chickens | KW Homestead

Tag: chickens (page 5 of 8)

chicken egg incubation update–day 15

a brief warning for you here… some images in this post are of an unborn chicken embryo, which stopped growing inside its egg after a few days into the incubation period.

.:.

recently i candled the eggs again to double check my candling work from last week and the progress was amazing! during the process this time, you could really see the blood vessels and the larger, wiggling chicken inside a few of the eggs. once again, amazing!

i also decided to check the other 5 eggs that i wasn’t sure were fertilized, still thriving, or alive.

unknown egg #1: the first one was definitely fertilized and alive, and i was surprised and excited to add another potential chicken to our list for the hatch this sunday. so that puts our count at 23 chicks!

unknown egg #2: the next egg i checked was definitely no longer growing, and i could see the tell-tale red ring around the inside of the egg that means the egg was at one point fertilized but the embryo died within the first few days. this egg was pretty much transparent except for the red ring, and i removed this one to crack it open later and check out the contents.

unknown egg #3: this egg was just the same as egg #2 and i removed this one also.

unknown egg #4: this egg had no visible embryo and even though i turned it on all sides, i couldn’t see anything alive inside. there was a very dark section and a very visible air bubble, but the dark patch was different than the dark patches in the fertile and growing eggs and i couldn’t see any blood vessels or other signs of life. so i decided to take this egg out too so that it wouldn’t bust and contaminate the others as time went on.

unknown egg #5: i was still unsure about this egg, so i left it in inside the incubator just in case.

as of now, there are 24 eggs in the incubator and i’m sure (or as sure as a beginner can be) that 23 of them are growing nicely.

the other 3 eggs that i removed became a science experiment…

failure to thrive egg #1: when i cracked this one open i only saw the red ring of small blood vessels around the inside of the egg. there were no other substances inside besides the red ring and the light yellow liquid that was the yolk and white mixed together. that means this one was fertilized too (24 out of 27 points for rex).

failure to thrive egg #2: this egg had the same red ring as the previous one, but it also had a couple thick spots of dark red that could have been the beginnings of the the embryo. it seemed to me that this egg lived longer before failing to thrive. (25 out of 27 points for rex.)

failure to thrive egg #3: this last egg at first appeared to be the same as the second egg but when i poured the contents out into the bowl with the other yellow liquid, i heard a little plop. i looked in the bowl and found a tiny, but unmistakable embryo that hadn’t even begun to from its limbs yet,which meant that the egg died sometime around 3 or 4 days into the incubation process. (26 out of 27 points for rex!!!)

tiny chicken embryo

you can see its eyes but it has not yet formed limbs. to me, it looks somewhat like a seahorse!

jason and i have dealt with a chick that was born that died, and chicks that were busted out of their shell by careless hens just a few days before hatching, so this process isn’t new to me… and since the embryo was barely developed i don’t feel sad about the situation, just in awe of it. i am hoping that all of the eggs that are in the incubator now will thrive and hatch well… and i can give thanks for that!!!

i also found a great video on YouTube that shows the growth of the embryo from the beginning until the day i hatches… you can watch the video and think of our embryo-chicks, who are at 15 days today!

.:.

candling eggs and seeing baby chicks grow!

November 19, 2014 / Emma / 4 Comments

the incubating-chicken-eggs adventure continues… this time with some more hands-on activities!

last weekend we “candled” our eggs, a term which supposedly came from using the light of candles to see through the egg shell and observe the progress of the contents. this process usually shouldn’t be started before the eggs have been incubating for 7 or 8 days, since the growth of the baby chick inside is a lot more fragile during the first week (ish). also, waiting until at least a week into the process ensures that when you finally do candle the eggs, the embryo inside is much more visible.

the really cool thing about this simple and easy way to check on your eggs, is that it’s like a chicken ultrasound! you can actually see the life growing! candling also allows you to make sure that no bad eggs are still in the bunch that might explode later during incubation, affecting the environment of the viable eggs.

dark-shelled eggs are harder to see into, since the increased pigment in the shell obscures the light and keeps it from penetrating through as easily. jason and i actually has some trouble at first figuring out how to get the bright light to focus on the egg, until he had the idea to put our 1,000,000 candle power flashlight underneath a full toilet paper roll and sit the egg on top of the tube’s opening. this worked perfectly, and also meant that we didn’t have to hold the egg since it rested on the tube just fine on its own. i was able to shift the egg more easily this way, and locate the embryos. the pictures and video that we took really don’t do the experience justice…

let’s see… how do i explain this? the darkest blob that is a little higher than halfway up the egg and a little to the left of center are the eyes of the chick!

