Growing my little flock

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DonyaQuick

Crowing
Jun 22, 2021
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2,867
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Upstate NY (Otsego county), USA
I’ve only been keeping chickens for about a year and a half; earlier this year I decided to get a rooster for my hens to have a more complete experience and to turn chicken keeping into a larger project by hatching my own chicks to maintain a larger group. These are current my adults minus my broody. I've hatched eggs from Dingus and Buddy so far.

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Roosters are supposed to be dinosaurs, but Ziggy is more like a moody version of Barney the purple dinosaur. He’s a group hug kind of guy that occasionally gets bent out of shape if I set the feeder in the wrong spot, but even then he just tugs my pants. He's a very sweet boy.

Buddy is my smartest chicken and is a hefty girl even though it's not obvious from the photo. She’s probably a little on the chunky side because she uses her smarts to eat more junk food than the others, but she also has a lot more muscle than my other hens. She lays medium sized pinkish to light brown eggs with white speckles. She is a lap chicken that likes to be pampered.

And Dingus, aka The Dingus Baby, aka Big Ol’ Baby Dingus...she wails and cries if she doesn’t get to shove her face in my armpit each morning. It started when she was a chick. None of my others do this. Dingus lays light brown to nearly white eggs that usually have brown speckles.

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Another odd thing about Dingus: I believe she is far-sighted in one eye and extremely far-sighted in the other. She has almost no up-close depth perception, which was obvious from when she was just a couple weeks old and couldn't figure out how to jump out of the brooder with the others. She's still rubbish at jumping and will snap at bugs that are 2ft too far away, but she can also spot a predator in tall grass clear across a good-sized field. If she sounds off, I know to just trust it and go in the direction she's looking, because there will be something out there even though I can't see it until I'm halfway there. So, her weird eyesight issue has turned out to be half disability and half superpower. I was on the fence about whether to hatch her eggs because of the vision issue but she gets along just fine and seems like a hardy bird otherwise. Doesn't seem like either of her offspring have inherited her far-sightedness.

I wanted to hatch some from Chungus too, but her eggs were all duds unfortunately, so for now I just have 4 chicks, 2 each from Buddy and Dingus.

And they were hatched by my little Dimple here. Please forgive the state of the room; I had everyone set up in my home office for the first couple weeks and the chicks got into pretty much everything.

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Dimple is my bantam size hen who grew weird little bricks for spurs tried to be the rooster more than once before I got a real one. She probably will never have fertile eggs of her own because she doesn’t squat. Instead, she does the Dimple Dance where she furiously drums her feet and scoots about with hunched up shoulders. Being broody is probably the most normal hen thing she’s ever done. As soon as they were able to leave the nest she started bringing them over to take naps on me, so now I have super-friendly chicks. They are all around 3 weeks old now.

As for the individual chicks, Dingus’s vision issue doesn't seem to have been passed along to her children but a certain something else apparently was. Two days out of the egg and it started. How on earth is there a shove-head-in-armpit gene?

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Buddy made what looks to be a barred chick and another that is white with some random black feathers coming in. I’m actually excited that it looks like I have a cockerel with the white one; I think it could be a very pretty bird. The white buddy baby is the only one so far making suspect it's a cockerel - comb coming faster and in red at the base instead of skin tone and wattles coming in early and on the redder side.

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And this is Dingus’s other chick. It took me a few days to realize what was up with it's face, but I think this poor little one actually broke its jaw during hatching. It got stuck after pipping and I wonder if that's why. It could also have been from being bopped around because it was last out with its beak protruding from the egg for some time. It had its foot right up by its beak through the hole, and I had to assist by tearing the membrane a bit so it could push the shell apart the rest of the way with its foot, which it did on its own. On its beak, it initially had had a big dent that swelled up at first, and it wanted to sleep in my hand a lot more than the others for the first few days. The injured area turned dark red first and then purple, but it now looks to have healed and the discoloration is gone. It’s a strong eater and catching back up in size to the others. I know this type of injury in a chick can lead to scissor beak but I’m not seeing any sign of curvature so far. I hope it does ok even if it has a bit of a snarly face.

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Now I'm in the process of trying to figure out names for these little fluffs. It will be fun to see how their colors turn out as they grow.
 
Got a few names so far...
  • Dingus chick #1: Squishy. Looks like a pullet so far. She is almost entirely white and so soft! She feels different than the others.
  • Dingus chick #2 with the funky beak: Scruffy. Also looking like a pullet. She looks like she will be a mix of white and brown spots, maybe minor barring here and there.
  • Barred Buddy chick: probably Monster. Probably a pullet but I'm not totally convinced yet. This chick is a heavy beast for its age!
Still not sure what to call the white Buddy chick, which has surely got to be a boy. Those little wattle stubs are bright red now and it's such a little firecracker of a chick lol.

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One of the things I've been doing to keep my little floofs entertained is The Fun Box. This is a thing I did with my original chicks when I was just starting: a designated container where anything I introduce them to new things they can eat or throw around.

