Tag Archives: birds

Brooder set up review

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The chickens and turkeys turned two months old over the weekend. They are doing really well. Today, I’m going back to review our brooder set up and how we got from day-old birds to here.

We decided to brood in the house, and I would definitely do that again. Having the birds close made it easy to check on them frequently and manage their food, water and temperature.

The brooders

We built two large plywood boxes. Each box was 4 feet wide by 4 feet long by 2 feet high (a sheet and a half of plywood). We used 2x2s to reinforce each vertical corner and screwed the plywood to the 2x2s. The bottom of the box is nailed on.

This is my little chick testing out the box before we attached the base. Thanks to Matt’s Dad for the mask.

And here she is describing the decorations she added to the boxes. Many of the drawings are instructional. The birds received directions about eating ticks and learning the alphabet. Cigo got repeated lessons that birds are boring (and he absorbed those lessons so, so well).

We filled each box with wood shavings bought at the feed mill and added our waterers and food dishes (more details on food and water below).

At three weeks, we cleaned out the brooders and changed the shavings. The boxes were pretty stinky by that point, so to keep things pleasant in the house, a cleanout was needed.

For warmth in the brooder we used some heat lamps we found in the barn. Growing up, I remember my Dad using basic lightbulbs. I bought a couple of utility lights and gave it a try, but I couldn’t get the temperature warm enough, so I went with the proper heat lamps.

I set the lamps up on chains hanging from the ceiling. I started with the lights right at the top of the box. This allowed me to achieve the recommended temperatures for the chicks (33ºC) and poults (35ºC).

As the birds grew and I was able to decrease the temperature, I raised the lights higher above the brooders. At the beginning, I had thermometers in both boxes to keep an eye on the temperature. The birds ended up kicking the thermometers around, and I found they weren’t necessary. I watched the birds and adjusted the lights accordingly. If everyone was huddled along the edge of the brooder away from the light, I figured the temperature was too high. If they were hanging out comfortably in the middle, I left the light alone.

Regardless I raised the lights a few inches every week, as the birds needed less and less warmth (about 2ºC per week). At week 5, I began turning the lamps off during the day, and then I turned them off entirely to give the birds a few days to acclimatize before they went outside at week 6.

The temperature in the house was still significantly warmer than outside, so the move was still an adjustment, but the birds didn’t seem to have any issues (more on this below).

Food and water

For the turkeys I started with a basic bowl for their food. An information sheet I got from the feed mill recommended spreading a cloth over the shavings, I believe to help with traction. They also recommended sprinkling some feed on the cloth, so we did all of that.

The chicks got an official chick feeder that was left in the barn by past owners. I’ve never used a chick feeder before, and it worked very well. They were able to access their food easily, they didn’t spill a lot, and the food stayed relatively clean. As the chicks grew, they kicked more and more shavings into the feeder. I think raising it up on a board once they’re bigger would be helpful.

The turkeys graduated from their bowl (and the cloth covering) very quickly. Our turkeys are the Large White breed, and they are living up to their name. They eat constantly and grow so quickly. They stepped in their bowl, sat in it, pooped in it, tipped it over, emptied it.

I moved to another bowl that was in a little box to help stabilize it, and it only worked for a few days before they were too big again. I ended up with a small rectangular cement plant pot. It held more food and was a bit heavier so they couldn’t tip it as easily.

When I first put it in the brooder, I set it on a block of wood. The turkeys were so tall I thought it would help them to have their food a bit higher. A turkey climbed up to stand on the food dish, and he could see right over to the top of the box. It seemed like I’d given him an escape ladder. So the food dish went back down in the shavings. I’d like to find a better feeder solution if we do turkeys again.

At week 4, the chicks transitioned to a 50-50 mix of starter and grower food. I also started to mix the turkeys’ food. By week 6, everyone was fully eating grower. (The chicks will transition to a layer feed around week 18.)

In total, 10 chicks ate 20 pounds of starter. Four turkeys ate 40 pounds (!) of starter (they are monsters).