the video below shows the dark shape (which is easier to see in the video) moving around in its shell. dancing, really! all the information that i read said that you might see the embryos move inside their shell during candling if you got lucky, and i got lucky over a dozen times! after i finished squealing with delight, i filmed the video!

the coolest thing i learned?

that at least 21 out of our 27 incubating eggs are fertilized and growing magnificently! this is a really high ratio and makes me proud of rex! also, it makes me less inclined to eat him next time he tries to attack me!

after candling all of the eggs, i put a check mark on the eggs that i was sure were fertilized and growing. later tonight, after i’m done writing this, i plan to candle the other eggs and see if they are fertilized, as well as check on a few of the ones i’ve already checked off! talk about an awesome way to spend the evening!

our incubating eggs, most of them with check marks!

.:.

incubating chicken eggs 101

November 12, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

the time has come for us to have some babies… 21 chicken babies, hopefully!

we finally broke out our new incubator, the incuview all-in-one egg incubator, that has the ability to keep eggs moist, turn them every few hours, and keep them warm and toasty just like a mother hens’s butt! another really cool thing about the incuview is that it is capable of incubating reptile eggs and many bird eggs, such as chicken, goose, duck, and turkey.

so, this past weekend we decided to incubate 21 chicken eggs (this is the number that will fit in the incubator) so that we can have some new chickens this coming year! we started incubating on sunday and we saved eggs from last wednesday through saturday to be sure that we would have enough to incubate. these we stored at room temperature, pointy end down. we also made sure to shift them in their tray every day so that nothing inside the egg would begin to stick to the shell or form air bubbles. when sunday came around, we chose the best shaped, cleanest eggs from our collection and placed them end to end in the incubator.

our incubating eggs!

the default temperature fr the incubator is 99.5 degrees, which is ideal for chicken eggs, and the dial measuring humidity is easy to read and understand. i do recommend, however, putting less water in the bottom water tray than you think you need… i poured out a good bit of the water today, and the humidity is still very high inside the device. i’ll be checking the levels again tomorrow and pouring out even more water if the humidity doesn’t drop.

chicken eggs hatch after 21 days of incubation, and the last few days of incubation require a different humidity level in the environment so that as they hatch the chicks don’t get stuck to their shell. our incubator has a setting that allows for this increase in humidity and we can disengage the turning device so that the eggs are not turned during the last few, critical days.

the turning device is the metal rod that you see coming down from the lid of the incubator.

this weekend or sometime next week we will be able to hold the eggs up to a bright light to see which of the eggs are fertilized and which are developing properly. it’s like a chicken ultrasound!

the hardest part of the hatching will be watching the chicks be born without interfering. it is great that you can see the whole event but since they recommend waiting every few hours to remove hatched and dried off chicks, i’m going to be jumping out of my skin while i wait to hold them!

we’ve decided that once they’re born we’re going to keep them in a pen inside of the basement shower so that they can grow without being molested by bolt and without taking up too much of our basement space. once spring rolls around, we’re going to replace some of our older hens with this new batch, and eat whichever older hens and newer roosters are left.

so, we’re starting off on a new adventure here at kuska wiñasun homestead, an adventure that will hopefully end in many little chicks!

.:.

kuska wiñasun’s official farm bandanas: by 100% gdk!

October 31, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

my amazing friend georgia, who is a fantastic artist and as jason puts it, “an awesome gift giver,” has given us 6 fantastic bandanas!

she completely designed these bandanas herself, using photographs she took of our chickens feeding and our chia growing. the images of the chickens make radial blossoms and the chia leaves form bright pathways of green. she also included images of violets, petunias, and marigolds.

they are 100% cotton, machine washable, and she even stitched the seams herself!

as georgia wrote: they are our very first farm-issue work bandanas… for sun and sweat and messes!

amazing!!! be sure to check out her other creations at 100% GDK.

you can see the radial “chicken” blossoms in each of the 4 corners.

if you look closely at the chickens, you can recognize roosty, the bantam rooster, eating with the standard sized barred rocks and buff orpington.

if you look closely at the chickens, you can recognize roosty, our bantam rooster, eating with the standard sized barred rocks and buff orpingtons.

this is the third of her three designs. she made two of each!

.:.

geese vs. chickens: which to choose?

