Back in late March, one of our australorp hens went broody, and 3 weeks later, by God’s graces, she hatched out I believe 9 out of 12 eggs (11 were fertilized, but two of the young ones either died pretty quickly or didn’t make it out of the shell), and she raised the others very successfully! She hatched them out originally in our chicken mini-tractor, and then we moved them into the summer kitchen where we had our chicken nursery last year. Finally, just recently, I moved them to the chicken pen. As I mention in the video below, a few of them started getting sick in a day or two after moving them to the pen, and sadly, one died. I started feeding the other two that didn’t look well a little elixir the Lord granted I come up with — using an at least 3cc dropper, fill it with 1/4 cc angrstrom silver, then up to just past 1.5 cc’s with egg yoke, and up to 3 cc’s with goat milk (I did 2 1/2 for these little ones; rinse it down with semi-clean water — and they appear to be doing much better, thanks to God.
And here they are about 6 weeks into it:
And here’s a little video, that includes the mother hen:
And maybe 12 days ago, another autralorp hen went broody, and here she is in the mini-tractor:
We are very grateful to the Lord for granting this provision of being able to continue the flock, and we pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His Church.
Some time ago it was evident that one of our newer roosters was having some trouble walking — it would almost goose step. I noticed that its legs had developed a white crust on them, but thought that it was perhaps just a genetic defect or something. I picked off one of the crusties on the leg, and it looked like moist skin, like when a layer of human skin is removed. I wondered what was going on, but at the time, I just let it go. Then, over time, several of our chickens seemed to start getting the same crust on their legs or their scales started to look and feel “odd,” and I noticed that some of them were starting to have trouble walking, even some preferring not to do much of it.
Ok, something appeared to be wrong; and at that point, I figured I’d better investigate.
Here is a picture of the rooster’s legs:
In searching the Internet, and after finally working out a helpful search term, and after viewing several images, I discovered what I believed to be the culprit: scaly leg. This is apparently caused by a mite that burrows into the legs and causes the scales to protrude or that white crust I was seeing, and can in the end cause lameness. Wow! I was then glad I finally looked into it, although I felt badly for that rooster because I hadn’t researched it earlier.
And so, after further investigation, the simplest way I found to remedy this situation is to get some cheap cooking oil (not motor oil, because of the potential toxicity) and dip each leg in it for a couple of seconds (from an off off-gird standpoint, I assume we could probably use lard, but we just bought the oil instead rather than use up any lard now). This was supposed to be done for at least several days, and needed to be done to all infected birds, as the mite apparently spreads from bird to bird.
What I ended up doing was dipping each bird’s legs at night for about four days in a row, and then switched to every other day for about another week, and a couple more times at three days apart. Because we had so many to do, when I was dipping them every other day, I started alternating days with part of the flock. I used a pint jar so I didn’t have to have a lot of oil used at one time. It took a day or two to get the hang of not allowing the chicken to spill the oil, which I did by also holding the jar with the dipping hand.
Here I am dipping that rooster’s legs:
And sure enough, a few weeks later, apparently the mites died, and their legs began to heal. And here is that original rooster:
Nice!
Well, that little therapy appeared to work really well; and since then, it looks like the other chickens have had similar results.
We are thankful to the Lord for allowing us to fairly easily help the chickens, and we are grateful to Him for Him granting the healing that He did.
When we last left our broody hens and chick-hatchings, we had just had another Austrolorp hen go broody, wondering if perhaps the Lord was not done in granting chicks this year.
And sure enough, we moved her into one of the little chicken pen areas in the piano room, and she hatched out somewhere around eight or so — Group 16!
I didn’t get pictures when they were younger and with their mama, and they have since moved on to our chicken pen area (which is our staging area for younger birds before going to the main chicken tractor), but here are a couple of them as they are now:
And a video:
We did have yet another hen start to go broody recently, but because of the difficulties in trying to bring chicks through the winter, we just pulled any eggs she was sitting on, and she eventually lost interest. I don’t like to do that, but we’ve had to try to take care of young chicks when it’s really cold, it it takes quite a bit of effort (you can see a little of what we had to do during the pretty bad cold-snap we had a couple of years ago.
Anyway, once again we are very thankful to the Lord for granting these provisions of the chicks throughout the year, and pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His people.