The waterers worked pretty well. When we first put the birds in the brooders, we dipped each of their beaks in the water. After this, they had no trouble finding the water themselves.

As the birds grew, I put the waterers up on wooden blocks so they could reach a bit easier and hopefully kick fewer shavings into the water.

The chicks came to like to perch on top of their waterer. They didn’t use it as an escape ladder (though they easily could have), so the perching was not a problem.

The problem was the turkeys (again) who knocked their waterer over repeatedly. Wet shavings are not a good thing. Propping the waterer in the corner helped a bit, but they still managed to tip it from there.

Transition to the coop

When we first ordered the birds, I asked the staff at the feed mill when they could move outside. The answer was, “It depends.” Not helpful. Now that I’ve gone through one cycle, I understand that answer a little better. The forums at www.backyardchickens.com have also been helpful.

Birds can be outside without supplemental heat when they are fully feathered and the temperature is around 10-15ºC consistently day and night.

Our spring was a bit slow here this year, so getting to that consistent temperature took awhile. The birds ended up staying inside for nearly 6 weeks. By the end, that felt long.

Things were pretty stinky and dusty. Between poop, feather fluff and sawdust, I felt like I was living in a barn. The photo below shows the amount of dust on the heat lamp when I finally took everything down. This dust went everywhere.

Everyone was big enough to hop out of the brooders. The turkeys have no coordination, so they were always surprised when it happened. The chicks had more control, so they mostly perched on the edge of the box or tight roped along the top. A couple did fall into the turkey box, which they turkeys did not appreciate. Fortunately, I was always nearby to rescue.

Then the turkeys started to fight. That was my sign they were over-crowded and had outgrown the brooder. On a warm Friday morning, I very quickly transferred some cantankerous turkeys to the run outside. Then I spent the day debating whether they could stay out. The weekend forecast was quite cold. What was worse? Fighting in the house? Or freezing in the barn?

We decided to keep them outside, and they did just fine. For the first weekend, we kept them locked in the barn where it was warmer, but when it finally warmed up the next week, they were thrilled to be out in the run.

The chickens joined them in the coop at officially 6 weeks and everyone transitioned without issue.

Final thoughts

Overall, our brooder set up worked very well. Everyone was safe and comfortable for a long time. I liked having day-olds. I feel like it’s a fun way to for everyone to get used to each other. Brooding the birds in the house was easy, albeit smelly and dusty by the end.

If we do birds again, I might try to move them outside around 3 or 4 weeks. Getting them a bit later in the spring would hopefully mean more favourable temperatures. I would also like to work on the wiring in the barn so we can have some heat out there safely if we need to.

So far, the birds have been a really fun experience. We’re definitely learning as we go, but the preparation we put into the coop and the brooders have worked out well. Two months in, I feel like we’re off to a good start.

Coop reveal complete with birds

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The birds moved into the coop about a week ago, and I am proud to say this project is done.

Today I’m going to share all the finishing touches that went into completing this space.

When we last visited the inside, the walls and doors were done, but the pens were not fully secure. I added mesh, boards, whatever worked around the perimeter of the coop along the ceiling. This will hopefully ensure that no climbing crawling predators can sneak over the top of a wall. It was fiddly work to make everything fit.

I also added a motion activated solar light on the back of the barn as an extra deterrent to anyone who comes creeping up through the field.

Then I needed to fit out the interior of the pens.

For the turkeys, this was simple: a feeder and a waterer. I found an old metal hopper feeder in the barn, so we washed it out, covered the top with mesh (to hopefully dissuade rodents) and hung it from the ceiling. It’s working very well for the turkeys. For their water, I went with a simple bucket. I built a little box to hold the bucket so the turkeys can’t tip it over (something they loved to do in the brooder). Right now the box is sitting on the floor, but I can attach it to the wall if I want to raise it up.

The chicken fit out took a little more work… and a relocation. The hens needed a few more things in their stall. Water and food, of course. But also nesting boxes and roosts. As I was planning the roosts, I realized everything wasn’t going to fit in the centre stall, which I had assigned to the chicks. But the end stall was a few inches bigger… just big enough for everything they needed. So they moved next door.

