Growth and Death: Poultry Update

The runt

Chickens

Our chicks are now young chickens.  At roughly two months old, they have all their feathers and look like small versions of adult chickens.  They've moved into a stall space attached to the barn and we've built an adjacent temporary run for them using materials that we had lying around. We have plans for a more permanent run, and we'll need to make some changes to their coop in the coming month or two (including winterizing and adding nest boxes).  M. and I are torn between building the larger run close to the house, which would make access during the winter relatively easy, and constructing a hoop house that could be moved around the field adjacent to the garden.  A hoop house would be further away from the house and harder to reach once the snow comes but it would give the chickens some of the benefits of free ranging while limiting the dangers from predators.  Ideally, we would do both so that they could be in the hoop house most of the year and then, once the snows come, we could move them to the coop and a partially covered run close to the house. 

Sugar Mountain Farm's blog has some great information about how to construct a hoop house.  Their site also addresses the suitability of this kind of housing for cold, snowy climates (http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2009/03/08/chicken-hoop-house/).  They move their hoop house closer to their house in the winter to address the access problem.  In the middle of the summer, it's really difficult to remember and believe how much snow there is in the winter and how much effort is required to access parts of the property that are not at all far from the front door. 

We could really use a pickup truck or a trailer for hauling supplies.  To build the hoop house, I want to use metal livestock panels that are 4 by 16 feet.  To build the coop, we'll need to buy 4x4s and 2x2s. There is no way that these materials will fit in or on our Subaru Forester and we don't know anyone well enough in the neighborhood yet who could help us out.  We'll have to rent a truck.  The closest place we can do that is in Dover-Foxcroft, about half an hour from our house.

 

Guineas

We had a very sad thing happen with our baby guineas.  We moved their brooder in with the chickens in the coop and after a few days we opened the brooder up so that they could mix with the chickens.  Some of the chickens harassed the keets by chasing them and not allowing out into the run, but we were watchful and didn't see any serious danger. 

Keets are serious escape artists.  Several managed to get out of the brooder before we put the top netting on.  While we were moving them out to the coop, three escaped in the house.  And after the keets and chickens had been together for a few days, I found that two of the keets had somehow managed to escape the run.  They were running back and forth along the outside of the fencing, desperate to get back in with their flock mates.  I put them back in.  Then a few hours later, when I went out to check on them, I found another one had tried to escape, and was caught in the bird netting over the top of the run.  Just a few hours after that, we went out to check on them again and they were all gone.  Every single one.  We found a small gap where they had burrowed down in the dirt and pushed out against the fencing just enough to sneak out under the wire.  [Our more permanent run will have netting buried in the ground or folded against the ground to avoid this problem--this run is makeshift and temporary.]

We searched the yard. I even went across the road and looked into the neighbor's bush.  Nothing.  And the silly birds picked a horrible time to escape.  Within an hour of their disappearance, tropical storm winds and rains moved in.  The sun went down.  We went out a few times to look around in the dark and rain and wind but there was no sign of them.  I had a faint hope that they'd return to the coop once it got dark.  No such luck.

We went to bed to the sound of raging wind and rain, knowing the keets were out there with little shelter.  The temperature plummeted that night, down to almost to fifty degrees.  In the morning it was still still raining but once it slowed we went looking for the keets again.  I took the dog with me on a leash and asked him where the keets were.  He smelled all around the yard and eventually pulled hard to get into the enormous bush across the street from our house.  I put him inside and made my way into that bush.  I was hoping that I might find the keets huddled together in a pile to keep warm. 

I found one dead one right away.  No signs of trauma, just a cold, wet, stiff body.  I went deeper in to the bush and I saw a small grouping of keets, three or four, up against a stump. They were dead, sodden and cold.  Under their bodies were more dead keets.  I found a total of 12 dead in the bush which left three missing and presumably also dead.  There were no signs that a predator had bothered them, I think they must all have died of hypothermia.  In the coop, they'd still been sleeping under the heat lamp because they were only a few weeks old.   

I'm not sure how we could have avoided the situation, short of keeping them in the brooder for another week or so until they were bigger and couldn't get find a way to get out of small gaps in fence.  But they clearly did not like confinement and wanted more space to move.  I also think they wanted to get away from the chickens.  M. thinks that even if they hadn't escaped on that day, they would have escaped sooner or later.  I do think they would have proven difficult to keep confined, even while young.  I do hope they enjoyed their few short hours of freedom. 

I was devastated but I have to admit, also a bit relieved.  Even though they were only a few weeks old, it was already evident that I'd made a mistake in getting so many and that we would have to get rid of some of them once they got older.  I placed an order for the minimum number (15) back in March.  After that, every single time I mentioned ordering keets, someone told me a horror story.  I worried that they'd be too loud and that they'd wander into our neighbors' yards to dig up their flower beds and gardens.  Our plan was to let them free range to eat ticks on our property.  But the ticks we expected to have in our fields and yard never materialized.  I heard that they were not very bright and didn't know enough to get out of the way of cars; their lack of brightness was confirmed once they arrived and I observed their behavior.  And while we had planned to put up a fence to keep them away from the road that's right next to our house, I learned from reading and observation that despite their stupidity, they are excellent escape artists and would likely fly right over it.  I wasn't looking forward to neighbors having to swerve to avoid our wandering birds or the guineas being hit and killed by passing cars.
 
Now I worry about keeping the chickens safe.  It seems all I read are horror stories about predators who find their way into chicken coops and devastate entire flocks.  Maybe it's silly, but I've really gotten attached to these damn chickens.  I want them to be safe.