Growing my little flock

[DonyaQuick]

Looks like I might actually be seeing some mild fume side effects in my hens from the main flock despite being pretty sure they never saw significant levels of whatever those fumes were. I'm still feeling good about all of my birds' overall health after that event, but toluene is a known endocrine disruptor; it can affect egg-laying and shell quality in wild birds that are exposed to it even at mild levels that cause no other health issues. And now I think I have some more evidence that it was toluene! As a precaution, I stored all eggs laid after the fumes event in a separate place and haven't used any. I didn't look at them closely at first though since I was just focused on the birds themselves and was just grateful everyone was alive and spunky. Now I'm looking closely, there are color and shape abnormalities, a bit of iffy shell thickness in some place on a few, and I got two wrinkly ones. Most notably, I've also had several eggs laid in the middle of the night by different hens while on the roost, which NEVER happens in that flock. No hens acting oddly or looking unhealthy in any other ways, but I'm going to be tossing eggs this week I think just to be safe. Toluene has a pretty short half life in the body, so anything they got should be out of them by now, but I don't think those odd egg events right after the fumes can just be a coincidence.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Baby #1: "oo yes, that's the spot..."
Baby #2: "eatin' that bandaid in 3...2..."

 

[DonyaQuick]

This is Miss Scruffy, who is about 2 and a half years old now. Fighter of a chick who broke her jaw hatching out of her egg. Broody mom who raised the cochin babies and taught them that the way to ask for hugs is to peck or bite the human as hard as you can. Crazy girl who who will fight any chicken to get onto my lap during morning hug time. Also apparently a dancer now! Out of nowhere today she went doing a bunch of great big wing dances for the other hens.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Last week, Mr Goober started getting oddly nippy with my husband and kind of cranky with me too. I actually said at one point something like "I hope this isn't some kind of late onset personality change," worrying in the back of my mind whether Goobs was somehow maturing out of his sweet Gooblyness. Well...I, too, might be in a bit of a mood if I was gearing up to dump piles upon piles of feathers everywhere and my whole body suddenly looked like THIS under a thin veneer of old scratty feathers. Now that he is well along with his metamorphosis into a cactus, he is a big mopey mess and having another brief stay indoors since he effectively has zero insulation and we're having a cold snap. He is staying in my home office, which naturally now looks like someone ripped apart a down pillow and threw it everywhere.

Goobs is by far having the hardest molt out of any of my birds but all my roos are molting now, and all of them are little moody messes.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Bigfoot is such a sweetheart. She's never gotten any longer tail feathers like the other cochin chicks - she has more of a bunny tail.

 

[fuzzi]

Any lasting issues from the fumes?

 

[DonyaQuick]

Any lasting issues from the fumes?

None with my birds thankfully! Just a few days of odd eggs and then back to normal.

The only recent bothersome discovery was a dead frog in a puddle on the cement pad where that sealer was applied…it is supposed to become inert eventually and there are zero fumes from it now even according to my meter, so I don’t know if the frog was a total coincidence or if it actually leached some stuff into the water. I have no way to test the puddle water unfortunately. Chickens of course are not in contact with it and also uphill a decent amount, so if it is leaches bit when rained on they should be unaffected.

 

[DonyaQuick]

What what what what WHAT?! That's a Raven egg. In a nest. Raven is my girl who has been laying eggs for a year and been utterly unwilling to set foot in a nest that whole time. She'll crawl into any other dark and dangerous hole to lay an egg, but never before has she been in a nest box. And I was about to make a "Reserved Parking for Raven" sign to put abover her favorite weird little corner on the coop floor LOL.

Meanwhile...Gooby is a happy fluffy boy again. I feel bad having ever doubted his personality with that molt; it hasn't changed one bit. He's the same gentle, snuggly clown that he's always been, just bigger and fluffier now!

I also know where he got his funny version of the rooster dance from (which I still need to get a video of at some point - he's so hard to film!). It's from his mom's side! Chungus has decided to join the dancing hen club and has recently given me a few little happy stompy dances that are exactly like what Goober does.

 

[DonyaQuick]

So wide! That would be a sassy Sasquatch, who was by far my most skiddish chick. Now she regularly comes over and pecks my leg for hugs.

 

[fuzzi]

So wide! That would be a sassy Sasquatch, who was by far my most skiddish chick. Now she regularly comes over and pecks my leg for hugs.
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Look at those fuzzy feet!