Don't worry. just take the water out for the night they'll be ok...honest. And they are very messy with their mash, nothing to worry about.
Henny Penny and Future Friends
the food mess is fine.. I agree with heidi.. and the water looks good enough for when your around.. but think there is still too many big water spaces on the sides... so again agree with heidi.. just take it out tonight.. make sure they get a drink.. and they will be fine till mornig... and stop staring at them.. you all need sleep...lol
Claire, there is NO CURE, the patch just gives you little breaks now and then.
You are doing great, hope you closed the eglu. the hen will change her mind, and be up early looking for those chicks... hope you took the water out, just get up early and dunk all their heads three times each... they not only drown easily, they are all fluff and will get chilled from getting wet... if you wake up to hear shrill peeping, you need to dry off a chick.... and warm it up...
from the looks of no tail feathers, they are either less than two weeks old, or all roosters!
take care
tf
awwww tf to the rescue... thanks..tf.. we was trying ;-)
you did great! i still dont' have much time for hear. but things are looking up.
btw, thanks for that goat thread. i browed through and got some much needed info today!
hugs [and handing baton BACK, as though i NEVER picked it up]
tf
OK, took water out. Going out to close Eglu door. Must go to bed next. Sigh. This is so nerve wracking...
hands not available... sorry your stuck with baton..na na naNA NA
awwe, hugs to you claire.. we've all been right where you are tonight.. all will be fine... we'll be here in the morning to see how sleepless your night was...
somebody will be here duirng the night if you need anything. usually catscan and luckycharm at least...
you own't be sleeping for a while. got them by your bedside?
if they ar eloud, they are cold or wet. if they are too quiet they are hot. without watrer in there you relaly don't want it too hot...
i guess the baton was dropped, just laying here for somebody to pick up. this gal is off to bed too.
tf
Good save! I've had chicks die in less water than shown in these pix's. And getting wet as tf mentions is really bad too. They can't get warm again. Found them under everyone else, trying to get warm -- bad ending. Live & learn as they say.
Claire they will all be fine in the morn. And will be happy to be back with their mama. GOOD JOB!
okay, the one thing everyone told me... put paper towels or towel across the bottom of that crate... completely cover the bottom or they will get splayed legs(?) or splat legs or something like that and for some reason thats bad... I dont know what it is or why :o) I just put a towel on the bottom of the box and then put pine shavings on that :o)
Its like they are doing splits--they can't keep their legs underneath them. You put something smooth down the first couple days--like newspaper or paper towels, so they can see the mash and peck at it. But if you leave them on it for too long they may develop splayed legs. Some people use those sort of woven rubber shelf liner to give them a good grip. I kept mine on paper towels over pine shavings for the first two or three days until they knew where their food dish was, then removed the paper and let them run around on the shavings. Never had splayed legs--but I think their can also be a genetic predisposition for it--some chicks are more vulnerable than others.
oh, I just knew they werent supposed to be on a cardboard box without papertowels or womething so they wouldnt get splayed legs :o) I didnt know so they could see the food! lol!
mine are now a few weeks old...and OMG they have no problem seeing the food! lolol! funniest thing is to watch them rip apart a corn cob! lol! and fight over noodles!
did the mum come back
good morning.... it's a new day... how's it going this morning... I am just dying to hear how much slepp you got and how the babur=es are and did mamma wake up and are the babies peeping and.... well you know...tell us a story?????
OK, so everybody is fine except the mom. I can't find her still. I have been outside looking for her. The chicks are all fine. They all appear healthy and running around in the box. They are eating a lot. We have a white noise machine to help us sleep so I didn't hear them in the night. They were in the bathroom. I got up once in the night so I checked on them and stirred a little more water into the food. They are always eating! I put another towel on the floor of the box. They are peeping but fairly quietly most of the time. I think they are OK?
I have to thank everybody for last night - Fieldsems, Fran, Heidillyho, & TamaraFaye. I don't know what I would have done without you all helping. I sincerely thank you all so much for your advice and for being online late at night!!
Claire
Claire,
That is good to hear about the chicks, maybe the mom will show up this evening.
Oh, when I let Henny Penny out of the Eglu (plastic part) this morning, she met the new hen who was in the enclosure who would not go into the Eglu last night. It rained something awful last night, with thunder and lightning. I don't know where the other one is. She is either gone or hiding in the brush.
When Henny Penny met the other hen, she kind of cornered her and pecked her pretty hard a few times and the other hen was squawking a lot. She did this for about 20 seconds and then left her alone. The other hen didn't peck back. Does this mean they are settled on the pecking order? They started eating after that. The other hen is barred. I think maybe a barred rock. She is smaller than HP.
