Backyard Poultry Info Centre

After successfully hatching four little chickies on Saturday & Sunday (see 'Incubation & Rearing' forum for my first panicky thread about hatching for the first time, where I had lots of questions to ask), Mum has taken them on a little adventure away from the nest.

Here she is on the nest, covering all of them up to protect them; looking very contented I believe. Note that my head was not in front of her... only the camera was !


Hatchling number 3... with the interesting colouration.


Teaching the Four Little Chickies to forage.


Hatchling number 4... with a very pale yellow colouration & some odd black & grey colourations on bits. Even after editing, I couldn't exactly recapture the colours of this little critter.


Winglet (how do we get suckered in by such tiny little things?)

aaaawwwwww.........how cute! for posting the pics are beautiful and mumma hen seemed to be watching that camera very carefully!

I am so jealous. I cannot even think about incubating eggs at moment as need to wait for my araucana chicks to get bigger and move onto one of the big girls coops.

I absolutely adore the photo of her with all four chicks in it.

The two right near her beak are copying her so much, and she's so focussed on teaching them.

The two 'in the wings' look to me like they're in a queue waiting their turn.

They'll all be fine foragers, as she's kicking up the rice hulls & chick starter so much that if the chicks are behind her they get covered in it & run off to avoid being buried !

The 'hole' that the two front chicks are in was level before today; there's a wooden board that you can just see in front of the hole that goes almost the full length of the coop... I'm so glad that I put that in there !!!! Without it, the entire coop would have excavation holes in it.

I've scattered heaps of chick starter everywhere, especially now that she's scratching about so much. I don't want them filling up on rice hulls at the expense of the chick starter crumble.

I've had to shift the water container up onto bricks, as she filled the pebble-filled rim with rice hulls in one swift scratching movement. The chicks have no trouble getting up on the bricks, and all holes are filled in with rice hulls & have a thin layer of rice hulls on the top of them... which will, of course, be kicked off before long.

Congratulations on the hatch!! Very cute. She looks to be doing well for a first time mother.

Thanks taylorducks.

MyShell's an absolute gem. She's my 2nd best forager, so will teach them to look for food extremely well, methinks.

She used to be a little independent; not in a bad way. Just used to toddling off on her own if she didn't think the area that the rest were foraging in was sufficient to get the best bits of food. She's really spun me out with the care & attention she's giving these four chicks.

As 'natural' as it is for them to mother the chicks, and as much as it's 'instinct', I do think that there's a difference in the way individuals of a breed mother their charges. I think that MyShell's leanings towards perfectionism are turning out to be very useful in teaching this lot. She's always been very focussed, and that's paying off in bucket-loads right now.

I'm incredibly lucky that she's being relatively tolerant of me when I take the photos & check on her with her brood. She'll fluff herself up & give some warning noises, but hasn't growled at me since I (foolishly, and never again) took her off the nest & saw the first hatchling all wet & wobbly on Saturday afternoon.

I'm keeping my distance still, and letting her tell me what distance is too close for her... so far we have a happy understanding between us & seem to have worked out what's okay & what isn't.

Thankyou for sharing these pics!!!


I also love photos showing the motherly love thing going on! Just so adorable!

Sam

You'll just have to build a new coop, idealistic !!

You know you want to.

Congratulations on the new family.

It is lovely to watch them and to hear the new language that MyShell will now be uttering, there is the "Oooooh come here look what scrumdiliumcious things mummy has found" bok bok, then there is the "Come her now, the big two legged non-feathered thing is approaching" bok bok


So did you crack open the other two that didn't hatch.

Were they infertile or DIS??

Just a guess here but based on the offspring that Rainbow has "thrown" in the past, yellow = cockerel, and black = pullet.

Ron

Thanks Uncle Ron (for those that don't know, Ron supplied the eggs)...

If you're right with the black/yellow we'll be doing VERY well on the pullet/cockerel ratio !

I wasn't game to open the other two. They were definitely fertile, as on day 7 JOD helped me candle them, and they were most definitely fertile on that day. At day 14 it was only myself candling them, and although I can't be certain (someone knowledgeable here next time at the day 14 candling would be useful) all 7 eggs had the same shadow & air sac in them; I couldn't see anything different in any of them (aside from some being darker shadows than others... which JOD advised me was due to the different colours of down on the chicks). So I presume that they were still fertile & growing at that point. They both 'felt' (weight-wise) the same as the others right up to when I last handled them all, so I'm confident that they went a long way along in growth. They never pipped though, at which point I resigned myself to having 'lost' them both.