The nesting boxes are simple plastic bins that screw to the wall. They lift off the screws easily so I can dump out the straw or even rinse them out if I need to.

For the roost, I spent some time researching to figure out the best approach. Here’s what I found. Build your roost as the highest option in the pen. Chickens like to be high to sleep, so if your nesting boxes are the highest thing, that’s where they’ll sleep. Since I want them to sleep on the roost, I made sure the roosts were higher than the nesting boxes.

I also found that chickens like a sturdier perch. They are not songbirds who will wrap their toes around a branch (although watching them walk along the edge of the brooder box, I think they do pretty well). So I went with 2x4s laid flat for a nice wide perch.

The other topic was optimal spacing. The recommendation was 12 inches per bird. Since our order was for 15 birds, that meant 15 feet of roost. Our pens are 8 feet long, so this worked out easily to 2 roosts along one side of the pen.

A feature I added courtesy of my Dad is a poop board under the roosts. Roosts tend to be a messy area. Chickens poop in their sleep and sometimes even lay an egg. The board under the roosts will hopefully catch the mess and then I can easily scrape it off, rather than changing all of their bedding.

All of my research and planning complete, I went to work and built the roost. Along the way I also decreased our chicken order. The pen was starting to look a bit tight, and I was worried the birds would be too crowded. So I dropped our order to 9 birds. We ended up with 10, as the hatchery seems to have a practice of giving 1 extra chick. We have lots of room for everyone to be comfortable… and we’ll still have lots of eggs.

The roost turned out well… nice and sturdy. (From my attire, you can tell when I was working on this.)

Then I added a little ramp that we had from the old coop in case any birds needed help getting up. It’s on a hinge so we can easily lift it out of the way when we need to clean out the stall.

The final touch was, once again, feed and water. The chicks have another bucket in a box, just like the turkeys for their water. For their feeder, I went with a wall mounted version to save space. This was another souvenir from the old coop that happened to fit perfectly in the remaining wall space.

After the first week, I made a couple of adjustments to decrease the size of the opening where the food comes out, because the chicks were spilling a lot of food, but otherwise it seems to be working well.

Each flock also has water in the run with two large metal waterers that we had stashed in the barn. (Yes, that is 2 chicks standing on top of the waterer.)

Ellie made some signs for each pen. The turkeys live in Turkey Town. The centre stall is Where the Waddles (will) Live. The hens are The Cluckers.

The final detail came from my Mom who bought me a coop warming present of a happy red geranium. This hangs by the door on a chicken plant hanger that used to be on the side of the house. I kept it during the garage demo and have been saving it for exactly this spot.

Since the turkeys and chicks moved in everything has been working really well. They seem comfortable in their pens and in the runs. We lock them in every evening, and it’s an easy task to move through the run, herd them inside, drop their little doors and latch them shut.

In the morning we open the little doors and they pop right out flapping and stretching. They’re eating down the grass and weeds that had grown pretty high in the runs.

I opened the gate between the Waddles and the Cluckers runs, so the chickens have double outdoor space. I had wanted this option during the run construction, which is why I had our contractor add extra gates. I’m pleased that it’s working as I envisioned. It’s nice to give the chickens some extra space and this way the grass doesn’t get overgrown. Win-win.

As a whole, the coop is working as I planned. I’m so proud of this project. It was a big build for me. I had help along the way on demo with my cousins, clean up with our landscapers, fencing with our contractors, walls and more fencing with Matt’s Dad, which I’m very grateful for. But the design and most of the work is mine.

It took figuring and muscle and time and energy and skill. I had what it took and I made it happen. It’s a really good feeling to see the birds in there, chirping (no clucks or gobbles yet), scratching, eating, drinking, snoozing, flapping… birding as they’re supposed to.

Thanks so much for following along with this project and cheering me on throughout it.

I shared the final video updates of the coop construction on Instagram. Follow me at juliaon129acres. If you want to relive the whole construction process, check out the coop highlights (part 1, part 2, part 3).

