it was time to revamp it!

And presto--a few days later (and a heaping helping of cussing when the new wiring proved to be just the teensiest bit too thick to willing go through the metal gooseneck and had to brute-forced into cooperating), Club Flamingo lives again!

Sadly, nothing could be done about the various chips and cracks in the flamingo head, but overall the flamingo lamp just looks heaps better! Not to mention not such a scary fire hazard...

Lockdown Day!

And yeah, even though with the ReptiPro incubator you don't actually do a lockdown (where you stop turning the eggs and do not open the incubator again until the hatch is done) on the eggs, day 18 of incubation will forever be 'lockdown day' to me.  With the ReptiPro you simply stop turning the eggs, but do open the incubator 5 times a day to let fresh air in.  So today was lockdown day for Lot A, the first group of eggs.  Lot B will join them tomorrow, meanwhile I'm still turning Lot B today.

We ended up with 13 embryos, 11 of our eggs and only 2 of the Dark Cornish that made it to this point.  To tell the truth, given the age and condition of the rest of the mail-order Dark Cornish eggs, if either of the chicks makes it and is healthy, it'll be a miracle.

But here they are!  Lot A has been moved down to the bottom of the incubator, where the humidity will be raised to 65%.  Banty eggs in front since I suspect those little stinkers will hatch first, probably even early.

Maybe even today... 
No pips or peeping yet, but some of the eggs are rocking when I talk to them!

My little homemade water weasel performed just fine and is still doing it's job...

As for the brooder box, it's been raining so non-soggy boxes were not to be found--but my husband found some fun raw materials for me to construct it out of...

It's a movie advertising display!

We don't want the glossy surface on the inside with the chicks, so here's the end product:

The brooder box will get the finishing touches of hay, heat lamp, food/water dishes, etc. today.  But we're ready!

I'm actually ahead of the banty eggs hatching FOR ONCE, HA!

I will update on the Chickam Twitter page when the hatch begins, and you can watch it on our UStream channel, here--if you tune in and see eggs, that means the hatch has begun!

Thar Be Chickens Here! Again!

So we went to a local appliance store and scored some boxes...

 Which I then spent about 6 hours whacking up and assembling into a brooder box that takes up half the freakin' house, or seems to.

Just in time, because we have two little bantams that jumped the gun and hatched yesterday, even though the hatch isn't *officially* supposed to start until tomorrow!

We got them settled today into the brooder box, along with the traditional flamingo lamp for warmth and one of the kid's stuffed animals to cuddle with as a psuedomom.   The black thing on the left is the webcam.  Needless to say, the cam will have to relocate to safer, higher ground once the chicks get stronger and start to climb around.

Ninja is the little blond one, Jimmy is the black and creme colored one.  You can watch them on our Chickam UStream channel, here:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008

They are both nice and strong, although Jimmy was an assisted hatch after having become shrink-wrapped in the membrane of her egg from pipping too early and not *really* being ready to hatch yet.

Ninja, meanwhile, entertained herself by sitting on Jimmy's head.

Club Flamingo Lives!

Well, with the hatch a week away the other day we went brooder box hunting and found some behind a local appliance store.  The owner was kind enough to let us take some, so we came away with two dishwasher boxes and one for a huge oven/range.

First to lay them out and make sure they'll fit in the my dining room, which will be given over to baby chicks for the next 8 weeks for our annual Chickam webcast starting March 29th if all goes well.

Then it was just a matter of cutting cardboard and using lots of hot glue and hardware cloth to whack together one giant brooder box!

 

Black plastic trash bags go under the box to help protect my floor.  When the hatch begins, the webcam will be pointed at the chicks in the incubator, then be moved to the brooder box after the hatch is over and will broadcast the baby chick's antics 24/7 for the next 8 weeks. 

The hardware cloth window is something I starting incorporating into my brooder boxes years ago--it helps keep the chicks from getting bored by allowing them to see out (they can watch TV from there!) and also makes for calmer, tamer birds who grow up used to the movement and noise humans make.  I DID learn the hard way not to make the window quite at ground level--if I make it that low the chicks kick the shavings out and I get to spend 8 weeks constantly sweeping them up.



The flamingo lamp is a running joke with Chickam viewers--it used to be my desk lamp long ago (I have a weakness for tacky crap like that) until one day the ceramic flamingo head shade got broken and had to be glued.  It was no good as a desk lamp anymore, but perfect as a baby chick heat source!  People started calling the brooder box Club Flamingo, and the name stuck.

The food and water containers will go on top of the bricks on the right hand side of the box--the bricks serve to raise the food and water up out of the shavings, keeping them cleaner.  And anything that makes for having to muck out the containers less, I'm all for!

We always start with a quail waterer base (the food and water bases screw onto a standard mason jar)--the quail base has a smaller trough so baby chicks cannot drown in their water--if I used a standard chicken waterer base I'd have to keep a handful of marbles in the water trough to keep the chicks from drowning during their first week or so of life.  With the quail base, after about two weeks I just switch bases to the chicken waterer and it's all good.

Because we also have a family dog, Dusty, who comes into the house at night and in bad weather, the brooder box will also get a nice, sturdy top made of wire on a wooden frame--we also gate off the dining room while Dusty is inside with a big wire gate that she cannot jump over.  You can't ask an animal not to follow their instincts, so we just eliminate any opportunities for tragedies.

I like to keep a broody hen in reserve just in case--last year having a broody saved our second hatch when our ReptiPro incubator broke during the final week of incubation.  To encourage egg laying and broodiness, the other day I took some plastic Easter eggs and made some fake eggs to leave in the nest boxes.

I just picked out four of the most obnoxiously colored ones, filled them with rice for weight and glued them shut.  We'll leave these in place and hopefully a hen or two will go over to The Dark Side and go broody.  We use fake eggs rather than real ones so that we don't end up with a partially developed, dead chick if a hen abandons her nest partway through.

Since we're having a staggered hatch and will be hatching a second group of chicks one week after the first hatch, we'll partition off a section of the brooder box for the first week or so after the second group hatches--once they are strong, we'll remove the partition and all of the little stinkers can run together.

So today marks the final Chickam webcast of the adult flock outside for a while--next Saturday should be the hatch!  While the chicks should hatch starting around 7AM on the 29th, Mother Nature has her own schedule and sometimes brings the chicks a bit early or late.  I'd suggest checking the Chickam UStream channel, here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008 every few hours starting on Thursday--if you tune in and we are live and the picture is showing eggs, that means the hatch has begun!