Update on the peeps

New Hampshire, White Leghorn, and Black Australorp hens lounging around together, May 31, 2009.

The chickens are growing up beautifully.  They are all in an “adolescent” stage, where they don’t quite have their full growth yet, and are not yet laying eggs.  They are, however, mature enough that they look like gorgeous, slightly smaller versions of their adult selves, and they are big enough that we have been able to resolve the identity of the “mystery” chickens. We can now tell the New Hampshire apart from the Cinnamon Queen, and our straight-run Buff-Laced Polish chicken has turned out to be a rooster.

All 8 chickens, labeled for convenience. June 11, 2009

For awhile there, after the rooster started awkwardly crowing but before he developed the distinctive five syllable “cock-a-doodle-do” call, I thought he might simply be a dominant hen.  Dominant hens do crow, and I was really hoping for another egg producer (contrary to my earlier expressed wish for a rooster).  But he has grown into producing a very distinctive rooster call, and I no longer consider him to be a dominant hen.  Well, as long as his crowing doesn’t bother the neighbors, I’d like to keep him around.  He’s already pretty, and will likely be even more so when he is fully grown.

Aaron is very worried that the rooster’s crowing will bother the neighbors, even though they haven’t complained and I hardly notice it myself (although it can get pretty loud).  Aaron’s solution has been to box up the rooster at night, when all the chickens have gone in the coop, and the rooster doesn’t get let out until 9:00 AM.  I have urged Aaron as well to actually talk to our neighbors and ask them if they are bothered by the rooster, instead of just worrying about it, but I don’t know if that will ever happen.

We are also finally able to tell the New Hampshire from the Cinnamon Queen.  They are the same red color (they share some ancestry, as the Cinnamon Queen is a hybrid – Silver Laced Wyandotte Hens with a Rhode Island Red Rooster – or so the internet tells me!), but the New Hamp has dark tail feathers, and the Cinnamon Queen has white or light-colored tail feathers.  I was able to see the color difference upon close examination of the chicks’ tails probably at least six weeks ago, but since this is my first time raising chickens, I didn’t want to say for certain until they looked more like their adult selves.  The Cinnamon Queen also matured a bit faster than the New Hamp, but the New Hamp has since caught up, so there really wasn’t much difference there.  The next real test will be – who lays eggs first?  One of the desirable traits of the hybrid Cinnamon Queen is early egg production.

Cinnamon Queen, April 28, 2009 (a little over a month old)

New Hampshire, April 28, 2009. Note that she still has chick fuzz on her neck (compared to the Cinnamon Queen). She's also a bit smaller.

Aaron is in the process of building a very nice coop for them.  This is a coop designed to hold eight chickens, with 32 square feet of floor space (four sq.ft. per chicken – recommended minimum for free-range chickens).  I mention this because in our research on coop designs, we found lots of designs for 2-4 chickens, but very little that were larger – and also relatively plain.  It seems there is a big leap up from “small and simple” to “large and elaborate” with very little in between!  So ours is an in-between coop  – large and fairly simple.  I’ll be painting it once it’s done – probably a nice yellow color, along with some sort of contrasting trim.  We also want to put it on wheels to move it around easily.

Most people who have backyard chickens, it seems, only get a few, instead of eight like we did.  We got eight because we wanted around 5-6, and it was prudent to get a few extra in case any of them died – and pretty cheap, too – most of the initial expense is in stuff for the chickens.  Well, none of them died!  We have eight very healthy chickens!

The "exit" side of the coop. The right side of the roof tin (in this view) still needs to be trimmed.

The "access" side of the coop, with a door big enough for humans to get in. This side of the coop is a little over 4 feet high.

Their primary feed is Nutrena NatureWise Meatbird feed, which we get from our local Farm and Home Supply store.  We’ve been feeding them that since shortly after we got them.  We could have started them on it, but we didn’t find that out until later, so we started them on medicated chick feed.  We’ll keep them on the meatbird feed until they start laying, which is when we’ll switch them to a layer feed.  I’d love to be able to mix their feed ourselves from locally available ingredients, but that is A LOT of work and cost-prohibitive at this time.

They also eat plenty of grass and whatever bugs they can scrounge out of our lawn.  I like to think they find quite a few – the lawn hasn’t been chemically treated for at least three years, and almost every time I dug into it this spring to give them some dirt clumps to feed on (when they were still kept inside) I found worms.  About once a week or so we give them wheat sprouts that we’ve sprouted ourselves, plus occasionally some sour raw milk – they love both treats!

I’ll post more later on the chicken coop, once Aaron’s got more work done on it – and more on the chickens, once they start laying.

One big happy flock of "teenaged" chickens. June 3, 2009