The coop run is done

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When we last visited the coop, the interior was in good shape. As the weather warmed this spring, I shifted my attention back outside to finish the run. You may recall I had a contractor install fencing for three outdoor pens back in the fall. I was very glad to hire that job out. But there were still things for me to do.

In my quest to make the coop as secure as possible, I wanted to cover the top of the run so no hawks, possums or other predators can get in.

I still had chainlink left over from the pen construction, so I planned to stretch that over the top. I added top rails over each of the gates to attach the fencing to and then I started to lay out the roof.

I quickly discovered it was not a one-woman job. Attaching the roof to the barn or the existing fence while pulling it tight was not fun. So I called Matt’s Dad, and he came and helped.

We laid strips of fencing over the top of the runs, stapling it to the barn wall, attaching it to each vertical section and then wiring each strip to the one beside it. Unless a predator brings plyers I don’t think they’re getting in.

We also laid more mesh around the ground. This will hopefully stop anyone from digging in. All of the mesh is wired to the fence along the bottom and then buried in dirt.

I adjusted all of the gates to make sure they swung easily and latched securely. Between installing the roof and frost this winter, some of the posts had shifted slightly.

Then I blocked any little gaps around gates or corners that looked big enough for a creature to crawl through. This involved an old fence post and stepping stones as thresholds, metal posts, rocks, wood corner blocks… whatever worked.

I also cut little doors in the wall of the barn. This will allow the birds (and currently the cats) access to the runs. Hatches can swing down to close the doors.

(Cedar figured out how to unlock the little button that kept the door closed, so for now the cats are enjoying going outside whenever they want. I’m hoping the birds aren’t quite as dexterous.)

Then I built ramps to make it easy for everyone to get in and out. I expect the hens will be able to hop or flap, but a full grown turkey may not be so acrobatic.

And with that, the runs are done.

The birds are hopping and flapping in their brooders. While they’re not full grown, they are definitely growing.

It is time for them to move out. As soon as the temperatures are consistently warm (and they have all their feathers), they will be moving into the coop.

Yay!

It’s exciting to be so close to having birds in the barn, as I’ve dreamed of and been working towards for so long.

I’ve still been sharing video updates of the coop construction on Instagram. Follow me at juliaon129acres, and catch up on all the construction in the coop highlights (part 1, part 2, part 3).

The birds are here

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Two weeks ago, our family expanded by 14 fluffballs–and we’ve been having a lot of fun ever since.

After years of imagining, planning and working (I owe you an update on the coop), the birds arrived. We have 10 chicks and 4 turkeys. For breeds, we have 3 barred rocks (brown eggs), 2 azure blues (blue eggs) and 5 olives (green eggs). I had ordered three of each breed, but numbers apparently shifted at the hatchery. The turkeys are large white and wow are they living up to their name. They empty their food bowl every day and are growing so fast. With their little combs, they look like turkey-corns.

The brooders are set up in the house, so it’s easy to keep an eye on them and take care of them. Ellie and I built big plywood boxes, which have been working really well. I found some heat lamps in the barn, so I hung them from the ceiling and have been slowly raising them as the birds grow.

We didn’t put a lid on the boxes, but we may need to. Everyone is testing their wings and the turkeys have had some impressive vertical leaps.

Cigo is tolerating being a bird brother. He is interested in the birds–loud peeps attract his attention. But he’s not been a problem so far. We’re working on making the birds very boring.

The best part of it all is seeing how much Ellie likes the birds. The turkeys are her favourite. When she unloaded them from the hatchery box for the first time, they all crawled right into her lap. They’ve gotten a little more independent, but they’re still the ones she spends the most time with. (She is still very committed to these birds being dinner this fall.)

Everyone seems to be healthy and growing. Their adult feathers are coming in and they’re approaching the awkward dinosaur stage. My plan is to keep them inside for another few weeks hopefully until temperatures warm up enough for them to go to the coop.

This little flock is a long-held dream. I am so happy we’re making this happen finally.

The coop has more doors

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In my last coop update, I had found one door (a sentimental memory that my Dad made for our childhood coop) and resigned myself to making two more.

