Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

My Olive Egger ended up laying chocolate brown. It’s a pretty egg, and I was a teensy bit disappointed. Luckily somehow the 3 BYM chicks my hen hatched last year lay green eggs. I just want happy healthy hens also, but different colors are nice…seems olive eggs are not a guarantee.

Could've sworn I'd seen somewhere that there was a 5% brown egger chance with the commonly used olive egger crosses, but I can't seem to find where I read that now...everything just says "chance of brown eggs." So maybe I misread or imagined that rate and it's actually quite a lot higher percentage of brown eggers from the hatchery crosses.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I can hardly blame Mr Cuddles Junior for being such a grump when this is what he has to put up with while he's trying to wait patiently in line for hugs

 

[DonyaQuick]

I think Mr Cuddles Junior may have tangled with a hawk yesterday through the mesh. Both red tail and sharp shinned hawks have been buzzing my chicken enclosures with increasing frequency since the regular snowstorms started. I guess they must be getting desperate. I have not been letting chickens out between that and large quantities of snow, and everyone in both flocks is protected by combinations of heavy duty 1in welded wire and/or 19 gauge 1/2in HWC. No raptor is getting a meal through that, but for some reason taht hasn's stopped them looking for gaps that aren't there. I have already seen a couple times that Junior will fly up and strike the HWC if they come past low and close enough.

Yesterday I went out to change waterers and Junior turned around to say hello and was covered in fresh wet blood all down his front feathers. Not a drop on any other bird and whatever it was had obviously just happened right before I went out. I immediately brought him inside of course to get him cleaned up and checked out. Turned out the damage was three parallel slashes on one wattle, quite deep, with the middle one longer than the other two. Really does not look like he snagged himself on something in the enclosure - I've seen HWC snags and they aren't long, clean, deep cuts like that. I do see an area where the snow has been knocked off a hoizontal beam and it looks like something tried to land there...which appens to be the one area where I don't have shower curtains up. Only thing I can figure is one of the smaller hawks must have tried to land there, Junior did his thing, and then must have gotten somewhat "footed" I believe it's called through the HWC. Hasn't slowed him down at all...he was a gentleman about being cleaned up and was kind of clingy with me this morning, but otherwise he seems just fine.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Coop cleaning is hazardous with my flock. I get 4+ normal sized chickens stacked all over me as soon as I bend over for any reason, which is fine...but then I never know when big girl Coco Bean is going to join in the fun and throw my back out lol.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well I was wrong - there are indeed TWO green eggers! Today's egg lineup, all of which were made within such a short time of each other it has to be 5 different chickens.

So that means from left to right we have...

???, definitely Raven, ???, definitely Harley, Dimple I think (definitely not an "egger")

So, who is green egger #2? Did I get it wrong twice over and that one's actually Hobbit and the pink and white splotches is somebody else??

 

[2ndTink]

Well I was wrong - there are indeed TWO green eggers! Today's egg lineup, all of which were made within such a short time of each other it has to be 5 different chickens.

View attachment 3733752

So that means from left to right we have...

???, definitely Raven, ???, definitely Harley, Dimple I think (definitely not an "egger")

So, who is green egger #2? Did I get it wrong twice over and that one's actually Hobbit and the pink and white splotches is somebody else??

They are great looking eggs! Definitely looks like 2 green egg layers!

What an egg-citing mystery!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Raven has been quite determined to lay eggs in a particular corner of the shed-coop instead of using a nest box. I thought, well, if I can't get her to go in one of the existing nest boxes, I will make a new nest box and just put it where she goes, and then maybe she'll get used to the whole nest box idea and I can scoot it to a better place over time. So, I slapped together a modestly sized new box this morning out of some spare wood. Naturally, having put as little effort into this thing as possible and placed it in a location where I don't actually want nest boxes...it's now the very best nest box. Top quality nest box. Amazing nest box. The only nest box worth considering, in fact. I can't even get in there now to add ceramic eggs.

 

[2ndTink]

Raven has been quite determined to lay eggs in a particular corner of the shed-coop instead of using a nest box. I thought, well, if I can't get her to go in one of the existing nest boxes, I will make a new nest box and just put it where she goes, and then maybe she'll get used to the whole nest box idea and I can scoot it to a better place over time. So, I slapped together a modestly sized new box this morning out of some spare wood. Naturally, having put as little effort into this thing as possible and placed it in a location where I don't actually want nest boxes...it's now the very best nest box. Top quality nest box. Amazing nest box. The only nest box worth considering, in fact. I can't even get in there now to add ceramic eggs.
View attachment 3734224

Haha, well congrats on them loving your carpentry skills! They clearly love their new, fancy, perfectly sized, nesting box!

 

[fuzzi]

Raven has been quite determined to lay eggs in a particular corner of the shed-coop instead of using a nest box. I thought, well, if I can't get her to go in one of the existing nest boxes, I will make a new nest box and just put it where she goes, and then maybe she'll get used to the whole nest box idea and I can scoot it to a better place over time. So, I slapped together a modestly sized new box this morning out of some spare wood. Naturally, having put as little effort into this thing as possible and placed it in a location where I don't actually want nest boxes...it's now the very best nest box. Top quality nest box. Amazing nest box. The only nest box worth considering, in fact. I can't even get in there now to add ceramic eggs.
View attachment 3734224

I literally laughed, shared with my dh.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Miss green egger Raven whyyyyyy.....why do you hate the box so much lol. Even little Dimple (pictured) thinks the box is good, and she's picky. Every single other egg went in there today!

Haha, well congrats on them loving your carpentry skills! They clearly love their new, fancy, perfectly sized, nesting box!

I'm thinking my other boxes must be too big! My first box was 18in wide, which I used for my broodies the last couple years so that seemed ok, but Raven doesn't like it. The second one I made earlier this year for the new coop ended up being 22in wide due to a measurement goof...although the older hens were using that extra big one preferentially for some time. Of course, that went out the widow with the new one which is the narrowest at 16in wide since I was trying to make it more cozy. This kind of thing in the pic below was starting to happen regularly with the pullets in the 22in wide one, so I thought maybe that's why Raven was upset with it, but apparently Raven just won't be contained in a box lol.