Claire
I am hoping the mom will hear the other chickens (2 of them) clucking and come to check it out. Maybe she took off in the storm. Maybe there was a predator. I have no clues. And even if I find her and catch her, I don't know if I should put all 10 babies back into the Eglu with the adults. I'm concerned that the hen in there now (who had 1 of the babies) won't know which is hers or that they would get picked on by HP or something.
Claire
Claire.. my unexperted advice is.. maybe not to add the babies, but definitly keep them around so all can hear, see and smell each other so when it is time the blend easily..
Experts.. please add
that is what I did with my last new babies, I put them in the pen next to the big brooder and then let them out with the rest a few days later. No problems but mine are still young.
Right now we just have the 1 Eglu. It is for 4 regular or 6 bantam chickens. Kelly's first job when he gets over his head cold is to build a bigger coop. As the chicks get a little older, then I will put them outside maybe in the Eglu and put the adults in the bigger coop? Since I don't know how old they are, I think maybe they should stay indoors for a couple more weeks? Longer? The only other thing I could put them in is a dog crate beside the eglu, but I don't know if I should do that today or not? What if they got out? Would they be warm enough? I will be at work about 8 hours.
Claire
well, went to bed early and missed all the excitement...power's back on now and I see that the new chicks are nearly settled in. I'll bet Miss Flighty will show back up today. I accidently left a hen out one night and she let me know the next morning - SQUAWK.
I've had best luck with introducing new girls at night...just plopped them in the coop after dark and the next day everyone assumes they have always been there.....lol.
Good Luck on Day 2!
I found the other hen this morning but can't catch her. She is very flighty. Will have to go to work soon but will try again later I guess. At least she is alive and well. Thing is, this hen has never really been given treats or a lot of attention - she was just kinda one of a large flock in a barn that never gets handled. She doesn't know me, she doesn't know the area, and she doesn't have her chicks right now. A bit of a pickle! I will keep working on it.
C.
She'll be okay... throw some food out.. takes them a second to find the feed... she'll free range all day.. work well and earn more treat money!!
The area she is in is chock full of grasshoppers, crickets, and hordes of other yummy bugs. There are lots of weeds and grasses in there too, some with seedheads. It rained last night so there is water laying around too. She should be fine for the day I would think. I hope she doesn't lay an egg in there somewhere. Since she was sitting on the babies last night when we got her, I imagine she won't start laying again right away.
I hope we can cut away some of the weeds over the next couple of days to make it easier to track her and then maybe we'll get her.
I'm so curious to see how these chicks turn out. Mom is a barred rock. Dad is one of three possible options - barred rock, light brahma, or another one I didn't know.
Claire
Sorry you lost the hen Claire but at least the chicks don't need her to survive.
MollyD
the chicks really look like black australorps, unless they have spots on their head, then barred rock... beatutiful too!
I think you will be able to lure her back, Claire. She will want to stay with the other chickens--if at all possible. My chickens go crazy for fresh corn--maybe make a trail from where she seems to be hanging out to the Egglu? Or let the other chickens out at dusk to forage and see if she will follow them back to the coop? They imprint on their roost pretty quickly.
Our black sex-linked chicks and crosses looked like that. Males with yellow tops and tums.
Or throw her a tomato in the entrance to the Egglu.
And if you can locate her at dusk--just as it gets too dark for her to see, she will be easy to pick up and relocate. I have to move one of my chickens from the apricot tree to the coop every night. She is very stubborn about where she wants to roost.
I hope all the ones with yellow spots on the top of their head are not roosters because if so, I have 8 roosters and 2 hens. :-(
They don't all have yellow on their tummies though.
So here is the thing...the Eglu has 2 parts - the plastic hard part that they roost in at night, and the open wire run that they are in during the day. It says when you get your hens that you should not let them out of the Eglu run at all for 5 days so they learn where they live and roost. So I have never had HP outside of the Eglu - she has been outside of the plastic part into the run every day, but not outside of the run itself. The other hen that I just got last night has only been in the fenced run area as well. I don't want to leave the fenced run part open because I'm worried that the new hen doesn't know enough to come back there to roost yet. And I don't want to have to catch 3 hens! I'm hoping that just the other chicken sounds will bring the 3rd hen out of the brush.
