Broody Banty, Part Deux!

Banties are so small and so good at hiding!

The bantam Golden Seabright from my previous post gave up immediately when I took her eggs away from her, but the three of them continue to fly over the fence and hide their eggs each day.

When broody banty number 2 disappeared about 2-3 weeks ago, I immediately assumed she had gone broody, but a search of our property turned up nothing. If she had made her way over to the neighbor's big barn, there wasn't anything I could do about it, so it was wait and see.

Two days ago she finally made an appearance, popping out briefly to find something to eat. She was very impatient and nervous and demanded that I bring her food right away. She then threatened to whoop the cat if he didn't get out of her way and proceeded to eat from the cats' dish. As she briskly made her way back to her hiding spot, I was able to trail her and saw her duck in here:

A small recess in the bottom of my husband's wood pile. He has been working on splitting this wood every few days and it's a wonder she wasn't squashed by the unstable pile of logs! She never came running out, never made a peep, just laid low, waiting and hoping not to be noticed. 

The weather here has been hitting record highs for the month of December with the strong El Nino going through. Many days have been in the 60's and 70's. We've scarcely burned any firewood this year so far. But tomorrow night is forecast to go below freezing, so I made the decision to move her and her eggs to a safer, warmer location.

 

Chicken solitary confinement.

I didn't want to risk finding frozen peeps or worse yet, a frozen mama banty.

She was a little peeved with me and very agitated at first, but after she ate, drank, relieved herself and preened her feathers, she finally did settle back down on her eggs. Of the 14 eggs I removed from the nest, 5 were warm and viable. I candled the others to verify their demise. We even saw these 5 WIGGLE a couple of times. Yay! :D If I remember correctly, she has been gone at least 2 weeks, or perhaps nigh unto three. We may have some new peeps here very soon!

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. As broody and sneaky as these banties are and given how chicken math works they could multiply quite rapidly come summertime. These little girls have a major advantage over the standard size pullets in hiding their nests from me. :\

Broody Banty

If you've kept chickens for awhile, then you know that most missing chicken stories don't have happy endings.  We were so glad this one did!  We've become very attached to our three banties.  They are so sweet and gentle and just the right size for the children to cuddle.

One night she didn't turn up on the roost with the others, although I had last seen her about an hour before closing the pen when I tossed them their daily ration of scratch grains.  After a brief search of the backyard the next day, this is where we found her:

What else to do with a hoard of 16 eggs, but to set them?  

This little girl seems to have her seasons mixed up.  It has been an unusually warm November this year, so that is understandable.  Maybe in the spring I will allow her to set some.  I felt really bad taking them from her and even worse scrambling them up later!

If these were fertile, they would have been a cross between our white Easter Egger cockerel and bantam Golden Seabright.  The banties have discovered they can squeeze between the gaps in the electric poultry netting when it's off and he usually flies over daily to escape our other Easter Egger cockerel who is the top dog.  So they have formed their own little band, although the banties get along with all of my other chickens and can mingle at will.

I just bought an incubator this fall.  I can't wait to hatch some eggs!  I will post pics and stories about that when the time comes.  Chicken math...you know how that goes!  :)

A Tale of Two Turkeys

Hello, blog!  I have missed you and am thinking I will try to get back into the habit of posting every so often if I have anything interesting going on around here.

These are my two Bourbon Red turkey poults and they are are 6 weeks old now. These are supposed to be DH's turkeys, my gift to him, but really they're more mine. I feed them and everything. He just mentioned in passing that he'd like to get turkeys someday, so that was all I needed to hear.  ;)

I found out the hard way that turkeys have a really steep learning curve! These are the only two survivors. We started with 6 poults and very mysteriously, every few days, one would just get sleepy and then I'd find it dead the next day. A couple days later, another, then another... After asking around www.backyardchickens.com, the best answer we could come up with was a failure to thrive. I think they were getting too comfortable under the heat lamp and not eating and drinking enough. It is advisable to put a chicken chick in with them to show them how to eat and drink, since they are slow to catch on themselves, so I'll definitely do that next time. They really don't eat and drink as voraciously as chicks, although most every other aspect of their care is the same. These guys are about the size of a banty chicken now.

They are very nervous and flighty little critters. I had to cage them within the brooder circle because they kept flying out and couldn't figure out how to get back in. I got 6 poults for $40 from a local breeder, which is a really good deal (they go for $10.50 each on Murray McMurray Hatcheries website, plus shipping.) But I think the time of year now going into fall and winter isn't really the best. I will have to keep them in the garage all winter or maybe in the barn since young turkeys are said to not tolerate drafts or dampness well and our winters are usually pretty cold and wet. They'll go out on pasture with the chickens in the spring.