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I've also been letting them forage in a little tractor I built out of scrap wood and and my coop's old pop door. Yesterday I also let them in the run for a bit. My setup has two halves to it, so I can close the connecting door and keep the main flock in one half while the chicks are in the other.
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Kind of a sad time right now. My adult rooster may be on his way out - basically due to being too nice and not getting the hens out of the way so he could eat when he started molting. He's always been weird about not eating if a hen looks like she might eat from the feeder he wants to eat from. Anyway, he unfortunately ate a bunch of cast feathers and fibrous weeds, presumably out of desperation for additional protein. This happened during a heat wave and he got an impacted crop. He's very sickly and staying in the house for now. He managed to get the impaction cleared I think, since his crop is emptying again, but I don't know if he can rebound he's so sore and weak from the ordeal. He completely hid the feather-eating from me; I only know he was doing that because of what came out once I'd isolated him.

On the bright side, my chicks are doing well. Dimple laid an egg yesterday while I had them all out in the coop but is still very much being the momma to her chicks so I haven't separated her yet.

Here is Squishy from yesterday - still looks like a pullet. Apparently she did actually inherit Dingus's distance vision superpower without the total far-sightedness. She and her sister can both spot stuff ridiculously far away, just like their mom.
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Scruffy - still got a wonky beak shape, but the ends still seem lined up. Other than the beak, she is distinguishable from squishy by the gray dots on her head. I think she will have more color on her.
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Monster, who is probably a good 25% bigger than everybody else now.
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She (I think she's a pullet anyway...) got caught by the sun today for the first time. Look at the size of those feet! I swear monster at 4.5 weeks is the size my original girls were at 6+ weeks. All of my chicks in this batch seem "ahead of schedule" compared to what I was expecting for size and feathering, but monster especially so.
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And...the cockerel is now Junior. Short for Cuddles Junior. Cuddles was a hen I lost earlier this year that I always described as my lawful evil chicken. This little hug-loving face-biter may be biologically derived from Buddy and Ziggy, but he is very clearly Cuddles' spiritual successor.
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Well...sadly it's on Junior now to be the man of the flock going forward. Strangely enough he already seems to be trying at 7 weeks. He's starting to strut about and I think I even saw him tidbit this morning - picking up and dropping a bit of shavings while making the right noise, just a couple octaves too high. Wasn't expecting to see that for some time yet. He hasn't even crowed! He's made all kinds of other awful noises as his voice seems to be cracking, so perhaps I missed it in one of his extended performances of off-key yodeling.

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Unfortunately he's also run into problems with Monster now. Squishy and Scruffy are small enough that they are happy to bow to his strutting and prancing about, but Monster isn't having any of it. Monster is also still enormous and closing in on Dimple's body size already - just not as fluffy as her.

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I'm not sure on Monster's gender anymore. He/she/it has looked 1-2 weeks ahead of the others for some time now and does spend most of the time pale faced, only going red face when something exciting is going on (whereas Junior is all red face all the time). Junior and Monster have the same parents but of course my hens are buff orpingtons which I gather are notoriously slow to become obvious as cockerels...but Junior was extremely obvious at 3 weeks so I'm not sure. Time will tell I guess.

And here's sweet little Squishy begging for treats. Those treats aren't for her though, they're for my other broody. Unfortunately the chicks collectively got into the bag once when I wasn't paying attention, so now they know what's in it lol.
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Scruffy is nearly impossible to get a good pic of these days - always just a little ball of motion.

After a couple days indoors due to absolutely awful weather flooding half the run, they are all back out integrating today. Dimple is fully out of mom mode and Brownie has become their weird aunt. For some reason Dimple was ok with Brownie disciplining the chicks to teach them how to act around other chickens even when Dimple was still in mamma bear mode and attacking the other two hens. Since Dimple is out of mamma mode now I'm hoping I can get Dingus and Brownie interacting well with the chicks in the next 2-3 days.
 
Look at this sweet little man sitting on my shoulder with his little footsies all tucked up - what a cutie!
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Such a sweet little - ow!
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And one day I'm sure he'll start kicking me in the shins and I have to discipline him more than just setting him down for biting my ear. I know it's coming at some point lol.

Integrating little chickies into the adult flock is getting strange...I can have everyone in the main enclosure now it seems, but the chicks put themselves straight into the coop. They run around normally when it's just Dimple and weird auntie Brownie, but when Buddy and Brownie have access then all four chicks just "nope" right outa there and march into the coop. Not sure what I can do about that or if that's normal. The chicks have other roosts and spots they can go but they only use those places when they're around the two hens they like.
 
First crow from Junior today! Well, first loud awful noise that was clearly an attempt anyway. He needs to practice that a bit more. 😂 Also getting the first adorable "bokity bokity awwww" sounds from him like his dad used to make when greeting me. And he's starting to seek out the treat bags in the house to drag them around and try to get them open, but then he doesn't always eat the treats straight away when put some down for everyone. I'm increasingly having to directly offer him some for him to start snacking, otherwise he just yodels and watches the ladies eat it. They're all 8 weeks old today.

Junior did make a big oops this morning though before I took the chicks outside. He jumped in with my other broody when I was trying to clean some muck off of squishy and wasn't paying attention. Heard a lot of screaming and looked over to see him somehow half sliding on the floor and half draped over her head as she was charging around pushing him. Everyone is fine but I don't think he learned his lesson, so I guess that's it for chicks in the house and they'll be spending their first night in the coop with the big girls tonight.
 

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