Chickens for Eggs (pets), for Eggs (pets) - yah

So we somehow got the idea to get chickens. I don't know when it happened or why, I didn't even eat eggs until a couple years ago,  but here we are getting chickens! Since we have an acre and there are no covenants saying we can't have them we decided it may be nice to have fresh eggs and some new pets toddling around our space. The next place we live we may NOT be allowed to have chickens so we are going for it! Since there are coyotes and great owls and bobcats (we have yet to see one) and only one dog that runs loose for an hour in the morning we have to have them in an enclosed area unlike in Puerto Rico where they are almost wild! To spare our neighbors (and Jeff) the crowing and to spare me cracking open a fertilized egg we decided to get sexed chicks. This is supposedly 95-98 percent accurate but we won't know for a few months. By then I will be attached and it will be an awful thing to have to part with someone (it better not be Sweety...if she turns into a he we will get a crow collar)! We will cross that bridge if we have to. I have read the My Pet Chicken and Barnyard Chicken websites non stop trying to learn about coops and health and everything else. The dog run turned catio turned straw bale garden thingy is now being repurposed as a chicken area. The area for them to roost will be raised and they will sleep inside at night and during the day they will run around the 10 x 10 dog run. It is covered to provide shade, enclosed with hardware cloth, doodaded out with perches and dust bath bins and a chicken swing will be coming when they move out there. We thought we'd get four. Chickens are pretty addictive once you start looking at the different kinds and what their eggs look like and stuff. There are many different kinds of chickens with different sizes and personalities and egg laying abilities and egg colors...who knew?

After doing a fair amount of research about the chickens that were coming to Tractor Supply, Dan's Boots and Saddles, and Village Mercantile in Corrales I decided on the Mercantile  because they had the kinds I wanted coming in on the same day with the exception of the Brahma. Dan's Boots and Saddles had the Brahmas coming in a week later. I read that you want to get your chicks pretty close together so the pecking order gets established, because of size differences (I had no idea how fast they get big) and heat requirements. We wanted a variety of egg colors, docile chickens since they will be pets and ones that can stand the heat and cold we have here. At first we were going to get 4 but then I saw some other varieties....realized someone may have to go if they end up being a male and unfortunately chicks can die due to undeveloped organs or diseases in their first 4-5 weeks. At that point it would be harder to introduce another baby to the group so I ended up picking 6!

We have an Ameracauna - nothing special to look at and not the most docile birds BUT they lay green or baby blue eggs! We have a Gold Wyandotte because they are spectacular looking and very docile and excellent layers. I got a Barred Rock because they are supposedly nice birds and they are nice looking. I wanted a Buff Brahma because they are little dinosaurs...9 pounds with feathers on their legs and feet and very very friendly. It ended up that the Buff ones didn't come in but the Light Brahmas did and our little puff ball is now getting gorgeous snow white feathers!!! Very exciting. These guys all lay various shades of brown eggs. While chatting with the chicken lady I got talked into (yah, that was a hard sell) a Welsummer (dark chocolate brown eggs with spots) and a Black Austrolop (her favorite most personable chicken). So there you have it...6.

So here are some photos of their enclosure and of them in their little hot tub brooder inside the house. We tried the garage for about an hour but it was way to cold out there and since we have to redo carpet and some sheetrock in the water damaged room we turned it into a chicken bedroom!

The leveled and covered dog run is ready for hardware cloth and the addition of the "coop" part of the structure. Below Jeff is working on the sleeping and nesting quarters for the girls. The back walls will drop down so I can hoe the dirty shavings out and into a wheelbarrow. We don't have the perches or ventilation worked out in this photo.

We decided to make their entrance a little comical...the cut out is the door their ramp will come to. A door will shut from the outside once they are in. The vinyl is so the plywood doesn't absorb all the pee and it will make cleaning easier. Here are a couple of the day old girls. Nutmeg is the Welsummer on the left and Midnight is the black and yellow one. She will turn into a jet black girl with a green and purple shimmer to her feathers (supposedly - hope she keeps some of the cute markings on her face).

