Anne at Echo Mountain View Road

Time flies! Ayla had her two kids - Bleu du Bocage and Herbed Chèvre.

They are now well over two years old! Chevy did fairly well at the 2016 WNC Ag fair, enough so that we are hopeful she will produce great producing kids! But we are still waiting to hear if she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Ayla had three kids last March 22, 2016. We sold a buckling as a wether and a matching doeling...photo at some point, I promise. We kept Mercia al vin -although her performance at the ADGA goat show was less than stellar. She hopped the fence her first night. She has springs for legs!

And now Ayla is pregnant again; she's due April 19.

 Maria and Ayla with a goat photobomb in the background

This is pregnant Ayla. We intended to buy Ayla and one of her kids - a doeling, if she had one. Meanwhile, we made plans to purchase any other of her babies - how could we separate the mom from her kids? We are not true farmers yet....

So, on Monday, January 19, we got the email that Ayla had 2 doelings! We had already made arrangements to visit the next day.

How could we not take both? We gave another deposit for the second baby.

 We agreed to wait until the kids were debudded before taking them home.

Anne at Echo Mountain View Farm

 We went to visit Ayla today, our pregnant registered dwarf Nigerian goat. We've also purchased one of her kids, if she has a doeling.

She is a very sweet, somewhat shy, small goat. She did not do well when she was shown so we intend to keep her for milk and breeding. With lovely blue eyes, she follows us everywhere. She sits pretty low on the pecking order at her current farm, and we'll be glad to give her space where she's the top goat. If she doesn't give birth to a doeling, then we'll pick one of the does from another dwarf Nigerian goat.

Anne at Echo Mountain View Road Farm

In resurrecting this blog for our new venture in raising goats, I reflected back on our last three years in keeping chickens. We subtracted and added to our flock. Our first subtraction came with the departure of the roosters. Three of them proved difficult on the hens and on us. Stevie became aggressive. He flogged any perceived threat including our neighbor's young son. With spurs the size of Texas, he could wreak havoc in a heartbeat. We put an ad in Craigslist. The woman who came offered take all three Polish boys. Let me digress by saying that we had found a home for Andy, but retrieved him a week later because he was restricted to a small cage. This woman, taking all three, said she had ample space for the boys, and intended to use them to breed polish chickens.

With the boys gone, it was a quiet day at Echo Mountain View Farm. No crowing.

Andy

Amy and Allison

Prior to the boys departure, when Amy and Andy had been housed in the special need's coop, I got a call asking for fertilized eggs. Amy's white eggs contrasted with Allison's brown, so I gave two white eggs away. Twenty-one or so days later, Izzy was born, hatched under a Silkie hen. He was raised by Silkies for 8 months until he got too big for them, and the owner asked if we wanted him back.

Izzy

Gone as an egg, back as a beautiful, peaceful, non aggressive rooster. He is still with us today, and has fathered a couple of chickens!


Speaking of Silkie's, intrigued with the heritage breed, we drove to Tennessee to pick up some Silkie's and Black Copper Marans. At the top of this post is Suzie, the only survivor of that trek. Raising chickens is not for the faint of heart....Suzie's sister died early on and of the three Black Copper Marans, two were roosters and given away.

Piper

Piper, the only hen of the three, lived for two years and never really laid any good eggs. Hers were always filled with blood spots, far more than average or healthy. But she lived a happy life in the special need's coop.

Amy and Allison are both gone. We learned a lot about prolapsing and egg bound chickens in our experiences with Allison. She survived two episodes and lived happily ever after, not laying another egg. Then, one morning this summer, we found that she had died in her sleep. Sadly, Amy was the victim of the neighbor's dog. She, along with several other chickens, lost their lives in two separate instances of two separate neighbor's dogs coming through the property while the hens were free-ranging. Needless to say, we now never free range without direct supervision.


Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

Ruthie is now Rudy

People who buy chickens will sometimes have an option to pay extra for pullets, or hens.  A chick's sex can be determined with fairly good accuracy within a day of hatching. 

When we purchased our birds, I had the choice to select the sex on three of the four breeds.  The fourth group of chickens we ordered, the top hat special, was essentially five birds with fancy crests, randomly picked.  The option did not allow me to select the sex of the birds.  With this in mind, there was a possibility of getting 5 roosters.

Even before they arrived, our Top Hat Specials all got honorary names.  

Stevie was named by our daughter after a female Saddle Club book character, Stevie.  Fortunately, his name remains the same, as Stevie was the first to crow.

