October 2, 2010: Ellie's First Egg!!!

October 2, 2010

Saturday, 4:05pm

"HEAR YE, HEAR YE:  ELLIE HAS LAID HER FIRST EGG!!!!”  “ Ellie had been showing renewed interest in the nesting boxes again, jumping in, jumping out, digging around.  Yesterday and today, she displayed the submissive position and squatted and spread her wings, letting me pet her for a long time.  This was indeed no small feat because she is one of the more skittish of the birds, so I wondered if she had already laid or knew she was about to.  I thought, “Well, maybe she is copy-catting Raven and Goldie who also do this?  But all the signs were there.  This morning, I went out and she was fussing and fussing and pacing through the cage, jumping up onto the nesting box platform and back down again, going in the box, scratching around, etc.  She was scratching so hard, it sounded like a trapped cat and I thought, “Wow, is she in pain?  Is she egg-bound and can’t lay the egg?”  Worry-wart, worry-wart, worry-wart. 

I was so tired from not sleeping the night before and had a migraine headache and yet, here I was out in the 60 degree weather, sitting in a chair outside the coop, falling asleep, while I waited for her to lay her first egg.  I finally figured out I was being ridiculous and went back inside.  Around noon, I felt so bad, I went and laid down to take a nap.  Through the open window, I could still hear her fussing and fussing.  At 3pm, when I finally got up, headache still on board, I noticed she was not fussing and was flying around the coop, high point, to high point.  I thought, “Hmm, this is the not the image of a bird who is carrying an egg around inside her waiting to be laid, so let me go check things out.”  I peeked in all the boxes and all looked normal at first glance, all of the fake eggs I had put back in the nests to show them where to lay again were still there.  Uh, but wait a minute, I had removed the fake egg from the upper left box because they kept knocking it out since I hadn’t put a lip on the front yet, but there was an egg in there.  I reached in and picked it up, it looked almost identical in size and shape to the fake eggs, but there it was....Ellie’s first egg, a light creamy color, not white, not brown, but cream.  “Good girl Ellie, Good girl!” I cooed and bent to try to pet her again to congratulate her on her accomplishment, but she just skittered away no longer willing to let me touch her. 

This week also marked the date of two eggs in one day, one from Goldie and one from Raven.  Neighbors John and Renee had stopped by to give me some cat items and a bread machine and three very large brown speckly eggs from their chickens.  Sadly, they have moved off my street and to a 6 acre mini-farm.  I suppose now I am the only crazy chicken person now on the street and will have to travel farther to share antidotes with them, but exciting for them to have more space to do all they want to do.    On the same day they stopped by, (Sept 30^th), the two eggs were laid.  They went out to check out the coop and to remark on how big the chickens had gotten. 

So two eggs today as well and maybe even three before it’s all over.  I had one from Raven early this morning before 9am and now one from Ellie and maybe, just maybe one from Goldie today as well.  Three more chickens to go, who will lay next?  On my facebook account, I may start a betting pool to see who will lay next.  LOL  I know it WON’T be Chanel since she is so much younger, so it’s between Hawkeye and Farrah.  I have a feeling it will be Hawkeye, but still not sure.  Time will tell, neither have shown even a remote interest in the boxes, except to eat the wood shavings!!!

Post for 09/23/10 First Day of Fall and an Autumn Harvest Moon

September 23, 2010

96 degrees today, the first day of Fall.  Go figure!  Gorgeous Autumn Harvest Moon last night, won’t see another for twenty years. 

The chickens have been lounging in the shade most of the day, panting.  Yes, they pant, like dogs, to cool themselves off.  I went out a little while ago to see if there were any eggs and there were no eggs and no Raven.  I looked in all the boxes, bent upside down and peered under the nesting area and coop, went out of the run and walked around the back....no Raven.  A momentary fear passed through me – could something have gotten her?  Could someone had let her out?  Then it occurred to me, there was one more place to look.  In trying to break Goldie from being broody and the others from attacking her, I had rearranged all the nesting boxes and tried to make the run more of a romper room for them, a distraction.....   Since several love to fly up onto my plastic lawn chair when I bring it in there, I decided to bring in a plastic wheelbarrow, slightly different than the conventional wheel barrow in that it is more like a large trashcan with wheels on the bottom and a handle on the top to pull it around.  I had turned it upside down so the bantams could run under it to escape from the larger birds who couldn’t fit under it and also so the birds could fly to the top and hang out.  However, the larger birds have been afraid of it and have not used it as a perch, whereas the bantams have gone underneath and explored a bit.  I swear bantams are smarter. 