Making the doors turned out to be a much bigger deal in my mind than in real life. They went so smoothly. I’m still really proud of them.

I was able to use some of the leftover siding. I ripped a few pieces in half on my Dad’s table saw for the outer frame and then used my Kreg jig to drill pocket holes and screwed them together. The jig is a super easy way to do joinery, though it took me a minute to remember how to use it (it’s been awhile).

I reinforced all the corners for extra stability. Then I stapled mesh on the top section so that we can peek in at the birds.

My Mom raided my Dad’s hardware stash for hinges. She also found hooks and eyes to keep the doors closed. I found handles in my hardware stash.

The finishing touch was a fun one. Above my Dad’s door (which is a bit short), I made a sign that says “stoop your head.” This is another sentimental memory. On the last night of our Ireland trip, we went to a restaurant called Stoop Your Head. Inside the restaurant was a low doorway with a sign above. I copied the sign and hung it above my Dad’s door. Seeing the sign in our coop is a fun–and helpful–reminder.

We are so close to finishing the coop. We are so close to birds! In fact, they’re on order. ETA April 22!

To see the doors in action, check out the videos I’ve been sharing on Instagram. Follow me at juliaon129acres, and catch up on all the construction in the coop highlights (part 1 and part 2).

The coop has walls

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There has been major progress in the coop. All the walls are in place.

I actually built the two interior partition walls on the last day before Christmas holidays (when I finished the floor). Then, when I returned to construction in January, I put up the cladding and built the rest of the walls.

Of course, there’s more to the story. Let me back up a bit. As always, I have details.

Reminder, the coop is going to have three pens. Each partition sits on the new floor I built and lines up with posts I put in. (This post shows the plans for the coop.)

The interior walls between the pens were easy. Studs 16 inches on centre. Wood cladding on the bottom half (including some fancy tongue and groove salvaged from the old coop). Mesh on the top.

At one end, I decided I could use the exterior wall of the barn as the wall for the coop. At the other end, I needed to build a new wall to achieve my room-within-a-room plan. This wall gave me a bit of trouble.

Like the other walls, I built it flat on the floor and then lifted it into place. Given that this wall was going to be against part of the stone of the barn, I thought it would be helpful to put the cladding on before it was installed. I stapled my mesh, then I decided to use a piece of metal roofing from the old coop to cover the other half.

As I lifted it onto the platform, I realized I’d missed a crucial step. I forgot to square up the wall before putting on my cladding. When I tried to slide the wall into place, sure enough, it didn’t go. The wall was a parallelogram. The opening was a rectangle.

I took off all the cladding then Matt’s Dad (who came to help me out) and I lifted it out, laid it back down on the floor and tried to square it up. We couldn’t line it up, so we put it back in the opening, where it straightened itself out perfectly. Only problem, the cladding wasn’t attached, and I had very limited space up against the stone of the barn. After borrowing my Dad’s right angle drill and testing my limits in stretching and contortion, I managed to get the metal back on.

The front walls of the coop were much more straightforward. I had been holding off building these ones, as I wanted to have my doors so I knew what size openings to build. I had a plan to use old screen doors, but it turned out secondhand screen doors are very expensive. Once I accepted that I was going to be building doors, I realized I could make the openings any size I wanted.

The first wall I built was the middle one because I was able to find one door. This is a very special door because my Dad built it for my childhood coop. The coop is now a storage shed in my Mom’s backyard, and she, knowing I was looking for doors, suggested I could take the one off the old coop.

I love having a door from our family’s coop built by my Dad as part of our coop. My Dad set me on this path of birds when I was younger than Ellie. I remember him building the coop in my grandfather’s garage. Now I’m building our own coop and continuing something that he really enjoyed.

Like the partition walls, the front wall has wood cladding on the bottom and mesh on the top, then the doorway is centred.

The last two front walls, Matt’s Dad and I knocked out in one very productive day. I built these doorways a bit taller to accommodate the doors that I planned to make.

Having the walls in place is another major milestone. It actually looks like a coop!

