Blue Tamago

No, we didn't give the chicks away, we just moved them to a new location to help them integrate with the rest of the flock. The chicks were 4 weeks old when we decided to move them and I read that it was usually after 4 weeks that the mumma hen decides to wean them.

Pekins are notorious for becoming broody, so when Goldilocks decided to sit in the nest box, we gave her some eggs. We decided on Araucana eggs and 21 days later, we have 3 new little cheeping adorable bundles of fluff!

Adelaide managed to swelter through another hot weekend. This time with both days over 40 degrees. It was so hot even a kangaroo decided to take shelter in our shade house.

I had a tight deadline to get Buffy's coop finished as I was due to head interstate for work for a week. It would have been too much for one person to look after the animals in three different locations, Buffy in his bachelor cage (since he fights with Penguin), Penguin with his hens and the chicks in their two different cages.

 Buffy and Penguin are now 1 year old! Hard to imagine that the once looked like this:   From squeaky balls of fluff we got two roosters that grew up together. For the first few months of their lives, they were inseparable and did everything together. Then at about 7 months, they started fighting over the hens, to the point that we had to separate them permanently :( Their first meeting together. Playtime together! So what did these two gentleman do for their birthdays? Penguin err..snoozed under the rhubarb... And Buffy moved into his own new coop and run. Here he is checking out some food inside the coop. Buffy will share his coop with Flopsy, the mature Leghorn, plus all the little chicks that we bought. So he will have 7 in total! Far more than the 3 that Penguin has. Here is Buffy showing Flopsy the best nest in the world. Buffy spent a good 20 minutes flattening the straw and making a nest. Flopsy on the other hand, seem...

What a horrid start to the year! The fire danger rating for the 2nd of January in Adelaide was rated as Catastrophic. Meaning if a fire started that day, it would be nearly impossible to contain it. So what happened? A fire started. The day was ridiculously hot, 42 degrees and Adelaide managed to top that predicted temperature. Added to that, strong northerly winds to fan any fire. The fire started in Sampson Flat, which is about 23 km north away from us. I think it started in the early afternoon and by late afternoon, it was out of control. Those northerly winds meant that it was fanning the fire south, towards us. As large fires make their own microclimate, this fire managed to spread in all directions. We woke up on Saturday to find (and smell) a smoke cloud outside the house, which put us in a bit of a panic. Had the fire managed to travel south that quickly? Checking the website, the fire was still out of control up north, but the smoke cloud had blown south/south eas...

So I mentioned earlier that we bought 4 chicks in total, well the other two are white leghorns. This wasn't a breeder, but she gets the chicks from a hatchery and she keeps them in her backyard in rather cramped conditions.  To me there were too many birds in one pen and she is just selling birds to make a profit. She doesn't seem like the type to really care for all those birds. Needless to say, we will not be buying from her again. We did take two little leghorns, just to save them from the pen. She did say that they were off heat, but they were about 4-5 weeks old and they are bigger than the Marans.

As if we weren't busy enough, on the weekend we bought a pair of chicks, actually we ended up buying 4 chicks altogether >.< but the other two were from a different "breeder". More on that later. We bought these French Maran girls from a lovely breeder out in Skye. They were around 4 weeks old and hatched under a silkie hen. Chicks reared by a hen tend to be smaller than chicks reared under a heat lamp. The light from the lamp allows them to eat 24 hours a day, whereas with a hen they sleep throughout the night. Being only 4 weeks old, they still require heat, so out came the heat mat and the mini shelf from Kmart.  The heat mat is placed on top of the shelf and a piece of old clothing on top of that. The heat mat is not regulated, but the wattage on that mat means that it doesn't get hotter than 37 degrees. The cloth on top helps to keep the heat in and also serves as a warm (not hot!) place to sit on. The brooder this time is a cardboard ...

Well...what has happened in another month? Last time Buffy was valiantly wooing the chickens, but was only getting Flopsy to agree with him. Now, Buffy holds court with not just Flopsy, but with Chicky, DeeDee and Pippy. It was rather surprising with Chicky, normally she just tells Buffy to get lost (with a peck), but this sneaky little fella often jumps onto Chicky when her back is turned.  Pippy is normally too fast for any of the boys to catch her. But in this last month, Pippy would madly scramble away only to lie down on the grass a few meters away. Penguin was the first to get her to do that, but she will now lie down for Buffy too. I find it interesting that Penguin would immediately start hanging around the other Araucanas. He never looks after the other hens the same way he looks after his hens.He will often give food to them, make nests, find dust bathing places and generally follow them around the garden to look after them. He never does this with Effie ...

Well I did say that the 6th month would be the last in the Grow With Me series, but quite a bit has changed in the 7th month and I had to include it. For starters, Penguin has discovered that if he stands on things, his crow can travel further. So you will find him atop the compost bin, on the vegetable patch, on the table, on the chair, anywhere up high and crowing his little heart away. One of the biggest changes is that the two boys are constantly fighting! You can read what we came home to one day here . As the days went on though and we observed the two, we noticed that Buffy was often the one to initiate the fights. Looks like in this photo he came off second best. Penguin is the type just to defend himself, but when Buffy presents himself with this lion-look neck flare, Penguin retaliates. Both try to spur each other. Incidentally, in the chicken world this is called flogging, I wonder why, I thought spurring would have been more appropriate.  Anyway, they can't do a...

What a gruesome sight to come home to! Met the boys at the back when we came home from work and found Buffy like this! I couldn't tell where the cut was, whether it was on his head or on his comb. After cleaning it with just warm water, I couldn't find any injury to his head, so I suspect it was his comb that got cut and it bled A LOT! Combs have a very good vascular system, which would mean that it would bleed quite a bit when cut. The cleanup Now we had to try and work out what happened, it didn't take us long to find the prime suspect... Arrow pointing to the blood under his beak Blood on his feathers They still spent the night together, but I did notice that Buffy did not crow as much in the morning. Generally Penguin starts crowing and Buffy joins in. This morning, it was Penguin crowing most of the time, with Buffy only crowing once or twice. When I let them out, Buffy was definitely wary of Penguin, and kept his distance, which confirme...

They are 6 months old! Time to celebrate with a crow on a frosty morning! This brings my posts up to date with the boys, no more zooming back in time. The boys regularly start crowing between 5:30-6:00am. They continue crowing until I let them out of their cage. I tend to give them a bit of a cuddle on a cold morning before I release Penguin. He makes a beeline to the ladies and waits for me to open the door. There is usually a mad scramble and squawking as he makes his move. None of the Araucanas were laying, so they are not inclined to squat for him.  Buffy is as cute as ever. This little one LOVES to be picked up and held and how could you resist this look? Even cuter when he's puffed up a bit from the cold What I like is that it looks like he is wearing fluffy pants. Even with all those feathers, this little one shivers with the cold. He's quite happy to be picked up and carried around. He likes to be up high, so he will jump up onto my shoulder (...