The place these two chickens came from is a bit wild. It is a big barn with rafters and a loft. There were about 15 hens in there. They fly around up in the rafters. They lay their eggs ALL OVER the place. In the rafters, in the loft, on the floor, etc. There are no nest boxes. There are old buckets around with rags and baseball gloves and stuff in them. There are eggs in the buckets. There are eggs on the wooden shelves that are also covered with stuff. It was quite a scene. I would call them almost "feral" chickens. They live with the goats but not a lot of human contact. Never picked up. The one hen that is in the Eglu pecks at me really hard if I go near her. HP doesn't do that, and she never did even the first day. She had more contact. So the one that is currently out in the brush is basically unused to treats, human contact, or anything other than this big open barn and running around in the open yard. This is why I worry that she doesn't even have a clue where to roost because there is no barn now and she's never seen an Eglu.
Sigh...I hope the babies will grow up being used to handling and stuff, so that they are easier to deal with. Their mother is black with a small white spot on one wing. She is small though, not an Australorp I don't think. She was smaller than the other Australorps. I asked what kind she was and they couldn't remember but said she was some "special" variety and they couldn't remember the name. She might be Aracauna or Ameracauna because they were getting some blue green eggs but not sure if they are hers or not. It's crazy over there.
Claire
If you can somehow locate her in the dark--she will protest, but you can play the night predator and relocate her. They are completely vulnerable in the dark and won't make much of an attempt to escape. I wait till dark to move all my chickens (not saying how many now--Thanks a lot, CF!); they squawk and flap, but even the wilder ones are getting use to it and much tamer.
I will be trying that again tonight. There are a few problems:
1. The area she is in has about 200 native Iowa shrubs that are waiting to be replanted. Viburnums of various types. They are from the State nursery. They are all about 2-3 feet tall and bushy. They are also surrounded by a lot (LOT) of tall weeds. We don't mow up there much so it's very overgrown. They are in rows, but she keeps going under the rows and in the weeds.
2. She is black, and thus very hard to see in the dark!!
3. When we played night predator last night, she was fast, and she flew away about 10 feet in the air, landed too far away to see where she went, and disappeared. She is used to being in the rafters of a barn that are about 15 feet off the ground. Crazy chicken! But admittedly, she'd just been for a 45 minute truck ride after having been evicted from her barn and had her babies removed, so she was probably in a bit of a huff.
Claire
Hate to admit it, but I actually bought one of the LCD head lamps to go out in the dark and move chickens. Don't try to find her if it is light at all--it will just spook her. She may eventually move over to where the other chickens are and nest down beside or on top of them. Maybe move some bushes over for her to hide in near the Egglu? Chickens hate to be alone and if the other chicken is one she knows she may gradually move over there.
LOL, can just imagine me creeping around at night with a head lamp on in the yard. Good thing I don't have close neighbors! I hate to think the stories that would start! Kelly has a workshop face shield thing with a small lamp on top. Maybe we'll try that! I was hoping the sounds of the other chickens would attract her and comfort her. I keep hoping I'll see her sitting on top of the Eglu. Will try to track her down again tonight.
I also have a small bunny carrier that I used to use for my rabbit. I was thinking maybe when it's still light and warm out, take the chicks out and leave them by the Eglu in the carrier. They would be peeping a lot for sure. Maybe that would attract her. They would not be able to get out of the bunny carrier. The bars are spaced too close together (like 1/2 inch apart) so they couldn't escape, but she would still hear them. I wouldn't leave them out for too long, and not unsupervised. Will she "remember" that she has chicks or will she have forgotten already. I'm not sure how smart they are in terms of memory. They seem to get over being broody pretty fast.
Claire
Claire you might try using a red bulb in your headlamp or flashlight instead of a regular one. That might make your light less threatening to her. btw how did they manage to catch her when you got her? That technique might work again for you.
MollyD
lol... Claire.. what Molly said.. I think in another thread I might have told about the Amish processing plant south of me.. the do ALL thier transports at night.. they use the red headlamps even in the "freerange" coops, they go in gather all the sleeping chickens they need.. no big hassle, it keeps them all calm and the meat is much more tender.. the poor birds never saw it comming.. all their work is done between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am all start to finish with red lanturns.... and really, unless your worried about someone eating her.. give her a few days and let her get use to the envirorment... she calm down, hear the chicks.. and wonder over... you said she has plenty to eat.. what was her housing situation at home.. were they free range? The way she knows to run and keep out of sight under those bushes, I'd say.. that gal knows what shes doing..
One idea... do you have sort of a 2x4 sawhorse... she might like that as a roost.. maybe in the day set it up.. put some grain on the ground around it to get her attention.. have it a little hidden so she feels comfortable but so you can see... wait till dark and she if she takes the bait and sleeps on it... most chickens would rather sleep on a roost.. I don't really know about new mommies though.. do they still roost?
cmoxon so glad to hear yall made it thru the night the sawhorse thing sounds like a great idea i'd try that next to the eglu. hope you catch her.