Backyard Chickens

Introducing new chickens is not my favorite thing about having chickens. They’re SO MEAN to each other. It’s so hard to watch! Unfortunately I’ve had several rounds of introducing new birds because I’ve also had several rounds of my new girls getting gotten by predators. Is the predator activity related to how well the new girls were introduced? I think maybe so.

For instance, the first three red girls I got refused to ever coop up in the hen house at night. They made a habit of roosting on a roosting bar that is down in the covered run. Generally, this would be okay. And it was. Until one of the nights after I returned home from Africa and was so jet lagged that I fell asleep at 7pm and failed to close up the run. That night a predator was able to get the girls on the roost in the run, but the girls in the hen house were safe.

After that I installed an automatic door that runs on a light sensor. The door automatically opens in the morning and closes at night. Shortly after I got the automatic door, I also got three new birds.

These birds were all different breeds. As it turned out, these three were younger than I am used to getting. I held them out separate for a couple of weeks to let them get older and bigger before I subjected them to the existing flock. Finally I did introduce them and one by one they got picked off by predators. As it turns out, introducing new birds and counting on them to deal with the automatic door was a recipe for disaster.

So. Now I have decided to add to the flock again. This time just two new birds. A good reliable big red bird, and a slightly smaller girl who I believe is a Leghorn.

I’m committed to making sure they get throughly integrated into the existing flock. Here’s a day by day rundown of what I’ve done.

Saturday: We started the day by putting the chicken fencing back up. I had taken it down and put it away because the owner of the land needed it mowed. So, first order of business was creating an enclosed space for the flock so that a) the new girls couldn’t get lost and b) the existing girls would HAVE to deal with the new girls and not just stay away from them.

Then I went and got the new girls and originally I put them within a baby play yard that I have just for this purpose. I gave them shade, food and water and went to a birthday dinner for a friend. After dinner my husband and I came back to the pasture and what did I find? Not a single bird had gone into the coop before the automatic door had closed. This is VERY unusual. The four existing birds are as reliable as the sunrise cooping up. But, there they were. Not in the coop. So, we went around scooping up all six birds and putting them in the coop. Part of the issue for the existing girls may have been that I cleaned and moved the coop before I went and picked up the new ones. This of course moved where the door was. But, I do move it every couple of weeks. It is a chicken tractor. They’re used to it moving. But, moving and new girls all at one time was too much evidently.

Sunday: Checked on them before church and they seemed to be fine. The automatic door had opened and peace reigned supreme although they weren’t really hanging out together. I went back about 8:15pm to oversee the cooping up process since it had gone so far off the rails the night before. The small white new girl has discovered that I will protect her from getting picked on by the existing girls, so I held her until right before the door closed, then I tossed her in. Once she was in she marched right up the ladder and tucked herself in with the existing birds. The new big red one stayed neslted in in the closed run. Safe enough, but I still want her to be up in the coop.

Monday: Didn’t see them until after work. The little white bird was all about visiting with me again. When it came time to coop up, the original four did fine. The new red one nestled in over by the baby gate that is still up rather than going into the coop at all. I went and got her and moved her into the coop. The white bird I had to toss into the run at the last moment while the automatic door is closing. She just doesn’t like to leave me. Once she was in the run she finally got up on the roosting bar. From the roosting bar she could see into the hen house and all of the sudden she took flight and flew right into the door. I heard momentary struggle, then peace. The big red bird just nestled in on the ground of the enclosed run, not even up on the roosting bar. That bird does not have the hang of going to bed like a regular chicken!

Tuesday: Once a month I have an informal dinner party and that was tonight. So, I didn’t make it out to the pasture until about an hour after it got dark. I found all of the exising girls cooped up properly, and the two new girls out of the run entirely trying to sleep just exposed in the pasture. I picked up the new girls and put them in the hen house. *sigh*

Wednesday: There were storms in the area. I went out to the pasture about 30 minutes before sunset and after a couple of minutes all four existing girls happened to be in the run, so I hit the close button on the door to close it early. Then I just caught the two new birds and put them in the henhouse. No idea how they may have cooped up or not if I had let it happen naturally, but I didn’t want to get caught in the rain. They’ll get it eventually, right?

Thursday: When I got to the pasture, the two new girls were already in the hen house. That was suprising. Before the door closed, all of the existing flock had gone into the covered run. Before I left, all six chickens were in the hen house safe and sound for the night. VICTORY! I don’t trust them yet though. I’ll keep watching them for a while yet.

Friday: Didn’t go until after I attended Friday night service. All of the existing hens and the new red one cooped up just fine. I had to put the white one in.

Saturday: Didn’t go until well after sundown so that I could see how they would do without the disruption of me being there. I got there and found the original four, plus the red one all cooped up. The little white one had wedged herself between the wheel and the wall of the run. She was absolutely stuck. So, I had to crawl in there…and under the henhouse where she was (ick), take off the wheel and let her free. She slept on the ground in the secure run that night.

Sunday: I went to the pasture at 10am to do a hive inspection. As I got out of my car I saw a large bird, probably a white tail hawk, flying away from the pasture. I thought to myself “I sure am glad I’m here to scare off that hawk!”. As it turns out, that hawk had already done his damage to my flock. The new red bird and my sweet little white buddy were gone. I didn’t find remains anywhere which points to an airborne predator.

So, I’m about to leave on family vacation. When I get back I am building a new chicken tractor and putting four new birds in it. I guess my existing four birds are freaks of nature that just have a sense about how to get away from predators and I can’t expect that from any other birds. I’ll create a nice safe place that the new girls will just be in all the time and I’ll move the tractor around, and the existing birds will use the existing coop like they do now.