It’s been several months since our last blog post about all of the chicks the Lord has been granting us this year; and in that blog post, there were some in the pipe line, which the Lord graciously granted the hatching of more chicks! And He kept going and going….and we are very thankful for the abundance of these provisions!
And so, here we go……
We’ll call this one Group 7. This was the hen sitting on eggs in the garbage can at the end of the previous blog post:
And this is Group 8:
And here is Group 9:
And here is the one chick that this hen hatched out (Group 10). She diligently kept sitting on the eggs, for some time, but this was the only one meant to be:
One day I was around the chicken pen, and a hen strolled up behind it with 15 chicks in tow! Wow! What a surprise that was. Come to find out, she had hatched them out in a stack of square bales of oat hay we had:
And here those chicks are after we were able to catch all of them (Group 11):
This is Group 12:
With the single chick from Group 10, I had tried to put it in with other groups of chicks around his size, but he kept getting picked on and was basically running around scared, and didn’t appear to be eating or drinking. And so, I thought I would put him with a mother who was close to hatching some out, so he would be larger than them, and then hopefully would learn to adjust to being with other chickens. That was about a week before the hen was due to hatch out her clutch. Well, all putting him in there with her did was bring her out of her broodiness — I guess she figured she had hatched one out when I put him in there; and so, she ended up hatching out none of hers. He is in the next picture with her.
What I ended up doing was when they were old enough, I put him in with those 15 rogue chickens that were hatched out in the hay bales, after pulling the mother hen; and he did very well in there, being a little bigger than them all:
Next is Group 13:
And group 14:
And then one day, another hen rolled out of the woods with a chick in tow; and here they are, just the two of them (Group 15):
Finally, here is a video recap of all of these latest hatchings:
But wait! Perhaps the Lord is not done…the Australorp in front in the right nest started acting broody yesterday:
Wow! God has been very gracious in granting these provisions. Although several died, most of the hatchlings have made it through to now. We have found the Australorps to be great sitters, most of them sitting at some point, hatching out eggs, with some doing more than one round. We are grateful for the sitting hens, and the new chickens, and we pray God glorifies Himself through the granting of them.
The Lord has shown extra graces this year in the amount of broody hens we’ve had. We almost can’t keep up, for which we’re very thankful!
And so, after the first round of chicks hatched for 2012, here is the next round from the hens that were in the “nurseries” mentioned in that previous blog post.
This was the next hen to hatch some out (this one wasn’t mentioned in that last blog post; these chicks are Group 2). We had her in our chicken pen area:
Going onto the “nursery,” this was the next hen to hatch her chicks (Group 3):
And then here’s the next one (Group 4). You can see the struggling one at the bottom — I didn’t think it was going to make it; and it looked like it had trouble walking; but by God’s graces it did, as you can see in the video below. I did add some “shackles” to its legs using duct tape, as it looked like it might have been spraddle-legged; I don’t know if it was for sure, but if it was, the shackles seemed to help (I got the shackles info from http://www.poultryhelp.com/spraddle.html, although our little chick didn’t look as bad as the example on that page). We have tried the shackles before on a very young rooster, and by God’s granting the shackles definitely helped:
And then here’s the hen and her chicks that are in the piano room (Group 5). This one also had a chick that really looked like it wasn’t going to make it — it had trouble standing, looked very sleepy, and couldn’t really get around very much. I actually put the spraddle-leg shackles on it too, but it was having so much trouble dealing with them (it was just falling over with its talons pointed backward) that I removed them. I thought for sure it wasn’t going to make it; but, again by God’s granting, it did, and it seems to be getting around pretty well now:
Finally, there were a couple of broody hens in our main chicken tractor that we just didn’t have a place for in any of our other buildings — they were both in the same nest; and so, we waited until they were supposed to hatch them, and they did hatch two before we could move them. Then, having removed the mother hen from Group 1 from the previous chick-hatching blog post, we also removed the mother hen from Group 2 that is in the chicken pen area, shuttled Group 1 to the chicken pen, and moved one of the mother hens (we just picked one), the chicks, and the rest of their eggs to the mini-tractor; and since, she has hatched out two more (Group 6):
And here’s a video about them all:
Whew! But, apparently we aren’t done yet, Lord willing — there are now even more broody hens; and so, we plan to keep the shuttling-to-the-chicken-pen area/opening-up-a-nursery-area process going.