As I mentioned in my last update, I’ve been documenting the coop construction on video and sharing on Instagram. If you want to see more about the coop, follow me at juliaon129acres, and catch up on all the videos in the coop highlights (part 1 and part 2).

Plans for our new coop

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Last week I shared how we demolished our old coop. This week I’m sharing the plans for our new coop.

I’ve had 11 years to think about this project. We could have had birds long before now. But I’ve waited because I want to have a safe, permanent home for them. (And I avoid going to the feed mill in the spring when birds are in-stock.) I really want to do this coop right. So I’ve thought (and thought) about what the birds will need and also what we need.

First step is to move the coop into the barn. We have this huge beautiful barn that’s not being used. So I am going to devote part of it to birds.

The part that I’m going to use is what I call the lean-to, where the old coop joined the barn. (The part covered in paper house wrap below.)

The lean-to is a more recent addition to the barn. It has 5 horse stalls, our tractor garage and large open area at one end. It extends about 18 feet off the back and runs the whole length of the barn and then continues out behind the silo.

I am planning to use the large open area at the west end and divide it into three stalls or pens. I’m thinking the stalls will likely end up around 50 square feet. This would give us plenty of space for as many birds as we can handle right now. (Chickens each need about 4 square feet of coop space.)

Where the old coop was will become attached, covered runs.

The plywood patched and overhung area to the left of the paper-covered hole (seen in the top photo) will be a new door. A window used to be behind the plywood, but the foundation under the window collapsed years ago. We had our mason change it into a doorway, anticipating that I’d want easy access to birds from this side of the barn. (I’ve been planning this for a long time.)

My plan is for the stalls to be fully enclosed–walls and ceiling. Animals can get into the barn. I want to do everything I can to protect our birds. The bottom half of the walls will be wood (I have some handy tongue and groove boards I saved from the old coop). Solid wood means the birds in adjacent pens can’t peck at each other through a fence, and it also gives me a spot to mount nesting boxes, roosts, feeders or water buckets.

The upper half of the walls and the ceilings will be mesh. I want the pens to be high enough that I can walk in without stooping.

I’m considering making part of the lower walls between each pen a gate, so that I can expand the pens if I want to. For example in the winter, when chickens are in the freezer, and ducks could use more space.

The three pens give us space for laying hens, ducks and geese, and meat chickens. Or perhaps a few turkeys. We likely will not start with all of these at once, but it gives us the option to expand (or shrink) if we want.

For the runs, there will be three separate outdoor areas side by side. These will have mesh roofs and buried mesh around the perimeter to try to ensure that, again, the birds are as protected as possible.

The first step is to clear the layers of manure off the old coop foundation. Matt’s Dad rightly pointed out that it shouldn’t go to waste. So I will be working on that as soon as things thaw.

Then, we will be able to get rid of the old foundation and regrade this side of the barn. The ground is higher than we need it to be.

After that, we’ll be rebuilding: the wall, the door, the stalls, the runs. Electrical, plumbing, fencing.

This is a big project for us, and I’ll likely be working on it for the whole year. My goal is to be ready for birds in spring 2024.

What would be your coop must-have? Any feedback on my plans? Any questions? (It’s really hard to explain what’s in my brain clearly in a blog post.) Do you have a project that you’ve delayed because you want to do it right?

One year

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It’s been a year.

For awhile, that was all I was going to write here. I didn’t know what to say. I’m still not sure what to say. I have many stories. Many thoughts. All of them feel small. Inadequate. How do you write about a person? All of them. How they feel, how they sound, what they do, how they act.

I struggle that what I share of Matt with Ellie will be small. She will not know him for who he is–for all he is. But I need her to know him, even if it’s just a small part. So I keep telling stories.

When we moved to the farm, herons became my talisman. It was always special when I spotted one at the pond or flying overhead. That’s one of the reasons I chose a picture of a heron to hang over my nightstand in our bedroom.

Audubon print of a heron in my bedroom

Herons took on even greater significance during Matt’s illness.

I saw herons more than ever.