This one is "Trouble." I liked her inquisitiveness and her markings. Her puffy cheeks make her an Ameracauna and even though she was in with the day old ones I am thinking she is a little older...she has gotten much bigger faster and has more feathers! She is a stinker already.

Here's "Honey" the Light Brahma with her feathered feet at one day old!!! She is really sweet.

This is "Sweety" my favorite. She is the Barred Rock and has the best personality! She lets me hold her and falls asleep in my hand! Sweety and Honey are my favorites.

The chick on the right is the Pepper the Gold Wyandotte. You can't tell from this photo but she has little gold dots where you would expect ears.

They are all a couple weeks older than these pictures and their feathers are coming in . You can kind of tell what are going to become but they morph so fast you can't really tell!

Work continues on the outside abode that they will live in in another 3-4 weeks.

Chicken Problems

So we moved our old solar dehydrator down to where the chickens roost so we might possibly get some eggs from them. Well THAT hasn't quite worked out. We have eggs all over the place but we can't eat them since we don't know when they were laid. Eggs all over the place in non-obvious spots where we can't see them, and hens sitting in harms way that don't move and suffer "mishaps." (more about that later). This white hen was sitting on about 18 eggs and I spotted her when I was harvesting parcha. She is right under the parcha mound in what becomes a stream or raging river depending on the rainfall amounts. I start checking up on her daily and one day I hear a faint peep. The eggs were starting to hatch!

I could hear a faint peep and when I sat and watched saw the first little guy under her. There was another dead looking wet slimy one that would peep occasionally and then stop then peep then stop but wasn't under her. I moved it over and hoped for the best. So I spend the better part of an afternoon watching these things hatch out - the babies in the eggs peck a little circle, they move occasionally, she kind of rolls the egg, it pecks it's way out after a few hours and then lays there peeping once in a while while fluffing up.

To make a long story short, in the end there were six that were trailing her around the next day. 4 were dead in the nest (I think she suffocated them) - 3 fluffed up but dead and a few that never fluffed. There were some eggs that didn't hatch at all. I pushed the dead ones out of the area since ants were invading and hoped she would be a good mom. Today there are 5 chicks. Number six couldn't really keep up. I would hear it peeping and would go and retrieve it and bring it to its mom and siblings and it would be left behind again. I figured I either had to raise it or ignore it. If I raised it it would be heartache when it became a "pet" and something got it so I let nature take its course. Now there are 5. In the end there will be only 1 or 2 since the birds swoop down and take them. For now I enjoy watching them grow up.

So I am in the yard and see this thing coming up the driveway. It doesn't belong here. Turns out to be a mutant chicken that somehow flew in. It has a comb that flops to cover one eye, it doesn't ever stand upright, and only one tail feather. It also has a pathetic crow that doesn't even sound right.

I put out corn and it can't even see until it does the hair toss to flip its comb out of the way!

I swear - if it is mutant, pregnant, injured, sick or disturbed it makes its way here!


This hen was almost hacked with the machete. I was cutting down a platano and after it fell I bent down to cut closer to the ground and I saw her just sitting on a pile of eggs. She never peeped, squawked or made any effort to move. Her nest was in grass at the base of the platano. She sat on the eggs a long while and then I guess gave up and nothing hatched.

This nest is abandoned - no one sits on them.


Lots of eggs everywhere but none we can eat since I don't know how long they have been there.

A sad mishap in the yard happened yesterday. Jeff weed whacked the feathers off one of the wings of yet another hen sitting on eggs. He was using the trimmer (very noisy) and made a pass and the stupid hen was hit and flew up and away. She has a nasty bare spot on one wing and has left that nest for good it looks like. It wasn't even a nest, she was just sitting in the grass. If it were a pet hen we would take it to a vet but I can't pick it up so it is on its own. Eggs everywhere and none we can eat. None that will hatch. I even relocated a couple eggs to the base of trees to give them a similar but better location. Nothing. Oh well.