Anyway, I lifted it up and there was Raven, laying in the very back, having hollowed out a little nest for herself.  She has laid two eggs in Goldie’s bottom box, 1 egg in the small upper box and 3 in the large upper box.  I suppose she is trying to find a place where her egg will not disappear, either that or she is like Goldie-locks in the fable and trying out new beds.....

I have a meeting to go to and will check later to see if an egg has arrived.  Hopefully, it will not be a temptation for any of the other birds who peck at anything on the ground.  Only Goldie should be able to get under there, maybe Ellie too, but not the other birds,  but they could perhaps reach their head under.

Got home at about 4:45pm and went out to check on Raven.  She was out and walking around so I figured there was an egg somewhere and indeed it was in a little nest she had made underneath the wheel barrow.  Egg number seven.  Wonder where egg number eight will be laid!!!!

Post for 09/22/10

September 22, 2010

Nothing very eventful lately, except that Raven laid her fifth egg yesterday and this morning, laid a sixth egg, so the first time she has laid back to back versus skipping a day.  Goldie did the same when she started laying, laid a bit sporadically and then laid daily.  I wonder if Raven will now lay daily and then go broody like Goldie?  I hope not because I don’t want her to get picked on too.  Goldie has never recovered her former spot in the pecking order and is now subject to pecking from the larger hens and doesn’t get her choice of the food as well.  So strange, the behavior of these birds.  Do they attack based on perceived weakness or do they attack on non-conformity (i.e. Goldie stopped sleeping in the coop and slept on the nest) ?  Hard to tell. 

I was hoping by now that the standards would start laying, but maybe they were not as old as he told me they were.  Ellie was showing interest in the nests for awhile but hasn’t lately.  The only one showing interest is Farrah and her interest consists of eating the wood shavings, nothing more.  Farrah has become a bit of a bully, perhaps making up for when she was the lowest girl on the totem pole.  The other day, I found a different type of weed in the yard, a small shrub with black colored berries on it, not a polk or a blackberry plant, but something else.  I put it in the run and they happily stripped it of all it’s berries both black and green. 

Also noticed that something may have tried to dig it’s way into the run.  In the front of the run, there was a small indentation where something had obviously been digging.  Must not have been a very large animal or perhaps it was scared away mid-process because it didn’t get very far.  Still, not a nice thought thinking something is trying to get them.  I’ll have to start a daily walk around the run to look for weak spots and digging activity.  Bob said most animals are not smart enough to start digging at the wire and then keeping going backwards to figure out where the wire ends, however, this animal started right where the wire ended, so I’m not sure about his theory...I’ll have to hope for the best.  I sat up last night thinking of ways to electrify all around the run....ugh, not something I really want to do.  Brian asked me last night, “You really do love them don’t you?”  I said, “Yes, they are my pets now.  I never thought I would like chickens so much, but they are fascinating creatures.”  I think he is starting to understand that they have and are helping me through a rough spot in my life and that their existence on this earth has a merit of it’s own. 

You know, it is interesting that when Goldie first started laying, Raven was very aware of it and gave Goldie moral support, but since Raven has started laying, it’s as if Goldie is oblivious to it and has not appeared to offer the same concern.  Raven is a nervous Nellie too, she frets constantly, talks constantly and runs the length of the fencing and makes a circular run underneath the nesting area, then hops on a cinderblock, then onto the wooden platform, then onto a nesting box, then into the upper nesting box and will repeat the circuit several times.  I don’t know if this means she has superior intelligence (I’d like to think so since she has always been my favorite), or if she is just mental.  The only other one that does anything even remotely similar is Ellie who will chase squirrels down the length of the run.

Post for 09/19/10

September 19, 2010

Yesterday was fairly uneventful, no eggs.  The day before, Goldie, in the midst of being picked on, flew up to my shoulder and perched there as if to say, “Help!  Protect Me!!!”  When I saw that she had a red blood mark on her face from being pecked, I had felt so sorry for her and I had picked her up and babied her, holding her in the crook of my arm against my chest and stroking her and talking to her with the other hand.  She murmured softly as if she was telling me all of her woes.  It has been strange since they’ve been picking on her, she chatters a lot as if she is fussing at them and this seems to irritate Hawkeye who chases her and tries to peck her each time she makes the sounds. 

I did put a large plastic wheel barrow type apparatus in the coop upside down to give Goldie a place to run under and hide that the large birds could not fit under.  All of the birds were afraid of it, except I noticed it didn’t take long for the two bantams to make use of it as a hide out.  I began to wonder if they were going to lay eggs under it and each time I lifted it up to check, all of the birds scattered.