Amy was named after a good friend of mine.  The birds were shipped on her birthday, hence the honor.  And Amy can keep her name.  She clearly exhibits pullet qualities.

Her hair do is more rounded as are her feathers.  

Rosie is named after a chicken that my mother inherited when she bought a farmhouse.  As I have written before, my mother's Rosie was a lone chicken that occasionally laid an infertile egg, and then sat on it.  Our Rosie seems to have hair or crest issues.

She has a hard time drinking water without getting her feathers wet.  But below you can see her on a good hair day.

There may be a bit of an issue over on the right side of her head, but for the most part, she looks pretty good.


Annabeth may be a rooster, but we are not yet sure.  She behaves like a rooster, bossy, challenging many of the hens and occasionally giving Stevie a bit of trouble.  But until we hear a crow, we will continue to hope for the best. 

Here she is with Rosie.  Now that I look at the picture and see the waddles, I am pretty sure (read confident) that Annabeth will need a new name before long.  

Which leads me to the last but not least TOP HAT SPECIAL, Ruthie.  Ruthie has had a special place in this blog and in our flock.  From the start, she behaved differently, and looked unlike all the others.  On the day we picked them up at the PO, even the mail carrier commented on how different she was.

Although she acted bold, physically she had all the characteristics of a pullet.  Her crest was smooth, she was small - we thought she might be a bantam - and no apparent saddle feathers or pointy hackles.  

And of all the birds, her 12 weeks have been the most photographed.  But two weeks ago, Ruthie crowed.  Ruthie is now Rudy.  And see how the smooth crest changed overnight into the spiked punk rock look common to Polish roosters.


And now, here he is next to Annabeth

At this point, Rudy remains a non aggressive bird, and we hope that he stays that way.  At least he appears to be paying homage to the CEO of our flock. I know I began with this photo, but with that crest, and Rudy's stance, ending with it seems fitting.

Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

The second rooster

Most evenings, one or more of our neighbors stop in to watch the chickens.   By now, a clear pecking order has been established (among the chickens, not the neighbors).  But it's a complicated order, not a straight hierarchy, as I would have imagined.  Instead, it's more like a company organizational chart.  Clearly, Stevie is at the helm.  He established his place as COO early on, in the brooder, and has maintained his position with very little effort.  

 
And, like the human world, his good looks no doubt aided his meteoric rise.  

After Stevie comes a complicated web of power.  Actually, layers might be a better term, and a more relevant term as that's what most of these birds are.  Each group of breeds has their own set of rules, and each bird interacts differently with the outside breeds.  For example, Ruthie, the black crested white Polish, is very powerful outside her breed.  Her stature when confronting a large rhode island red, almost twice her size, speaks volumes about her power.

  

But within her breed, her position is mixed.  She may get picked on by Annabeth unless Stevie steps in.

 In this picture, Annabeth is trailing Ruthie, with Stevie in the foreground. If Ruthie complains about the white chicken's proximity, Stevie will step in.


Amy is outside the organizational chart, possibly a consultant.  No one picks on her.  In fact, she often has her head down, looking for something to eat.

She is the most indecisive bird in the flock.  We often pick her up when she first exits the pop door in the morning.  Otherwise she will stand on the platform slightly confused.  The other night, for some reason, she did not get on the roost with the other birds.  

I picked her up and put her with the other birds, but she hopped back down and took a spot on the nest bar.  The next night I found her up again with the other chicks.

Two nights ago, the some of the birds settled on the roosting branch we have for them in the run.  We often wondered about the second bird in from the right - named Hecate.  The bird was late to feather and had a rosy comb.  Turns out Hecate is a rooster.  He crowed a slightly weaker sound than Stevie's.  

We renamed Hecate, Morpheus.   He poses no threat to Stevie.  In the organizational chart, he resembles the pointy haired boss in the Dilbert cartoon.  He continually tries to boss the other girls around with no success.  Although given authority by nature, he has no support from the flock. He is clearly in management.


Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

First cockadoodle doo!

Recently, we started letting the chickens out into their run.  The 26' x 10' space includes a huge oak tree rimmed with rhododendrons in layers of decayed leaves, and, unknown to us, hoards of small ants.  The first ones out the door were the Barred Plymouth Rocks, always the bravest even as chicks. 
  

Next came a Rhode Island Red and an Americauna.  
Then there was a bit of excitement and the platform became crowded - sort of like the subway just before the doors open up.