Pets and Plants

A very sleepy and Yoda looking Stripes. I woke him up and propped him up!

Tuca snoozing in the basket...

Blanco is the prettiest cat ever...

Bepo is as fat as a whale, but after she survived the butt biting I just want her to be happy!

The chickens, which aren't really ours (we didn't buy them or put them here), wait with great expectation for corn in the morning. They come right up to the screens and sit on the benches and just wait.

Some more of the gang...

I saw this prehistoric shoot coming out of the ground and forgot what it was (someone gave me a cutting) and then it bloomed!

It must be some type of ginger I suspect but there aren't leaves yet, just flowers.

I nailed some orchids to a couple trees and they are now blooming. Gee, gardening is fun here!

This odd flower looks fake...looks like some kind of coral. I was mowing the lawn and smelled this overpowering smell that I had caught a whiff of the previous day. It didn't smell like the oranges (citrus blossoms are the best, followed by Ylang Ylang) so I scouted around and found this!

We've got two of these and they are both blooming with these huge sprays of blossoms! They smell wonderful. This is the first time they have bloomed.

2 Mysteries Solved and a Minor Injury!

This little story falls into what Hamilton (blog reader, friend and previous owner of our house) calls "strange things that happen only to Katrina." Yes, I have had coconuts fall on me, been "nudged" by sharks, bitten by a gecko I was trying to save from the cats, and locked in the porch area of our house....I could go on but I won't. The chickens have been clucking away making a huge racket and "Big Red" has been running around raping everyone. Today there was a huge racket...the kind of racket that happens when one of the huge hawks comes down and takes off with a baby chick (or neighbors puppy) - that kind of racket. Or the kind of racket like when the hens lay eggs. I peek outside the kitchen door and into the gingers and get a glimpse of a little nest.

On closer inspection there are 14 eggs.

Later I find the mom hen brooding on her clutch.

This explains some of the clucking noises. After I investigate the latest ruckus I find there are only 3 chicks remaining from the white hen (there were 7 to start with) and only 3 of the black hen's chicks left (started with 5). This is not unusual. I spring into action when I hear the war cries to make sure it isn't the cats (hasn't ever been our cats), and have seen the birds swoop down then pick them off. As I come up the stairs I see Tuca sitting on the lawn motionless.

She is keeping her distance but has found something interesting!

There is also a hen nearby between the intruder and her chicks.

Then Blanco gets in on the scene.

The intruder is a pretty big, very green iguana. I have seen boa constrictors on the property but this is the first time I've seen an iguana.

I think he looked pretty full judging by the hanging belly. Look at the claws! I had to photograph this beauty, but didn't expect it to still be on the lawn when I got back with the camera. I also expected it to run when I got close but it just stayed motionless. I moved in kind of close to check out its really cool skin and claws and I had to get close to photograph its head.

It was very prehistoric looking. Look at that tail! The tail was about 2 feet long and I was busy looking at the claws and watching to make sure he didn't rush me when I photographed him when WHOOSH - with lightening speed he whipped his tail across my leg! Shocked the crap out of me and really stung! Who knew? I was not expecting that!

I was really shocked and backed up taking Tuca with me. That tail is long and far reaching and definitely a real weapon! It left two parallel cuts like grass cuts on my leg, but it was just like when they crack a whip in the movies... it just wrapped around my leg so fast I felt it and never saw it. Beware the iguana's tail!

Then he just kind of stood there some more with chickens roaming around, cats investigating and me shoving a camera in his face. I believe the earlier ruckus was this iguana stealing chicks and eggs. I'll be looking for him tomorrow at the first sign of chicken trouble. The only reason why I saw him was because of the cats. He blended in with the lawn despite his size and I only would have seen him if he moved. The cats are good at alerting me to interesting things in the yard. Beware the tail on these guys when photographing...you may get exactly what you deserve!

