It's been a minute, and new going ons have been going on at the coop. So grab a snack and something to drink, it's time for another
# Chicken Report
Quite a bit has happened, actually. The little chick who was in the nursery for a while kept losing her feathers, so we know her as baldie. She didn't grow any new feathers for a while, until a few days ago, when we started to see that she's growing a new set of them. Took her long enough. Special mention to her brothers because they took her back in and have taken good care of her. They are two little male chickens, I intend to have one of them replace the rooster, and I will have to give away the other one, change him for a hen, or maybe eat him. I really am not used to slaughtering my chickens, I don't want to do that.
I gave away a duck! The only male remaining from the current batch. I gave him to a neighbour who needed one for her females. I was going to get a couple currants in exchange but I haven't set up a nice home for them.
I got two more chickens, however. These are an exotic breed we just call "japanese chickens", and they are the cutest things. They go in the duck garden away from the rest of the chickens who would pick on them. Actually I had to take out baldie's brothers out of there so there's only them and baldie with the ducks. They seem to be doing pretty well so far.
Of the 10 chickens that had hatched from the other 3 hens, only one survived. This is the hardest part of breeding chickens. I took pains to keep them safe from predators, and they ended up dying with the heat wave. I kept seeing them look sick and eventually die withing a few hours. The last remaining chick out of that disaster, however, is alive and kicking, and he gets to go out for a couple hours before sunset.
And now that the new chickens are in the duck garden, we have started making a little house for them in there, so that they can have a place for themselves. Today was the first nice day in two months, and we managed to get it half done. Tomorrow goes the other half.
Getting these chickens made me reconsider getting currants. On one hand I would like to have a little "chicken garden" with rare chicken breeds, but on the other hand, it's more work and I wouldn't want to have a currant and a japanese rooster on the same ground constantly fighting, which I know will happen.
I don't know what else to say, now that it's raining I am going to plant a lot of things on the duck/chicken garden, and well, I have a lot of chicken-adjacent work to do, as well as non-chicken-adjacent, so for now that is all, until the next...
Chicken report!