 The original Barred Plymouth Rocks had lost their courage and made it back up to the platform. No one wanted to make the first move.  Then some brave chicken decided to take the first step, and they all followed suit.  All except Stevie, our rooster.  When I peeked into the pop door, Stevie was perched on the side of the brooder as though he needed to make sure everyone got out safely.

 Then he made his move.

At first it was a tentative step.

Then he waltzed down the ramp as though he owned it.  And I guess in Chicken World, he does.

The chickens immediately found the ants among the dead leaves and scratched away.

 


Now for the reason I titled this the First Cockadoodle doo - Yesterday morning, the day after their first outing, as I reached in to give them some greens, I heard a distinct, UR UR UR UR.  Granted, the voice squeaked like an adolescent boy, but the sound was clearly crowing, and it came from Stevie, standing at the highest location in the coop.

  


Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

Transfer to the coop

I haven't written in a while because I spend most of my free time out by the coop watching the birds.  The day we moved them, I worried about how they would adjust.  We moved half the brooder (dog crate!) into the house, and then carried them 6 or 7 at a time in 2 cat carriers, making 3 trips.  They all stepped out of the carriers without a glance back.

Here is the coop, before and after staining.

 
 And here are the peeps settled in

The half crate remains in the coop; the rhode island reds like to perch on the sides, and they are the shyest at this point.  I hate to disrupt their comfort level.  When we finish the run, out goes the crate.

Removing them from the house left me with mixed feelings.  On one hand, I don't miss the mess, occasional smell  just before changing the shavings, and worry about the cats sneaking in the stubborn screen door.  On the other hand, I miss seeing them all settled in, roosting on the side of the crate, small contented chirps from a few of the late night peepers.

The first night in coop, I didn't sleep very well.  I went out about 9:00pm and they were squabbling around the light I had placed in the corner.  I moved it to the center nesting box and they settled right down.  Proximity to the light means high on the pecking order, I assume.  The next night, all were up in the roost.  Subsequent nights they split half on one side and half on the other.  

 
Here they are, unsettled by my stepping up on the pop door ledge to take this photo.  This is the second night out.



Having them next to the garden means that I weed frequently.  They love the scraps and dirt I pull up.  I hate to weed, but this bonus means my garden will benefit from the treat.

Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

Lettuce stupor

If you notice the chicken just below Rosie, you'll see a piece of lettuce on the ground.  This is what's left over from the frenzy that occurs twice a day in the brooder.  I have a couple of rows of lettuce in the garden that have turned a bit bitter with age.  In the morning and afternoon, I stuff two suet cages with wet lettuce and place them at either end of the brooder.  

 

This is Anna Elizabeth taking ownership, briefly.  

 And here is a frenzy at the other end of the brooder.  In fact, the blur indicates how quickly the girls and boys move as they jockey for position.  You can just see Ruthie's white head scurrying toward the afternoon snack.

 And here is an Americauna - not sure which one, running away with a snagged treat.  She is making such a racket that in seconds, others will abandon the suet cage to give chase.  Damerow, in the Storey Guide to Chickens, calls this Tidbitting, apparently a way to shred whatever a chicken might have, making it easier to eat.

But what I find unusual is the stupor the birds seem to fall into once they finish the lettuce.  You'd think it was an afternoon drink!

In this picture, I disturbed them when I opened the door, but you can see the others peacefully roosting at the end of the brooder.

  

Close-up - note Ruthie is facing the opposite of the others.  

It's early in the afternoon for them to call it a night.  I call it the lettuce stupor, induced by the fresh afternoon treat.


Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens

How it all began

 On one of our Thanksgiving trips to my brother's house, we stopped at the  Museum of American Frontier in Staunton, Virginia, just off 81, and saw our first Silver Laced Polish Rooster. Timid at first, our daughter finally stooped to feed the bird some scratch we bought at the Museum store.  He ate out of her hand.  


This was in 2002, I believe.  When we went to order the chicks this spring, an option popped out - TOP HAT SPECIALS.  How could I resist?  We had no idea what kind we would get, but we are getting a glimpse everyday of what our chicks will become.  One of them resembles a silver laced polish chick.

This is Amy when she was a couple of days old.

A week or so later.

Then some feathers grew

And pictures taken today, June 6, 2011; she'll be 4 weeks old tomorrow.

We hope she/he grows into the feathers on top!

Anne at Echo Mountain View Road chickens