Just got an update from the fellow who is incubating my eggs - 2 dozen eggs, 1 had hairline cracks so not set, 12 of the remaining 23 fertile. The interesting thing is 7 of the 12 are from an "old" batch aged 10-15 days after lay. He figured they were unlikely to be viable and even I figured it was a long-shot. However I figured if even one was more than I'd have otherwise so might as well try - especially as Murphy would dictate if I composted them, they'd have all been fertile and big winners. ;-p

The fresher batch which I expected far more out of is 5 of 12 fertile! Methinks I know a chooks about to get their bum-fluff plucked!

The hen who laid the eggs has five eggs under her at the moment and is acting broody. I've told her she is absolutely, positively NOT going to go broody and sit there for a month on just five eggs!

Oh. And for any who might be wondering, the silkies in the pics below are definitely black... someone brought to my attention that the way I photographed made them look dark blue when they're not. Oh for a grey-card... ;-)

To show the chookies off better, here are some that show true colours under natural lighting conditions! (Also a fun excuse to mess around with macro.) These guys are SO hard to get a focus on though, they MOVE every other nanosecond!!!

Ladies first... here's the little black girl 5 months old.



Okay so this is me having a bit of a photographic joke - this is a colour picture black and white. It IS a colour photograph though! ;-) She is looking over her back here.

Head shot


Side shot

Side of head shot

Closer picture of her feet... this is probably the one area I will need to do a bit of work in breeding. She has virtually no middle to feathering (few tufts on the side of the middle toe) and the seperation between the 4th and 5th toe isn't great. His is much the same though he has slighly less seperation between the toes but more middle toe feathering.

The cockrel from the front

Side portrait shot. (Look ma, I have EYES!)

Side shot.

Cedar (wyandotte roo) was less cooperative about staying on my table and I didn't want him hopping down while they're still in quarantine so I'll try again later.

It's been a bit over a week now. I'm not sure if it feels like longer than that or shorter.

It's weird, there is still this outlandish hope that someone escaped and they're just lost, maybe the fox dropped them in the underbrush across the road or something. I find myself watching the sides of the roads when I drive home or scan the edge of the fields even though I know there is no way this is going to happen.

The day after I went on a bend of discovering even more and better ways to guard against foxes and further secure the pens.

I have made a few half-hearted attempts at gardening but it just seems empty without someone softly clucking at me from their perch on my lap.

I never expected to get so attached to them. I've had chooks and ducks before but they were pretty wild and while I was fond of them, I was fond of them in the way I'm fond of my sheep. They're beautiful, lovely to watch, I enjoy giving them tidbits but there's no bond beyond generally accepting I'm benevolent and my appearance usually indicates food is forthcoming. It's still lovely to interact with these and come a bit into their world but it's on a different level than say my dogs or cats where there is an actual relationship and genuine bond extending far beyond pocket love. Especially with my silkies though, they were just the most amazingly affectionate little souls and to bond like that with a chook was just an amazing, unexpected experience.

That said, I did go to the auction I'd planned to go to before this all. DH had some wise words and while I had a few wobbly moments, I also had a lovely day in some lovely company. I came home with two 5 month old black silkies (Jessamine and Cereus)

a std pb partridge wyandotte roo who was quite a surprise to see now named "Cedar"

and a trio of broodies - two silkie crosses Tiger and Lily and a wyandotte bantam (thinking of a name still).


I'm not sure what the X is in either of the silkie crosses. Any ideas? They're pretty little things though even if particularly fond of attempting to nip at this point! (Tiger is aptly named!)

All have various degrees of scaley leg mite, so the first thing after getting settled was a healthy dose of moxidectin which seems to have everyone much more comfortable.

The black silkies, while I'm not hugely interested in the black colour as such are necessary if I want to create lavender ones, so hopefully in a few years time I'll have some lovely lavenders. I need a lavender pekin for that and while I've got a good lead on where to get one I want to breed a few batches from these guys first to improve middle toe feathering and degree of separation between 4th and 5th toes. I think partridge colour will always be my first love though.

My little chicks are growing like weeds, the smallest is still very much smaller than the others but thriving.

I sent batch of eggs to be incubated on the 20th, one had a hairline fracture so wasn't set but fingers crossed for at least a few chicks out of them. Their mum has continued laying, has 4 in the nest as of today and looking as if she may want to go broody. Not sure if I should let her or keep removing them to set in an incubator as I really want to get my numbers up this year so I have a nice selection available to make my choices from.