October 29, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

an unlikely duo: a bantam and a standard.

chickens vs. geese…

if you live outside of the city limits, and are looking to raise some birds, you might be wondering if you should begin with geese or chickens (or both!) as you begin your homestead.

here’s a few things that we’ve learned about chickens and geese, and hopefully we can provide some insight and help you make the choice that is best for you and your life!

self-sufficiency–winner: it’s a tie!

geese and chickens are both great at scrounging up food to eat. geese go for grass and greenery and chickens eat greenery and any random bugs, seeds, and tidbits they can find.

ability to protect themselves/immunity to predation— winner: geese!

geese win this one, by a long shot! our geese have never been threatened by any predators, unlike the chickens. geese are so much bigger and they are excellent at ganging up on a potential threat and flogging them (sometimes to death). chickens simply think of themselves and run, although depending on predator size, a rooster might do a nice job protecting his hens. geese are a formidable threat, and since they operate as a team, they are far more frightening!
even if you have a mostly predator-proof chicken house, if you ever let your chickens roam free, there is a chance a hawk could swoop in for the kill. you also have to be sure to safely secure your chickens at night, but not your geese. we often close the geese in their simple pen at night, but the cage is by no means completely predator proof (it doesn’t need to be!) and sometimes the geese even spend the night out in the yard.

intelligence–winner: geese!

the geese are, by far, smarter than the chickens. you can tell that they are greater strategists, have better memories, and are much less frantic when escaping human contact. the geese will look inquiringly at something new, craning their necks around, whereas the chickens will either run from it or peck it. on a related note, the chickens are much less social with each other than the geese, and you can really see the link between intelligence and having a more complex social communication.

personality–winner: geese!

largely due to their intelligence, the geese have much more entertaining personalities. jason and i feel that they are similar to dogs since each goose has their own fun attitude and temperament. they act offended when they don’t get their favorite food, sometimes follow us around like dogs, and even honk at us when we get home as though they’re bolt greeting us at the door.
we’ve decided that the coolest thing ever is going to be letting our future kids raise a few goslings and letting them imprint on them. then they’ll having a fantastic, protective companion to follow them around!

body size (for meat purposes)–winner: geese!

although goose meat is different than chicken, you’re going to get twice or three times as much meat from a goose!

egg laying–winner: chickens!

geese lay large eggs, but they taste different than chicken eggs and since they taste so rich, you might not want to eat them everyday. chicken eggs are great for so many things in the kitchen, and to cook a large goose egg you really need to be committed to getting stuffed!
geese only lay during one season of the year, and chickens lay nearly all year round with a few slow-down periods in production.

space needed–winner: chickens!

since geese are so much larger and really need a lot of grassy pasture if you plan to fatten them up for cheaper, chickens win in the space competition.

noisiness–winner: chickens!

you might be surprised about this, but the geese are exponentially louder than our roosters. their honk has the weird ability to literally cancel out all noise in the vicinity. when i’m trying to talk and the geese start honking, i cannot hear any of the words coming out of my own mouth, even if i yell!

guardian ability–winner: geese!

as i mentioned before, geese are good at watching each others’ backs, but they are also great alarms if a new person approaches your house… another way they’re like dogs! some geese (not ours) will even charge strange people and flog them until they leave. it all depends on what you want your geese to be and how you raise them (breed also matters, too). they can be anything from a warning system to an attacking flock!

overall, we recommend raising both geese and chickens, just like we recommend raising both standard and bantam chickens! each has their own pros and cons, so why not dive on in and reap the benefits of both?

.:.

naming the new bantam chickens!

October 24, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

i spent part of the afternoon outside, sitting on an indian blanket from the wedding, looking at our new bantam flock. they seem to be having a fine time inside of their new bantam mobile, and since their space is small and contained, i was able to get a really close look at all of them.

first of all, roosty is the leader of the new flock, and he has 4 of his old ladies with him: brin, who is brindle and just had a brief stay in the chicken spa because she was molting and looking ugly; q, who looks like a quail and is named after one; vanna, who has a white neck on a black body and is named after vanna white; and cleo, who is very broody and has a long black tuft on her head and a bright golden neck (so we named her after cleopatra).

i wanted to give the new hens names, but first i had to spend some time observing them and taking notes. at first they all looked alike to me, except for the hen now named perry, who has no comb or tuft of hair on her head and seriously looks like she is a sneaky hawk who has gone undercover with the chickens! some of the new hens have features that distinguish them from the rest of the flock–features that are very unique and noticeable in the crowd–but others have features that are similar to their mobilemates and thus needed to be observed more closely to tell them apart from one or two look-alikes. so i made this chart (i am an organizational nut at heart):