New Chicks and..the Wet Season?

I thought I had some more "dry season" left to get stuff tethered and started in the yard but it looks like I was wrong. Unless this is some kind of weather system or something it appears we are settling in to the dry-and -sunny morning and wet- in-the-afternoon pattern. I've got top heavy heliconias falling down the hillside and new, very tall torch gingers pulling up the soft, wet dirt. Anyway, when I was out looking around yesterday I found a white chicken sitting as if she were on eggs. Since Big Boy, the new red gallo has started circling the house there has been a lot of chicken noise - mating torture complete with running and screaming and neck pecking. This first batch of brown guys has been around a week or two.

Today, for the first time I saw 7 little puffs on the driveway. The cats and the chickens love the little grass piles I make when I sweep after mowing: I make the piles and they undo them!

They are very tiny. One got stuck in a sticky weed and couldn't get unstuck so I took care of that. They can't eat big corn or even cracked corn yet but they can eat rice so I brought them a little.

I don't know if Big Boy is the dad or not but he appears to want to be.

I don't think this "display" is for me...I think she is telling him to back off.

Anyway, the house is full of wet cats everywhere and small chicks sitting under mom.

Cats, Chicken Spa, Veggies and Troll Bridge...

News flash !!! The Chicken Spa has moved from its prior location (in my garden bed) to under the Tamarind Tree. This hen made a nice hole and kicked/fluffed up a bunch of dry dirt before settling in for a rejuvenating nap. The other bitch and their pimp (rooster) did the same with the little cat sitting in the shade but not in a hole like the others.

This is the big, bad Dakota (aka Little Boy) - our fat cat from Washington. We neutered him young but he is still a big bad fighter and only goes on supervised walks in the yard. Other cats visit him (they know he is in cat prison) and taunt him from outside the rejas but today.... I had him on a supervised walk when "Chicken" (aka Chicken Little) the little cat came to greet me. Dakota tore out after him and when I rescued poor, innocent and nice little Chicken I got a nasty scratch from none other than my bad cat (soon to be replaced - not really). Cat purgatory is now in session. Look how comfortable and innocent Chicken looks near our fountain. We give him snacks (since he forages with the chickens) and have to decide when to have him neutered and when he should have his shots. At what point do we take him in? Well we had a bit of a rain squall today and I looked out and saw him sitting inside our decorative teracotta pot. Where does he sleep? Do the chickens look after him? Will big bad Dakota hate his guts until Chicken can beat the crap out of him?

To the right is the new garden area - not dug up and composted yet. To get their from the main yard you have to cross a five foot deep and maybe 6 foot wide gully of sorts (a water feature in the wet season we think). Jeff put together this little Troll Bridge so we could get over the gully or just sit (feet dangling) to listen to the coquis. We still have to dig the cinder blocks into the ground so the bridge sits more flush. Maybe tomorrow since the ground is soft?

Here's Chicken's family out on their morning forage around our compost stacks.

And what about Holstein? He is a very feral cat we cannot touch. He doesn't hear very well but has a routine of showing up for snacks. When Chicken is eating he just waits patiently and lets him finish. Puerto Rico animals all seem to get along...the chickens have cat friends....the cats are ok with each other...every cow has a bird friend. What is wrong with Dakota? I thought he could turn his life around.

I get bored with food (sandwiches for lunch, peanut butter and bread for breakfast - and coffee which I am not sick of-- and rice, beans, chicken or shrimp for dinner). All very beige food. Here are some goodies from the yard that brighten up our meals -- cherry tomatoes and yellow crook neck squash (calabazine amarillo). We still have oranges and are eating at least three things from the yard a day. Tonight included Cilantro, tomatoes, squash, orange juice and coco frio! All this bootie after another great dive at the Shacks. And as a bonus we got some rain so tomorrow should be a great day in the yard....