Fox... all my little chookies gone

I went out Wednesday mid-morning to find all my babies gone. Blossom, Petal and Basil - my silkies. Martha - my cheeky Aylesbury girl. Rosie my wyandotte pullet. Just gone. I thought maybe Nic had moved them until I saw a few feathers and the hole. As best I can figure it was a fox. I haven't found anything except a few feathers near a hole that was dug under their pen... under the patio tiles and sunkwire meant to stop attacks.

They were maybe 3 meters from my bedroom window. I looked around the whole property hoping someone had gotten away or thinking maybe they were hurt... I couldn't bear it if they were out there and suffering. I tracked through the grass out to the road across the neighbors field but lost it after that.

I spent all of yesterday just bawling my eyes out. I don't think I've cried so hard since I lost my Collie suddenly to heartfailure as a college freshman... I've lost 2 other dogs since but they were ready and passed away peacefully in my arms, loved and completely unafraid. I've been randomly bursting out all day today, couldn't sleep last night, finally gave up about 5 am. I went out to the garden to do some weeding and started crying when I realized they weren't sitting with me the way they always did when I weeded. My mind just can't understand how my littles are gone when the evening before they were sitting in my lap, getting treats, Blossom preening my hair and lowering her head for scratches 'chuc chuc chuc'ing at me softly. Petal sitting on my leg and hopping off to peck a bug when I turned one up as I weeded, then hopping back on to wait for another. Basil sitting nearby and watching for me to hand him sowbugs before the greedygut girls gobbled them all. Martha looking like a duckie bulldozer poking about for snails under the mulch, tail waggling and qwocking constantly under her breath and Rosie trying to gobble up more bugs while Jarrah, my roo did his little dance and Penny napped. Anyone who has seen the pics on my blog from a few days back of my son cuddling and giving them rides on his pedal tractor knows how friendly they are. I'm just sick every time I think of how scared they must have been, they're completely tame, theyve never known anything but gentleness.

I still have Jarrah and Penny, my wyandotte roo and hen and the chicks which were all in my house still under lights. Jarrah and Penny had been seperated from the others as I wanted them to breed but not with the silkies of course and Rosie would scatter Penny's eggs if she had access.

I *thought* my pen was pretty safe, I'm not sure what else I can do to proof it besides weld avairy mesh to the bottom of their nightshed inside it. The pen is sided with a tough wire mesh (think like sheep fence but smaller squares and an additional wire along the ground to prevent it being pushed up) and chickenwire over it along the bottom, netting on the top to prevent hawks/crows/cats, sunk wiring, 12x12 patio pavers surrounding to discourage tunneling. Jarrah and Penny are in my garage/shed which has cement floors and colourbond walls so hopefully htey're safe at least.

Sorry this is so long and rambly. My mind is just not straight and I don't have the heart go edit and spell check atm. I may not be on much over the next few days. I'd been intending to go to Euroa on the weekend to buy more silkies. My husband reckons we should still go but I'm really not sure I wouldn't just be a blubbering idiot.

(I copied what I wrote on Backyard Poultry as I didn't want to try and write it all again. I went and looked again this afternoon in case anyone had been in hiding and too afraid to come out but only found some of Rosie's down feathers. I had to check again because I think the fox probably ended it for Blossom, Petal and Basil quickly being that they were small... gods I really hope it was quick for them and at least they didn't suffer... but the feathers I tracked from the chooks pen all the way across the front garden, across the neighbors paddocks and to the road the other day were Martha's and it looked like she put up a fight most of that way so I was afraid/hoping/I don't know that maybe there was a chance it let go of her. It's a long way and looks like she was attempting to fight most of it. With the clump I found today, they were Wyandotte down, in a clump, with scuffed marks in the dirt so I thought she must have got away at one point but I guess the fox must have grabbed her again as there's no other sign she got away or any further struggle.)

Which one is not like the others?

(L-R: Yellow band, Green band, Red Band. Middle: Blue band sans band)

The chicks are now 22 days old and growing rapidly into spindly raptorish looking things - except little blue-band who is not wearing it's band as it's so small even the "baby chick" size kept slipping off! It's not even half the size Green and just half of Red and Yellow. There is plenty to eat and no bullying plus they get plenty of bugs hunted in the garden so it's not as if it's for lack of grub- it's just plain small and has more of the rounded features of the baby chicks. Despite this it is feathering up faster than Green or Red but slower than Yellow band.