This morning when I went out to give them some leftover bread and some dried oatmeal and some grass, I couldn’t find Raven.  She was not in the bottom or top small nesting boxes, so I looked to the large upper box on the left side and there she was.  She had nestled herself a large indent in the shavings and was sitting there.  I tried to give her a morsel of bread and she opened her beak threateningly and squawked at me.  “Alright, alright” I said.  Funny, she was the bird closest to me, but since laying, is not as docile.  Goldie, when she began laying, became MORE docile.  Later, Raven had jumped down so I went to check things out.  No egg.  I swear, this is my knee rehab, walking in and out a million times a day to check on them.  Just a little while ago, I went out again.  Raven was out of the nest and had left me a gift, egg number 4 to add to the bunch.  Makes a total of 21 so far between Goldie and Raven.  Goldie started laying every other day for about six days, then stopped for an entire week, then started laying daily before becoming broody.  She is no longer broody Thank God.  Didn’t last that long.  Perhaps the constant changes in the nesting boxes helped things.  Raven, on the other hand, has laid an egg every OTHER day since starting.  I wonder if she will ramp up and lay daily or if this will be her schedule and whether she too will go broody once she has laid an approximate number of eggs?  In the wild, they lay a clutch of about 12 eggs, then stop, go broody and sit on the eggs until they hatch.  Then they raise their chicks for about six weeks or until they can fend for themselves fairly well.  It would seem like a nice way to give them an egg-laying break so their bodies can recover without being completely depleted.  Factory hens are bred to lay daily, are kept in cages all their lives, where they cannot even spread their wings, and stand in their own excrement.  The lights are on all the time to force them to lay more since their laying extends when there are more daylight hours.  This was nature’s design for hens, longer daylight for having chicks in the Spring initially, but not daylight 24/7 all year long!  When the hens stop laying eggs, they are killed.  No golden twilight Grandma years for them.

Since I don’t know for sure what breeds Raven and Goldie are, it’s difficult to read up on what their characteristics might be.  I think Goldie is a Buff Japanese or a Nankin and Raven might be some type of Black Rosecomb since she has the large wrinkly white ears, or they could both be mutts...hard to say.  I am very fond of my mutts though!!!!  Ellie has been going into the boxes and sitting sometimes so I think she will be next.  It will be interesting to have a larger egg, although I have read that Lakenvelders, being one of the smaller standard breeds (about 4lbs for hens), lay smaller eggs.  I wonder if Hawkeye and Chanel will lay huge eggs then, because they are pretty large?

Post for 09/17/10

September 17, 2010

Well, I didn’t wake up to the sound of the other chickens attacking Goldie Locks this morning at least.  She did sleep in the nest again overnight even though I had rearranged all the boxes to make them look like a high rise apartment complex.  The new setup sufficiently confused the girls long enough that they stopped picking on Goldie locks and were more interested in checking out the new digs.  However, I had an uneasy feeling about the new set up myself; it looked, well, too exposed.  If I were a chicken, I’d want a little more privacy to hide my eggs, with all the nest boxes on top of each other and facing outward, well it was open and the standard hens were picking at the shavings and nosing their way into everything.  I was afraid they would have too easy access to an egg if one was laid and afraid they might peck it. 

Eventually Goldie went back to brooding in the same box and all of the standards were up there in her face.  Bob had told me that a hen goes into a kind of a trance when broody and sitting on the nest and she is at her most vulnerable.  I had seen the trance.  The others seemed to take it as a sign they could mess with or peck at her and unlike her usual feisty self; she didn’t do much about it.  Therefore this morning when I went out, I thought I should make some changes.  The birds were all gathered around Goldie again and Raven seemed to want to lay an egg because she was going in and out of the boxes and making a big ruckus when the other hens would get near the box as if she was claiming it as her own.  They pretty much ignored her, as did Goldie.  I then decided on a new tactic, went in and got the fifth large box that was in the garage and filled it with wood shavings.  I set the boxes up in a series of angles and stacks so that two large boxes and one small box were on the bottom.  The entrance to the small box was made narrow so only the small hens could get into it and it once again provided privacy.  I stacked a small nest box on top of it and a large one next to it, both turned inward facing each other and not outward, so more privacy.  In addition, the fifth box now acted as a sort of platform for the birds to jump on to in order to access the upper boxes.  Before, with the boxes all facing outward stacked on top of one another, the birds were not inclined to fly up into them because they really didn’t have much of a perch outside of them.  This seemed like a neat, new set up and reminded me of the new “fancy” apartment buildings that yuppies like to occupy.  :-)  Myself included...