I was hoping to have a couple of hens to keep for breeding and I was going to get a new tom off of another breeder about an hour from here. I don't know what I'll do with them now, depending on whether I have toms or hens there. If I have at least one tom, he will be grown out and ready for Easter dinner next spring. As much effort as it has taken to keep them alive, I'm afraid I'll be too attached to them at that point. That was the plan anyway.

Meat Bird Tractor Update

I had another member of BYC ask a few good questions about my tractor, so I figured I should add that information here as well.

He wanted to know about coyotes, coons and the cost to build.  Here is my reply:

Opossums, hawks and dogs are the only predators I've had to deal with at my location in the past 7 years I've lived and raised chickens here, so those are what I planned for.

A coyote couldn't lift this tractor.  It's too heavy.  It's only movable by skidding it along with the pull rope.  I can move it by myself on dry days, but in mud it takes DH and I both to do it.  It did flip in 70 mph storm winds on Halloween, but that was because a freak storm blew through the N.E. unannounced and I didn't have time to hammer in the storm anchors (rebar) and I unfortunately had it turned facing into the wind.

Coons... I have the bottom half of the tractor outside of the cattle panels (and underneath the tarp) also covered with 2x4 welded wire fencing.  Front and back arch of the tractor are completely covered with it, top to bottom.  If you have a lot of trouble with coons in your area, you could cover the rest of the top and door with it too.  Or maybe even go with something smaller like 1x2 cage wire.

I can't say exactly what the total cost would be since I used mostly salvaged/leftover materials.  Two cattle panels would probably run you $40-$50.  The tarp I paid about $20 for.  Eight 2x4s...about $2.50 each.  32 foot of 3' high 2x4 welded wire, maybe $30.  The door was salvaged off of my old coop and made with scrap lumber to begin with.  Small galvanized staples, a box of wood screws, door hinges/latch and some zip ties...about $15.  It comes to around $135.  After having two of my layer flocks wiped out by stray dogs, it was a necessary investment for me.  I've had no invaders or losses after that.

All good questions, thanks for your interest.

Some of you probably recall the storm I am talking about from Halloween night.  A cold front moved in quickly after a couple of 70 degree days and caused quite a stir.  I had the stomach flu that day and awoke at 4:30am burning up after my fever broke and when I went to open the window to let in some cool air, I spied my 31 meaties all out in front by the road, huddled in a ditch.  So out into the rainy, dark night I went to fetch them, two by two.  They spent a day in my chainlink fenced front yard until I could construct another enclosure.  The tractor took some damage and needs repaired.  They were roughly two weeks from processing day, so they finished out in a stationary fenced area over one of my garden plots.  I did lose one when the tractor flipped, but the rest were fine.  I am just glad I found them before my neighbors had to come knocking on my door!

A note on how my meaties turned out overall this year:  The tractor system was a wonderful success and very ideal for their health and my chicken-keeping pleasure...ha.  I am not sure that the hatchery sent me Cornish Cross though.  They may have been Cornish Roasters instead, which are nearly identical in appearance, but are from a different, slower growing strain.  These birds were very active and ate bugs and grass, scratched, roosted and dirt-bathed in addition to eating their feed.  I've NEVER had CX do that before.  They had no leg problems or unexplained, sudden deaths.  I usually lose 1-3 out of about 40 chicks in the first two weeks.  These grew out about 2 weeks slower as well.

I also tried a new, locally sourced feed mix this year formulated by a pastured CX producer in my area.  It contained cracked corn and whole grains of wheat in addition to soybean meal and some other things.  It was much more cost effective for me since I could buy it in bulk.  I can get it at $26 for 100 lbs., whereas the Dumor 24% chick feed would have cost me around $20 per 50 lb. bag.  She said hers still grew out at 7-8 weeks on it, but mine did not.  There were too many variables for my flock this year...the storm, the feed, possibly not CX...so I did not bother to extrapolate my feed conversion rate or costs.  It wouldn't tell me much of anything useful for comparison anyway.

Most of my birds averaged around 5 pounds dressed weight (I did not weigh them all though.)  I kept a couple a little longer and they were huge.  I have one 9 pound (dressed) bird in the freezer that I will look forward to cooking in the turkey fryer for a special occasion or summer barbeque.  :)