More Chicken Hobby Story

Good Wednesday morning to everyone. :) I hope today will be good to us. I am trying to start my day out right. Daylight is here and Tip has already had to go way out to the edge of the property out front and retrieve a chicken. Her nose was trying to get her into trouble this morning. There were some distracting smells that kept her from staying on task and I was not happy about that and let her know it. She did finally get the chicken back in the fence, but I had to walk way out there with her to get her to do it. Hopefully she will do better later this morning.

Looks as if we have some cloud cover this morning. I wonder if we might get a little bit of rain. It sure would be nice. I opened the window last night like I have been doing since we have been having cooler nights, but it didnt feel as cool this morning and our temperatures are creeping back up towards 90.

I think I will make another chicken hobby entry this morning. Lets see I left off at the thought of getting more chicks after the buffs were sent to the outdoors.

My next pick would be five Speckled Sussex pullet chicks. I brought them home and gave them all the attention and love the first five had been given. At about two weeks I was about to learn a new lesson in problems that can come about in raising chicks. One of the chicks was beginning to get splay leg. Splay leg is when a chicks legs begin to spread out to the sides and they can't walk. After consulting the internet I discovered this was common and it was fixable. I took a bandaid and keeping the chicks legs straight under its body I folded each sticky end of the bandaid, one around each leg. A hobble of sorts. It held the legs in place as the chick grew. This made for difficult walking...but it was not impossible for the chick to get to the food and water with some perseverence. Then another problem arose. The chick would get flipped on its back and couldnt get back up, mostly because its legs were hobbled. So we all took turns, Ian, Shelby and I, watching over the chick, turning her back over every time she was stuck upside down. It took several weeks, but finally there was improvement and she was able to stay upright, and then a couple of weeks later the bandaid was removed. She had grown out fine and was back to normal.

The enivitable happened and they grew up..grew big enough that it was time to go outside. I had to introduce the new crowd to the old crowd in adjoiningpens as the old crowd would assert a stern pecking order if the new ones were just thrown in with the older ones. After a few weeks of seeing each other through wire I let them meet without any barrier. They did pretty well, there was minimum squabling and soon they all got along together. So now I had ten chickens in the city limits. I couldnt spend enough time outside, I just loved to watch them.

They always welcomed my company, treats were always in order and when I was raking the yard they followed close behind to see what I had uncovered. The few neighbors that knew just loved to see them. The next door neighbor would often sit out back in their yard and watch them for long periods of time, enjoying them as much as I did. Thank goodness no one ever complained to the animal control. I would have been beside myself if I had had to get rid of them because of some crabby person that wanted to make trouble. My girls were quiet and kept to the back yard, they didnt ever bother anybody.

I did find my story on this computer, and I will post it, even though it is kind of silly. Not on this entry though..on another seperate one.

Here are a few pictures of the Speckled Sussex as chicks and growing up...I hope you enjoy them. Remember these pictures were taken with a regular old camera so they wont be as good as pictures we all take today.