By that time, it was getting too hot and too muggy and Brian’s Dad had come over for lunch, so I came back inside.  Afterward, had to run several errands and didn’t get back home until about 4pm.  I went out to check on things and amazingly, Raven had not chosen the old box that she and Goldie had been fighting over and that she had laid her first two eggs in, she had chosen the new higher box that lay on top of Goldie’s box and in it lay her third, perfectly formed white egg, unmolested by any of the others.  It still amazes me that such a small bird can lay such a large egg each time I see a new one.

In addition, I noticed that all the boxes had little nesting circles carved out in the shavings so someone had been in all of them trying them out.  Not sure who though.  Brian’s Dad brought over an empty egg carton as well, having gone through the last eggs we gave him, so as soon as things pick up, we’ll supply him with some more. 

I went out and brought the chickens some leftovers from the fridge and a huge handful of weeds from the garden and they all seemed perfectly content.  Such is the wonderful cycle of nature that we now have built in composters, they compost our leftovers and nature’s leftovers and turn them into food for us and output even more compost for the garden which will in turn thank them by providing more food for them.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Post for 09/16/2010

September 16^th, 2010

I was woken up this morning by a loud melee in the coop, the price of sleeping with the window open on a Fall night.  I sat up to figure out what on earth was going on and watched as Ellie, Farrah and Hawkeye chased Goldie locks around whaling on her.  She was flying to the perches trying to get away from them and they would fly after her and peck her some more, especially Ellie.  What the hell???!!!!  Goldie had become the dominant one so how in the world were they all attacking her?  I threw on some shorts and ran out there.  It was obvious everyone in the run was upset, but why?  I looked around and couldn’t figure it out.  These birds had turned into a passel of jealous, fighting teenage girls overnight.  The only thing I can think of is that perhaps since Goldie is broody and hasn’t been sleeping in the coop with the others at night that they have now disowned her, or maybe she went after Ellie if Ellie got too close to the nesting boxes, or maybe it is rampant hormones since they are all getting close to the point of laying.  Ellie, who had not necessarily been very aggressive before, is now an instigator, even charging and pecking at me when I went into the run.  I scratched her chest and petted her on the back and then picked her up to make her settle down some and let her know I am still the boss of this coop!  I ended up petting them all to calm them down some.  Very odd behavior.  A chicken’s life...never a dull moment.

Post for 09/15/10 - Raven pushes Goldie in the nest

September 15^th, 2010

Sleep never arriveth and I woke up exhausted and weary.  However, the mystery is solved!  Late this morning, as Goldie sat in her nest box...on nothing.....Raven got ancy and started clucking and pacing back and forth, jumping up and down on to the ledge where all of the nest boxes are located.  She finally tip toed her way in past Goldie’s raised hackles, probably wondering if Goldie was going to peck her or not.  Then the funniest thing happened.  Goldie was sitting diagonally, taking up the whole box.  Raven inched her way in and then began circling, scratching at the floor and clucking and putting her head underneath Goldie, alternately here, alternately there, her head would poke up underneath Goldie’s wing, then she’d look like she was almost on top of Goldie.  Goldie wouldn’t budge and stood her brooding ground.  However, little by little, Raven physically pushed Goldie from a diagonal position to a vertical position, pushing her to the opposite side of the box so that Raven could nestle in as well.  Now the two of them, one Gold, one Black lay packed in like sardines, side by side, two little Bantam sisters, giving each other moral support for the task that lay ahead.  At one point, I intervened and picked Goldie up and lifted her out of the box.  This seemed to upset Raven and she jumped down and started her fretting all over again, running every which way inside the run.  Eventually, I walked away because it looked like Raven was looking for a “secret” place to lay her egg.  Goldie jumped back up into the box, Raven jumped in behind her and I went in out of the heat to await the results.

 A little while later, I peeked out to see Raven jumping down but Goldie still in the box.  When I got out there, Goldie was sitting in the middle of the box, all puffed out.  On a hunch, I lifted her up to find her sitting on Raven’s second white egg.  I suppose if I had taken all of Goldie’s eggs away, Raven was going to produce some for her to sit on anyway.  The egg is amazingly large for such a small bantam chicken. 

This morning while I waited on the arrival of the second egg, I came in and made scrambled eggs with feta cheese, using three small bantam eggs and said a little “thank you” to Goldie who supplied them.  It never ceases to amaze me, this ability to produce eggs.  Now to Goldie’s 17 eggs, I can add 2 from Raven.  I wonder in a year’s time, how many eggs the girls will have produced???  Now, who will be next?  My bet is on Ellie.  All is good in the world.....