Mr Winglet is pretending that the yellow fella is a GLW bantam pullet... and yes, he knows that's not possible... but he wants to live in his GLW bantam fantasy world for as long as possible. It's a small price to pay to go along with his dream. I just hope he doesn't fall in love with this one like he did with Ranga. I've already warned him not to get attached to any of them... to think that once upon a time he didn't even LIKE chooks.

Winglet (So glad I arranged for time off work for the days after the hatch!)

Winglet your babies are absolutely adorable !!
Just wondering though, in the photo of mum and bubs foraging, what do you have on the floor of their pen? Is is rice husk ?
Our girls pens are all on grass, and when we have babies, sometimes they get lost or the mum steps on them while she is scratching. I am considering putting a floor and some other kind of material in the bottom of the pen that lets them scratch and is pretty absorbant for easy cleaning. Any suggestions ??

Coccidiosis is the major worry with any chickens in a pen or on the ground. What ever material you put on the floor of a must be kept dry. That is replacing it regularly as it becomes soiled or wet from the water container.

Its worth repeating that chickens need repeated exposure to coccidiosis organisms to be able to develop an immunity to it as adults. However, its a measured exposured. Chicken feeds contain a medication that stops the coccidia from rapidly breeding up in numbers but does not kill the coccidia present. Hence allowing immunity to be developed.

It is a numbers game though. Anything that allows a large number of coccidia to develop, such as soiled and wet brooder flooring material, quickly utilises all the available medication and then leaves the chickens open to a serious and life threatening coccidia infestation.

Anyone with young chickens should have specific coccidia killing medication (such as Sulphaquin etc) on hand at all times and be ready to treat. An infestation of coccidiosis is such that young chickens go from healthy to dead in two to three days.

Moral or the story - keep the material dry and clean.

Mike

Your little babies are gorgeous Winglet The photo of Mum teaching her babies how to forage is adorable. I love watching hens teach their chicks the ways of life. It's one of lifes' little pleasures

They're on rice hulls, and the photos you see of them are inside an enclosed coop. As chookyinoz mentioned, I still need to ensure that the waterer doesn't spill & wet the flooring. So far so good. Having pebbles in the rim seems to greatly limit any water coming out of that.

I still need to be wary with the rice hulls there, and make sure that there's heaps of crumble on top of the hulls, as I don't want the chicks filling up on the rice hulls. I've been watching what they're picking up in their beaks, and they get far more crumble than rice hulls... not sure if they'd do that if incubator raised though, as I have 'Mum' teaching them what to pick up.

The outside run attached to the coop is covered with a tarpaulin to keep rain off, and the entire flooring in that has been removed to soil level & then replaced with a thick layer of lucerne on the bottom & then rice hulls over the top (I did this a few weeks back but without the tarp on top, and we then had a major storm which turned it to mush). I figure that having the same flooring will ensure that when Mum introduces them outside it will be less of a surprise for them. They'll soon discover the lucerne underneath once she starts scratching.

There are water containers (both with pebbles/marbles) both inside the coop & outside in the run. There's a feed container outside, which they won't be able to reach for another few days, I expect. I don't have a feed container inside for them, but scatter their feed about on the floor instead. As soon as I see them being taken outside, I'll scatter their feed on the ground to start with, too.

Thakyou Winglet.
The pics of mum and babes are gorgeous. Will you be taking daily pics for the albumn?
Taking note of all their milestones over the next few months?

Congrats to Mr Winglet too.

I'll do what I can... weekends I'll have a better chance of getting decent photos. During the week I'll have photos for my own gloating, but they may not be good enough to post here (some of the fuzzy ones above I posted regardless as in the first few days I figure you'll all look past that).

I saw all four of them run for the first time today; sprinting over to Mum when she found something of interest (must have been an odd-shaped piece of crumble).

Off to see if I can get some more photos now... back soon (if I get any decent ones).

Winglet (this hatching chicks thing could become a twice yearly event)