S Gray/S Black = speckled gray/speckled black

Neck color	Body color	Tuft on head?	Comb type	Other	Name
Gold	S Gray	Yes	Pink, big, crooked, floppy		Elvis
Gold	S Black	Yes	Pink, small, crooked, floppy		Presley
Gold	S Black	No	Pink, small	Orange wings	Red Wing
Gold	S Gray	No	Pink, small	Orange breast	Robin
Gold	S Black	Yes	Pink, small	Ring of missing feathers around her neck	Ringo
Gold	S Gray	Yes, very small	Pink, big	Orange spotted wings	Poka
Gold	Black	No	Pink, big		Oro
Gold	Black	No	Gray, small		Churo
Gold	Black	No	Gray, small	Small bodied	Teeny
Gold	S Black	No	None	Looks like a hawk	Perry

The traits that are highlighted in blue are the traits that played the largest factor in giving them their name. For example, the two with the very floppy combs were hard to tell apart until i looked more closely at comb size and the direction it flopped over their face. they both looked like they had elvis-like hair to me, so i named the one with the largest comb elvis and the one with the smaller comb, presley.

red wing, robin, poka, and ringo were easy to tell apart from the crowd, since they had deep orange wings, a deep orange breast, deep orange polka-dotted wings, and a ring of missing feathers around their necks, respectively. ringo‘s missing feathers were from getting her head stuck through chicken wire for an entire day before my dad noticed and could free her. hilariously, she still has the featherless ring!

oro and churo look very similar to the matronly cleo, so i decided to give them names with similar sounds. neither have black head tufts like cleo, but they both look like less regal versions of her anyway! teeny is the smallest-bodied of all, and has a really tiny gray comb, and perry, like i said, looks just like a hawk (named perry after the peregrine falcon).

and there you have it… our new chickens’ names. proof that even within a batch of seemingly similar things, you can tell those things apart if you sit and look long enough!

.:.

making a bantam chicken tractor!

October 22, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

yesterday i finally finished our bantam chicken tractor! very exciting!

it all started with an old truck camper with 1/2 of the roof removed.

the old truck camper, about to get re-purposed!

it took a little while for me to decide what design would be best for our new birds (bred by my father), and i thought about it a while. ultimately, i determined that having two “stories” to the structure would be the way to go, so that they could roost higher off the ground and not have roost bars on the lower level getting in their way as they spent the day grazing around the grass inside the tractor.

in order to make the second story, i added bent and molded electrical conduit which, once screwed together with self-tapping screws, was very sturdy.

screwing in the bent electrical conduit as a frame… tedious and exacting!

this process took the longest of all, since i had to hammer out certain portions of the conduit so that it was flatter and easier to drill into, and i also had to clamp the conduit to the camper framing so they it wouldn’t slide about while drilling (which it still wanted to do anyway!).

hammered out electrical conduit… flatter is always easier to drill into!

whew! the frame is finally done!

once the two conduits were attached, we decided that removing another 1/2 of the roof (3/4 now in total removed) would allow for more sun and fresh air to reach the bantams. the nest boxes (3 of them, made out of an old plastic planter) are attached to the tractor itself so that when the device moves, the egg box does too! we applied the same concept to the platform that holds their waterer.

now the egg box is firmly attached…

once these were secured, i started attaching hardware cloth to the open sides and open roof on the half of the tractor with just one story.

hardware cloth… be sure to wear gloves!

attaching the hardware cloth…

then i attached hardware cloth to a portion of the roof of the second story, leaving space for most of the second story to be covered in the sheet metal i removed from the camper. i added more sheet metal (that we found while cleaning out our woods) as the sides to the second story and finished level 2 off with some more hardware cloth that was woven to the top piece with electric fence wire.

i added hinged doors to the side with the nest box, so that we can open them up and get the eggs without any trouble. this also has a latch that locks so that if any clever raccoons get brave, they shouldn’t be able to get inside. we spray painted the whole contraption white and drilled holes in the sides of level 2 to slide in three nest bars. i added a rope to the front of the tractor so that we could easily slide it along to a fresh grass spot each day.

opening the nest box door to collect eggs!

and that was it! it was a three day project, but it was fun to make. we’re proud of our “chicken hotel,” and now all we have to do is convince all of the hens that they should roost instead of giving up and sleeping in the nest boxes. at least roosty will enjoy having his own flock without having to worry about rex bullying him!

.:.

a chicken gets a spa vacation!

