Halloween Chickens!

So, my husband brought home this cute little ensemble, saying, "Now we can dress up the dog!"

Looks like a chicken outfit to me, I told him.

So, in the grand tradition of pet owners everywhere, I give you...Halloween chickens!

First up is Sesame, one of the Smokey Pearl chicks we hatched this spring. Both have grown into lovely, striking hens with loads of personality. A very fun, friendly breed who have to be RIGHT at your elbow and involved in whatever you are doing, who also have a natural-born chaotic streak and lay their eggs in really weird places--plant pots, inside the feeder, in the middle of the coop, etc.

Sesame wasn't really into it at first...

But then she clicked in! Ain't she cute?

By the way, notice her eyes.  Both of the Smokey Pearls have a lovely, exotic swirly-marbled look to their eyes! Each eye on each hen is different from the other.

The fuzzy orange monster thing wasn't well received by any of the chickens, who didn't like the weight and tended to duck out of it.

 

Next up for dignity removal is Chonk, our light Brahma Head Hen.

Most of the pics I got of the chickens wearing this thing looked like this.

Here, Chonk promises a long, drawn-out death for me sometime tonight. Sounds fair.

This is is Bobbie, our buff Brahma Head Rooster.

About the best thing you can say about Bobbie wearing this is that at least it distracts from all the feather molting going on.

Ah! Here we go. An old pro at stylishly wearing silly costumes, this is Milton, our bantam Belgian d'Uccle/Cochin mix roo. Milton used to be Head Roo until Bobbie grew up and realized he outmassed him by several pounds.

As long as we're embarrassing roos, this is Bacon, a tiny Belgian Danvers rooster.

He didn't dig it.

Arson, a lovely light Brahma/silver pencilled Something-Or-Other mix that we hatched from an egg we got from a neighbor this year. Arson is very sweet, and SO pretty!

It's just impossible to get a bad picture of her.

She looks like she should be in a Halloween ad.

She was the only one to successfully pull off the goofy orange monster head.

 Lastly is Darling, a little gray mottled Belgian d'Uccle hen, daughter of Milton, seen above.

Darling tolerated this for a bare few seconds. After this, one of my neighbors behnd us starting launching fireworks into the air and picture time was OVER as all the chickens said 'SCREW THIS' and went to hide out in the coop.

As Long As There Is Food Involved...

...chickens don't give a hang about being embarassed. 

As always on the day after Halloween, the chickens get the Jack-o-Lanterns. But why just give it to them, when you can take advantage of the banties being so small, and stuff them inside the pumpkin for picture time?

 

 Marble goes first, and good-naturedly complies while Chonk and Bobbie watch...

Tingle, standing on the ground to the left, makes a maximum effort stretch to reach the goodies.

But immediately jumps up for a more direct approach. She is one of about ten hens molting right now, and looks quite the train wreck.

Skillet's turn in the gnashing pumpkin o' terror...

Bacon the roo, however, doesn't find the humans funny at ALL, and scoots right out.

After this we remove the glow-in-the-dark plastic teeth and move it to the ground. The others aren't shy, and join right in. Kentucky on top, in front. Left to right is Pumpkin, Marshmallow the whiteish hen towards the back, Henry the golden-laced Cochin in the far background. Oxide the frizzle is next, with Basil, Bonesaw and Gumdrop making up the rest of the hens.

Skillet resumes her spot on top. Bobbie the buff Brahma roo in front, he is only 7 months old, but is growing by leaps and bounds. Chonk the light Brahma hen is beside him, she is an adult. The whiteish roo on the back right is Milton the d'Uccle/Cochin mix bantam, our Head Roo.

Kentucky boots Skillet to hang upside down like a bat and nibble. Pie (Rambo's daughter) the buff Brahma mix on the far right, is the only one who has finished her molt; she looks grand with her foot feathers and dignified beard.

Gumdrop joins Kentucky and they snarf down pumpkin together. Everyone else is more sensible and goes directly in from the front.

 The entire chicken yard is awash in molted feathers, and it's only going to get worse in the next two weeks or so since most of them are just getting going on the molt thing.

And our nighttime temps are already dipping into the low 20's. Hurry up and grow new feathers, ladies!

Chickam 2020 Is On!

Crappy scary human viruses shouldn't be allowed to spoil all your fun, or totally disrupt your traditions!

Today we set 36 eggs in our ReptiPro incubator. Incubation should take 21 days, and our planned hatch date is April 11th, the day before Easter...although like always, I'm sure the bantam eggs will hatch in 20 days instead of 21, like normal chickens. So I'd say start checking in on day 19 of incubation--April 9th--for updates.

Eight of the eggs were a gift from our kind neighbors down the street who have some white Leghorns and lovely, fluffy buff Brahmas...but I'm afraid they refrigerated the eggs, which likely killed the embryos.  It broke my heart, when they gave us the egg carton and it was cold. But what the heck, we'll try them anyway--so eggs numbered 1 through 8 are the neighbor's eggs. The other thing is that most of the eggs they gave us are large, white eggs--and buff Brahmas lay light brown/tan eggs.
We'll just see what we get, it'll be an adventure!