This one is scheduled to hatch out next. She decided to get broody in an empty garbage can (which she leaves every once in a while to get food and water), where chickens sometimes lay eggs:
And here are the nests in the main chicken tractor. The game hen in the upper right is scheduled next after the garbage can hen, and then we just added eggs under the three Australorp hens on the bottom nests (the other hens I think were just “playing” broody at the time of the picture). I believe the hen in the bottom right nest is one of the ones that helped hatch out Group 6:
And so, once again, we are very thankful to God for this “problem” of many broody hens; and we thank Him for these many safe hatchings.
Last year, the Lord granted that some of our hens would be broody and sit on eggs — something that hadn’t really happened much until then. Well, God has continued to be gracious in that way, granted one of our hens to get broody; and by God’s graces, she hatched out 13 new chicks out of 14 eggs!
We’ve since lost one, but here is a picture of them:
And a quick video:
Along with this hen, we suddenly had an avalanche of broody hens! We’ve had a hard time finding where to put them, but we put one in our chicken coup in the chicken pen, and turned our summer kitchen into a chicken nursery.
Here’s one sitting in the piano room:
And another in the summer kitchen area:
And the pantry:
There are two (sometimes three in two nests) more in the main chicken tractor that we’re not sure where to put, but hopefully we will figure that out before the chicks hatch (if the Lord wills).
We are very grateful to the Lord for granting this “problem,” and we pray for continued healthy hatchlings, according to His will.
Recently, another one of our game hens went broody; and so we put a bunch of eggs under her, once again hoping the Lord might grant continued perpetuation of the chickens, thus helping us be yet a little more separate from dependence on the world.
And He did!
When culling our roosters recently for butchering (since we indeed had too many), we had decided to keep a few more roosters than what we’ve heard is a typically normal ratio, in hopes more eggs would be fertilized, as we’ve had it where no eggs were fertilized for two broody rounds in a row; and it seems to have helped — 10 out of 11 hatched. At this point, we’re probably at 1 rooster to 2 or 3 or so hens that are currently laying; and we’re probably about 1 to 5 or 6 with all of the other hens included — we’ll see how that goes when the others start also producing, Lord willing.
Below are the new ones in live action. In the video I mention helping one hatch out. It had poked a hole through the shell, where you could see its little beak; but then it sat there the rest of the day. I would tap the egg shell, and it would open and close its beak, so I knew it wasn’t dead. By the time the end of the day drew near, I was bothered it hadn’t made any progress, and was trying to think of some way to help, but had heard it’s not good to help them. And so, I had decided to just let it happen as it was going to happen…until…I thought there must be some way to help it as I thought it was probably going to die if something wasn’t done. I looked up online regarding the topic; and the site I found said not to help, but also said that after a day of it not progressing it was possible to help, and the person gave instructions on what they did. And so, figuring it was probably essentially dead already if something wasn’t done, and that in helping it, even if it died, it was going to be in no worse a situation than it already faced, I decided to see what I could do.
The Web site I found with information about helping a chick hatch said to slowly chip away at the shell in pieces, as a chick would naturally do. In the case when an egg has been opened like this one was, the inner membrane dries out, and will I guess stick to the chick; and so, if you see bleeding, they said to stop and drop warm water around on the membrane to soften it, and try again in a little while. Well, in using some pointed tweezers, I didn’t actually heed that advice at first, and saw blood, but was able to chip away at the shell and gently pull back the membrane. I did this until the chick was free enough to basically move its whole body, which meant probably 2/3 or more of the shell was removed. After, I did go warm up some water, and with an eye dropper dropped some of it on the edges of the shell that was left, in hopes to help the chick more easily separate from the membrane. It just laid there all wet and on its side, and I figured it probably wasn’t going to make it; but the next morning quite happily, there were no dead chicks, and this one was running around with the rest of the hatchlings. You could see on it that day a few places where the membrane had pulled away the fuzz off its body; but in general, it appeared to be ok. I was quite thankful to the Lord, surprised, but very joyous too!
We are once again grateful to God for granting this provision, and we pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His Church.
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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