Heron wading in the pond

Wading at the pond, flying over the fields, in the east field (where I had never seen one before), out hiking with my friends. Twice, we even saw a heron flying over the highway as we were traveling to the hospital. Surrounded by concrete, asphalt and traffic, no water in sight, we saw herons.

These sightings gave me a lot of comfort.

Heron wading in the pond

On Saturday afternoon, as Ellie played joyously in the leaves outside, I saw a heron flying overhead. It glided down and landed in the pond. And I knew Matt was with us.

It has been a year. But I have never felt alone. It has been a year, but we fill each day with love and joy.

Green eggs in Illinois

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When I first learned there were chickens that laid green eggs, I immediately made up my mind that one day I would have some. Of course, our chickens are still awhile away. So for now, I’m continuing to live vicariously through Sarah in Illinois and her expanding flock–which now includes a green-egg-laying hen.

In my last post I introduced my new chickens and mentioned that while I was expecting to get three Leghorns, I got one surprise Easter Egger. If you remember I was waiting patiently to find out what color egg it was going to lay.

I should have emphasized to Steve how excited I was and how closely I was watching every day to see what was laid. Because one night I got home late and Steve collected the eggs for me. He said nothing about them. The next morning I was opening the carton and this is what I saw.

I texted him at work and asked why he didn’t tell me that we there was a green egg! His reply was, “oh, there was?” He clearly was not as excited as I was.

A couple days later I gathered my second green egg!

The green eggs are appearing a little more regularly now and you can really see how green they are when sitting next to the pure white Leghorn eggs.

I just can’t get over how beautiful the selection of eggs is.

Nature really does have the most beautiful palette.

That is a beautiful bowl of eggs, Sarah. What a treat to have that in your own backyard.

New chickens (again) in Illinois

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If you follow Sarah in Illinois on Instagram, you might have seen that some new feathered ladies joined her flock. Sarah seems to be on a quest to have all the chickens–or all the eggs in every colour possible. Read on to meet her new hens.

Back in June, my cousin Emma sent me a message with a picture of her new chicks.

In the message she said that 3 of them were Leghorns if I wanted them. I had mentioned to her over the last several months that I wanted a few Leghorns, but I didn’t want to raise them from chicks. Since she was raising some for herself she said adding a couple Leghorns wasn’t a big deal.

She sent me updates occasionally.

And two weeks ago I went to pick them up.

The 45 minute drive home was either very stressful or very relaxing because one of them laid an egg in the dog crate!

I had everything planned out for the integration into the flock. I divided the run so that the chickens could see and smell each other but not hurt each other.

Then I planned to put them in the coop inside the dog crate every evening.

Well I didn’t make the divider in the run tall enough because Blitz ran towards the chickens and scared one over the divider.

I could have immediately grabbed it and put it back in the separate section, but I decided to wait to see how the chickens would react. So what did they do? All seven chickens ran into the coop and hid from this new smaller chicken.

I had a couple days vacation, so I made a point to go out several times a day to make sure that none of the chickens was injured.

The first night the new chickens roosted up on the dog crate opposite the roost.

After a few days they all started roosting together.

I can’t say that after two weeks all of the chickens are “friends,” but honestly the integration has gone really smoothly. I do occasionally see one chicken picking on another, but the new chickens are very fast so they spend a lot of time playing hide and seek.

And it turns out, one of the chickens is not a Leghorn. It looks like it might be an Easter Egger! Instead of yellow legs like Leghorns have:

It has grayish-green legs.

What does this mean? Well, to me absolutely nothing. I just think of it as a bonus. Easter Eggers can actually lay almost any color egg depending on what they have been bred with, so for me it is like waiting for Christmas morning to see what happens. The two Leghorns have been laying tiny little pure white eggs. As they get older the eggs will get bigger.

Two years ago I thought I would like to raise chickens and started with 4. I now have 10 and I can’t say that I’m done. I’m thinking next I will add Araucana–they lay blue eggs! 😉

Chickens seem to work out very well for you, Sarah. I’m glad to hear the birds integrated so smoothly. It’s great to see how much you enjoy your flock and their eggs. I admit, I love the idea of having Araucanas someday, so I say go for it!