October 3, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

after the whirlwind of the wedding, i noticed that one of our bantam hens didn’t look so great. after i fed the chickens one day, i could see that she acted a little skittish around the others while everyone was eating, and her feathers looked patchy, revealing her bare skin on some places. based on her behavior, i expected that she was being picked on by the others (particularly the bantams). she didn’t seem confident enough to search out the more delicious scraps of food, and looked around the whole time she ate as though she expected to get jumped.

every now and again, one of the bantams will become an outcast for a little while, and i haven’t yet figured out why. there are certainly some dominant hens that peck at others if they want them out of the way while they’re eating, but i hadn’t seen this particular hen run up against any trouble.

look at bren’s pretty feather pattern!

i decided to catch her and put her in solitary, the way we did with sola, a chicken so named for her sad, single tail feather. catching bren was easy. she was inside the house and it was simple to corner her and get her in the net. she struggled so much, though, that it took me a little while to untangle her. once she was caught, i was finally able to examine her feather problem. first of all, she looked healthy under all of the missing feathers. she didn’t appear to have mites or any cuts or open wounds. it is possible that she’d pulled out her own feathers so she could sit on eggs, but i hadn’t yet seen her sitting on a nest, so i wasn’t sure about that. where her feathers were missing, some were growing back, and since her feathers are dark, you can really see the way that feathers grow: emerging from the hard, clear tip of the feather like a flower opening its bloom!

bren’s bare breast

bren’s feathers begin to return on her neck and chest…

for now, just to keep an eye on her, bren is in a cage by herself in the carport. i consider this the chicken spa since she gets all the food and water she wants and doesn’t get picked on at all (if that was the problem). we’ll let her spend some time in there until she grows some feathers back and then we’ll reintroduce her to the flock and see if things get a little better for her. for now, all she has to worry about is that big black dog that likes to jump at her cage as he walks by and that black cat who thinks that sleeping on top of the chicken cage is fun.

bren, enjoying her time in the chicken spa

.:.

chicken update!

August 1, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

ever since we lost primera, we’ve not had any luck hatching any chicks. our last try of 8 eggs were all failures, with 6 of them breaking before their hatching date (none of these were fertilized) and the other 2 never hatching (one of these was fertilized but it never fully developed).

since primera’s story was a sad one for us, it was amazing to visit my parents and see a little barred rock chick that is from our flock. this chick was hatched and raised by one of my dad’s broody buff orpingtons, and he (still not sure if it’s a future hen or a rooster) is doing wonderfully! he is, of course, rex’s son and also the son of one of our barred rock hens. this means he is unlike primera somewhat, who was a barred rock/buff orpington cross.

rex’s progeny: first chick, with mom standing by!

another chicken update that we have is that we’ll be acquiring 9 more bantam hens from my dad very soon. these hens are a beautiful golden/orange/black and they haven’t even started laying yet. it will be exciting to have more bantam eggs and i’m sure roosty will love having some younger hens in his flock. we’ll be moving the bantams to a separate pen in the next few weeks, where they won’t have to deal with the standards. roosty hasn’t yet been given the chance to reign as protector of a flock, and he’s a great little rooster so i’m really happy for him to have his chance without rex bullying him and his ladies.

the bantam hens that we’ll bring home soon.

.:.

what all of us animals have in common…

July 22, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

one thing’s for sure, living with animals on a farm reminds you how much all of us animals really have in common.

when it gets hot and humid outside, we all head for the shade and search out some water. since i just got back from the beach, i spent most of today dreaming about a large body of water to soak in (like a pond!). i also drank tons of water today, which i really needed to add ice cubes to since i spent most of today with my hands in a scalding hot dish-sink. we’ve decided against cutting on the air unless company is visiting; we really like hearing the world outside our windows and having the AC on makes us lazy bums who avoid doing anything outside.

since today was a hot one, and i spent most of my time looking out the kitchen window at the birds, i was reminded of these common needs we all have in the heat… shade and water!

the chickens were nowhere to be seen when the sun was shining, but as soon as a cloud would cover the sun they would come out of the house for a little exploration. the small white shade cloth that we’ve recently added to our new chicken pen setup provided enough shade during portions of the day for rex and a select group of his ladies to nap in the shade.

the geese spent most of the day sleeping while floating in their kiddie pool, and bolt tried to hog the floor fan that was supposed to be blowing on me while i washed dishes. no doubt if he had been outside he would have been hiding under his shady bush!

all four geese chilling in their kiddie pool together!

bridey drank tons of water and bolt could be heard lapping up water from the upstairs toilet, the downstairs toilet, a downstairs water bowl, and an upstairs water bowl. when it rained later in the day both he and i really enjoyed walking in it to cool off!

so whatever animals you have, mammals or birds, or just your partner (since we humans are animals too), make sure they’ve got plenty of water to drink and shade to hide in!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013