The rest of the eggs are from our flock, and in all sizes, shapes and colors--a mix of standard size and bantam. For daddys, we have Milton, our bantam Cochin/Belgian d'Uccle mix roo, Bacon, our tiny bantam roo whom I believe is a Quail D'Anvers (we got him at Tractor Supply last year so he's a bit of a mystery) and Rafiki (Rafe), our Russian Orloff roo that we got at a local poultry swap last year. None of our rooboys are big, even Rafe is on the small side.

 So pictured below are our 36 starters--I'll candle the eggs at 10 days in (March 31st) and remove any duds.

Other local folks around here that I contacted had no eggs to spare, as people are panic-buying eggs. Even when I offered to trade my eggs for theirs, they had none.
Another issue may be difficulty in getting used major appliance boxes for me to knock together a brooder box with, as I usually do. Since non-essential businesses here in Nevada have been ordered to close, the local appliance store we usually get boxes from may be closed for the duration. We may have to get creative...

Damned virus anyway, interfering with my chicken plans--!

As incubation progresses, I'll update our Chickam Twitter account: Chickam Twitter
and our Chickam YouTube channel--inactive until the hatch actually starts. If you tune in to our YouTube channel and see eggs, the hatch has begun!: Chickam YouTube Webcast

Right now we only have a couple of broody hens, all are bantams that we hatched last year so their mama quality is unknown. Hopefully some of the bigger girls will step up sometime in the next three weeks and we'll have a mama for the chicks--but usually we have too many chicks for a banty hen to successfully mother.

But dang it--whatever happens, there will be baby chicks here in three weeks! Hang in there, Chickam fans, baby chick fun is on it's way...

How Chickens Do Halloween

The other day the kid and I went out and wormed the chickens...a good time had by all, as always. In two weeks we get to do it again, as you must to catch any hatching worm eggs and break the cycle. Some of the implements of chickeny terror:

Broad-spectrum paste wormer, which kills everything, both mixed with water to be given orally and applied straight to that little bare spot in each wing pit and masssaged in, so:

 Chickens do not appreciate a wing pit massage and resist this procedure. Especially proud pretty bois like Milton, here.

Dog toenail cutter to trim any claws/spurs that need it and Adams Flea and Tick mist, sprayed liberally deep into the No Man's Land of chicken butts (where angels fear to tread, sister) and fluffy thighs and feet to take care of any mites. Since the kid holds the bird while I do all these things to the chickens, I am also free of worms and/or mites since I never fail to get that stuff on me. Not pictured: the goodie dish holding bits of diced ham, a few pieces given to each bird at the completion of worming along with a sincere apology...and boy, you'd better make it sound good, they can tell the difference.

But what the hey, it was also a good time to get a few pictures of pissy chickens!

Because most of the time when you try to photograph chickens while doing the semi-annual worming, they know what's coming and get all snotty and squirmy, so you wind up with pics of thrashing poultry like this one of Tater Tot:

It was also a good time to update on Blossom, my half-Silkie who this year decided to start shedding toes like a maple tree in Fall. We figured it was frostbite from last winter and her toes waited until months later to actually fall off.
Blossom *had* ten toes--Silkies have 5 toes on each foot instead of 4 like normal chickens. Blossom being a little weirdo from the get-go, she had two of her toes fused together at hatch, the two rear-facing toes of her left foot. I expected for her to have problems with *those* toes, if she ever did have foot troubles...

Nope. Weirdo mutant fused toes are just fine, as is ONE other toe. Blossom has shed all of the rest of her toe tips, though.
Even worst, she did this while staying in the house recovering from another injury...all of a sudden I started finding the ends of her toes, claw and all, lying in the middle of the living room.
FREAKY.
To make things even MORE gruesome, I never found two of her toes. Either the dog ate them or they are lying in wait somewhere in my house for me to have forgotten all about it and then pop up someday.
ICK. Zombie Chicken.

Speaking of zombies...
Happily, some of the other chickens posed nicely for head shots. Although I didn't realize until later that my daughter's zombie bunny Tshirt had lined up perfectly...

 Cam, my big Americaunas/Giant Cochin mix Head Rooster doin' the zombie bunny thing...

Several others got in on it.

 Pie, an Americaunas/Buff Brahma mix hen

 Tater Tot again, (once she calmed down) a bantam Cochin/MilleFleur Belgian d'Uccle mix hen

...and Rambo, the Head Hen, a 7 year old buff Brahma hen who is WAY too dignified to wear zombie bunny ears and is NOT amused by all this tomfoolery.

No. 22 In The Series, 'Things You Do NOT Want To Touch'

Apparantly, 'Fall' to our chickens sounds a klaxon that screams, MOLT NOW! MOLT NOW! MOLT NOW!

The chicken yard is awash in feathers, and while most of the birds are --eh, kinda molting--while others refuse to...

Some take things way too far.

Tonight I went out to pass out some goodies and nearly screamed at Cluckadorkle--normally a fairly fluffy girl.

Yeah, right now she's a beige pincushion.

Then there's Pele, who molts heavily every single year.

She's working on her usual: molting out white feathers and growing in lavender ones.

When she realized I was taking pictures she ran and hid behind Milton.

Then there's nearly 10 year old Beauty, whom I swear has NEVER molted. Her feathers wouldn't dare fall out.

Although she looks pretty irritated to have everyone's molted feathers stuck to her feet like the rest of the chickens do...