Our Little Flock

This has been a wild month!  First we had a hen, unexpectedly, and then we had two hens, also unexpectedly.  Then we had a hen and a rooster, and then we just had a rooster.  It seemed unkind, and also useless, to keep the rooster by himself, so we’ve been looking for a couple of hens.  Hens are hard to come by these days, though.  The only place we could find that had hens, rather than just very young chicks, was about an hour away.  As it happens, Papaw found them not long after we did.  He agreed to pick up the hens from the poultry farm and deliver them to our house on Thursday evening, so once again we acquired new birds unexpectedly (since all this was worked out during the day Thursday).  DH called the farmer and placed his order for what we wanted.  The man only had two laying hens for sale at all, but he had lots of younger hens to choose from.

Papaw arrived with five birds in a large dog carrier:  two young hens and three very young pullets.  We put the hens in the run with the rooster, who was extremely happy to see them even if they weren’t so enthusiastic about making his acquaintance.  After seeing the reception those two hens got, Papaw advised against putting the younger ones in with the rooster, so we made them a home in a cat carrier temporarily.

Today we left the older hens and rooster alone and didn’t let them out of the run.  The young hens got to run in the yard as much as the kids would let them, but they spent a lot of the day being chased or carried around.  They did get acquainted with the older hens and the rooster through the run fence, too.

We had tentatively planned to build a small run for the little ones until they grew some, but after reading online I think we might try letting the big ones outside the run tomorrow and introduce the little ones to the flock at that time.  We’re not sure about that, though.

For the time being, we have six chickens.  One young rooster (Black Australorp), two young hens (Americana–one looks just like the picture at bottom right; the other is that color without the black markings), and three very young hens (two Americana (the buff pictures are pretty similar to what we’ve got) and one Black Australorp (she’s very small)).  At this point we are not getting any eggs.

Natasha R.I.P.

The kids are crushed.  Natasha died early this afternoon.  Since we got her, she’s had a couple of spells where she seemed quite ill, but she’d always recovered.  This afternoon it seemed clear she was not going to get over it this time.  We’re not sure exactly what was wrong, but we think she might have had complications from some injuries she received when a dog attacked her awhile ago, before she came to live with us.

We can’t leave Alexander by himself, so we need to get a couple of hens now.  Hopefully that won’t turn out to be a difficult project, and hopefully we’ll be able to introduce the hens without a lot of conflict.