January Week 1

farmstead farmsteadsmith kitty cat benji

Yesterday I told you about how I had some daily posts that I have been doing on my personal FB that I, and others, thought may be good to share here to help me get back on track to posting on Steemit. I decided I will try to compile a week's worth (maybe more or less) at a time into one post to try and get current to start sharing here instead of on FB only. So here's the first set!

The first week of January was pretty brutal. We were under freezing fog for most of the week. The chickens were cold and not doing a whole lot. It was terrible not being able to see the sun for that long. It was such an odd occurrence because if I drove ten miles away, whichever way, from my property, it was sunny and WARM. While we were in the 20s. It was so cold.

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We did start getting more eggs! This was terribly eggciting for me. Even with the freezing fog, I was surprised the chickens were even willing to lay. This was a stressful chicken week though, my little bantam rooster decided to pass away. I took him to get necropsy to make sure he didn't have anything that would be effecting my whole flock. Thank goodness, the vet said it wasn't anything like that. Unfortunately for the little guy, he had testicular cancer. I felt terrible after, but let me tell you, I jumped for joy when the doc told me that it wasn't something that would kill my flock.

Poor little rooster guy had a sudden onset of paralysis in one of his legs in the morning. I brought him inside to separate and evaluate. All the while, freaking out because of course I am thinking the worst! By the afternoon, he had lost mobility of both legs. He did not eat at all but drank water. By the morning time, he was gone. I called my vet and got him in for the necropsy for that morning. Looking back, he had some signs of something happening to him. When he was too cold, his comb would turn a darker color, not like frostbite, but, just purple in color, when he warmed back up, the comb would return to his regular bright red. The vet said that this is typically a sign of something wrong with their hearts.

I am thankful I wasn't terribly attached to him, but I was still very upset because I was so worried that he had some terrible disease that would wipe out my flock. This put me into a terrible downward spiral because I had felt that all of my hopes of breeding chickens in the future was at risk. I felt that there was no point in me having chickens at all! It was really a terrible feeling. I am glad at the outcome. The vet asked me if I had any of this rooster's babies, and I don't. I assume that means that something like that could be hereditary.

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One day I had this odd feeling to just let the youngest chickens out of their grow out coop... In the middle of the day? The chicken in the front there, the Salmon Faverolles attacked the little rooster guy, don't worry, he was not physically injured, his pride was just hurt - He was put in his place! It was funny in a way, but I don't know why my gut told me to experiment like this when my brain knew better. PS. Do not do what I did, it's not the best way to go about merging your flock. Haha. You need to put them in at night when everyone is roosting. Some people do just throw new members into the flock and hope for the best. For me, I can't do that because I really want to set up my animals for success. - Later when I did it the right way, everything was fine and no fights happened! Maybe I just needed to see for myself the possibilities of introducing incorrectly.

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Even though I had that deep scare with the chickens, the prospects of getting more eggs was really awesome. I started keeping track of the total eggs each day. This has been really fun to see the increase, or decrease as it sometimes happens. All of November and December we maybe got 0-3 eggs per day. This is unusual for a chicken's first winter! Of course this would happen to me. You know, I do believe it is because I had a run in with chicken lice. That's since been eradicated and it seems that they're much happier chickens now!

January 1-6 Egg Count: 20

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