I’ve lost so many birds to predators lately! I lost one to probably a hawk way back a long time ago and then I never lost another bird until my plymouth died of something a couple of months ago. I think then is when the problem started. I was puzzled as to how to get rid of her carcas and one of the suggestions I got was to just put her body out on the pasture and someone would come get it. That seemed the most logical to me, so that’s what I did.

Well, that may have been a mistake. It seems possible that some predator has now discovered the buffet on my pasture. After the plymouth died, that left me with four birds. Three reds and one plymouth. So I went out and got three more reds. They were doing fine and were even laying. They never got to the point where they would go up into the actual roosting area of my Omlet Eglu Coop. They stayed down in the run on a bar that I had installed.

Sometime after that, I traveled to Africa for a couple of weeks and had horrible jetlag when I got back. Of course it was late Spring so it was staying light later. One night I fell asleep without having gone out to close up the run. During that night, something got into the open run and ate all three of the newer red birds. I came out to the pasture the next morning to find three areas of feathers. One for each bird. At that point I had HAD it. Omlet had talked about an automatic door coming out for my coop last summer and it never happened, so I went on the search again.

This time I found that they were selling the automatic door in the UK. I didn’t care. I ordered it right away and paid the international shipping. Over Memorial Day weekend we worked to install it into the side of the run and it is GLORIOUS. It opens in the morning and closes at night.

Also over Memorial Day weekend I got three new birds. An Easter Egger, a Light Brahma and a Buff Orpington. They were pretty young and small so I kept them separated for two weeks. Then for a while I let them coop up in a separate structure but they free ranged together during the day.

Finally I put away the other structure and made them all live together in the Omlet coop. So the flock was getting used to the automatic door as well as new flock members all at the same time. One by one the young ones got picked off by various predators. The Easter Egger I think was a land based predator. The other two I think were airborne.

So I’ve gone through 6 chickens lost to predators. Then I’ve had several trips stacked up one after another so I’ve just left it those four for a while. I do think I’m going to go get more this weekend before. Probably just plain old red chickens. They are survivors. They have the smarts to coop up at night and to get away from preditors. I really wanted my flock to have some variety, but I can’t just keep buying birds that quickly.

That’s pretty much what’s going on with my flock right now. What’s up with you and yours?

We are having record breaking heat here in North Texas. Technically, a massive blob of high pressure called a “heat dome” has settled in over us and isn’t moving. We’ve broken records in place for almost 100 years within the last week.

High summer temperatures are hard on our girls. They can get heat stress just like you and I would if we were covered in feathers and forced to be outside all day. They can slow down or stop laying, or they can even die from it. The heat is no joke, so what can we do for our chickens?

Here are the things I have done with the girls this week. I’m not sure if I needed to do all of it, but I’m going to keep it up until at least we are down in the 90s.

Ice Water: When I was preparing to get chickens, I bought a five gallon poultry waterer. I did this thinking it would reduce the amount of work I would have to do on a daily basis. Then when the girls stopped laying, I did some research and found that chickens don’t drink as much water when the water is warm, and when they don’t drink enough water, they don’t make eggs.

So, I bought two one gallon waterers. Every day, I fill one of them about 3/4 full with water and put it upside down in the freezer. Then, the

next day I top it off with water and and put it out. It stays cooler at least most of the day so they drink more water and lay more eggs. Everyone is happy.

Electrolytes: On really hot days, I add this electrolyte and vitamin mixture to their water. It helps keep them hydrated. It seems to help.

Shade: My coop is an Omlet Eglu Cube. It is a chicken tractor that easily moves around the pasture. There is a row of trees on the west side of the pasture and I try to keep the coop parked in the shady area. If you don’t have trees around you can put a tarp on one side of your run to create some shade.

Ventilation: The Omlet Eglu Cube has a coop door, and also a run door. I have been allowing the girls to free range all day in the pasture, then when they come in at sunset, I close the run door behind them, but I leave the coop door open. I just think the more ventilation the better.

Frozen Food: Frozen melon chunks or freezing corn in water in muffin tins are two examples of ideas you’ll find online for treats you can give the chickens that they will love and that will cool them down.

No Scratch Grains: It is generally accepted that corn and scratch grains in general raise the body temperature of the chicken. Some people dispute this belief, and I don’t really understand the science behind it, but they don’t need scratch grains anyway, so it won’t hurt anything to leave them out of the girls diet during the summer on the off chance it does heat them up.

Baby Pool With Ice: This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve been doing for my chickens in the heat. I bought a baby pool and I’ve been filling it with ice every day. I realize that I have gone completely ’round the bend. The first day I bought 60 pounds of ice at the 7-11 across the street from my pasture. The next day I found an ice vending machine attached to a car wash nearby where a 16 pound bag is only $2.50. I also noticed that if you bring an ice chest, that same 16 pounds is $2.00. So, my ice expense that first day was $16.00, and now I have it down to $4.00. I am also freezing two large mixing bowls full of water each night. The larger chunks of ice last longer into the day. Yesterday on Sunday I was at the pasture about 5:00pm and the water in the pool was still quite cool even though there was no visible ice.

I think the pool filled with ice does a couple of things. For one thing, I think it creates somewhat of a small microclimate that is somewhat cooler than it would be without the ice pool. The other thing is that the chickens drink out of the pool. I think they drink more than they would if it weren’t there. The bees also like the ice pool, but that’s the subject of a completely different post.

With the exception of one day last week when I got only three eggs, I have gotten four eggs from four chickens every single day for a few

weeks now. This during a time when I’m told that many people who routinely sell eggs at farmer’s markets aren’t selling right now because their hens aren’t laying.

I realize that some of these tips aren’t scalable to a large flock and that it doesn’t make financial sense…but when you’re a new chicken person like me and you just want to do things as well as possible (not to mention that you feel bad for the girls out in the heat) these suggestions may help you out!