Meanwhile Red, Yellow and Green chicks have graduated from little chick leg bands to big chick leg bands. Green is the largest and imo going to be a boy. Yellow and red are pretty evenly matched size-wise but yellow is feathering up faster, having some feathers on her shoulders and just starting to sprout them on the sides of her chest. (You can barely see this in the pics.) All of them remain pretty placid little critters especially compared to the fruitcake Faverolle! For this photo I pretty much ploinked them on top of a towel on a table in the position I wanted and they calmly stayed where I ploinked them - neatly in order - and waited while I stroked their tummy up to a standing position instead of nodding off! (Yes, seriously, they nodded off after being ploinked! O_O)

This started out with me trying to take more recent "look at how they've grown" pictures of my silkies! Of course I had my "helpful helper" and so it quickly degenerated into a series of cute photo ops! Ah well!

"Look chook, a geen WEAF!" (green leaf)

Blossom gets a cuddle.

It's all about your Point of View

A different sort of chicken tractor! LOL Blossom goes for a ride on Bubby L's "geen tac-tah"

But quickly gets distracted with pats.

I did manage to grab two semi-decent and bubba free shots...

Petal (above) and Blossom (below), with Basil not pictured as he was being a gobbleguts on the grass - head down and bum up busy inhailing bugs!

One day old and two week old pics

Another picture of mum, "Penny" that turned out nicely and pictures of the four bubs at one day old. I'll be getting leg rings for these guys to be able to identify them individually but right now they're too tiny so they've just got marks where toe punches would be! First is red band chick.

Then green band

Yellow band

And blue band I think.

And below are the littles at 2 weeks old aprox. First is "blue band"... who is the smallest of them and has what looks like it *might* be a white fleck in the down on it's head?

Blue band with fleck below.

Now here is green band


Red band


And yellow band


They are friendly little critters. If I look into their box they start talking to me and if I put my hand in the come up to cuddle and hop aboard for personal attention, they like to be lifted to snuggle under my chin! ;-)

Introductions

I suppose, first things first, introductions are in order. I decided to create this blog as a record of my chooks, ducks and (hopefully soon!) geese and decided to open a second blog as the readers of my first are primarily my friends and my dog friends, who've relatively little interest in chook related ramblings. Meanwhile, since my son is on my main blog, it's not one I wanted to keep public as there are not-so-nice people in the world. So that's the "why".

The who is Amanda, though many of you know me by my web handle. As for where, we're near Gembrook in Victoria on a small property of 5 beautiful acres.

My primary interest in chooks is my lovely partridge Silkies and my much loved std partridge Wyandottes which I keep the PB version of. I also have a cheeky Aylesbury duck named "Martha". She is a beautiful duck and I'd recomend the breed to anyone wanting a lovely, nice-natured duck!

DH's RIR "Millie" who is admittedly quite cute

and we've got a few Faverolle chicks as well which my son likes despite their high strung tendancies!

My silkies are:
Blossom, my first pullet, who started it all. I purchased a pair of sussex bantams as well but after awhile of owning them decided I wanted to pursue the silkies as I adore the friendly little guys and wyandottes only so they found a lovely home in the 'burbs as spoilt pets!

Petal, my second pullet, who is turning out to be a lovely young lady!
(Pictured here at 8 weeks old)

and pictured below at 14ish weeks old.

Last but not least is Basil, my cute cockrel below




These guys are all from Tim at Tribe of Honk in Silvan, Victoria and will hopefully be the start of a nice breeding line.

My second breed is my Wyandottes. I am just nuts about these guys, they're just beautiful! I purchased a hen and pullet from Alf Williams at a show earlier this year.

"Penny" is the hen and she's the nicest marked and quality wise, though the colour has plenty of room to improve! ;-)


The pullet, "Rosie" is a little less nice than "Penny" as you can see. Her penciling tends to go wild about mid-wing to rump, the markings in her neck and general shape.

My cockrel from George Norman a little while after and his name is "Jarrah". He is a true gentleman of a rooster and takes good care of his girls as well as being reasonably well behaved to handle.

Hopefully he should compliment the girls faults and vice versa and produce nice offspring!

I love the colours on this colour variety in both the roos and the hens. I just don't think you can beat them for sheer beauty!

On 21 August, Penny hatched her first clutch here. She did a good job laying and sitting but 8 days into it my pullet flew over the fencing and into her area and ate 3 eggs (fertile) and scattered several more which traumatized the embryos into dying. Of the eggs left, these 4 little guys are the results!


My son adores the little tykes! I think having chooks with children (albeit always supervised!) is a delightful thing for everyone involved! (Including the chicks as he's inclined to go hunt bugs to feed them!) Here are a few of the littlies just hatched - two of them still wet!