Spring in the garden

I feel guilty posting these knowing that so much of the rest of the country is STILL getting snow this late in March.  But I've had fun finding more chickens to adorn the garden and I can't wait to share.

The girls having some salad.

How many chickens do you see?  (I'll post the answer at the bottom.)

Couldn't find a hen door mat but this guy is pretty awesome.

I know my girls can't read but I'm hoping that they understand that the big red NO,
means that my veggie garden is a chicken free zone.

Honey Bear is disappointed she can't get to my veggies.
They are going to go nuts once they see tomatoes behind the fence.

I tried to make chicken foot prints out of a mosaic.  Not my best work but it will keep my feet out of the mud.

My chicken stepping stone came out better.

I'm using every last one of my chicken barricades to keep them from digging up my plants.

Poppy LOVES those gaps between the block.

Honey Bear likes to hang out under my chair on the patio.

Lulu Lemon takes a break from digging meteor sized holes in my garden.

Honey Bear and Poppy take cover under my patio chair from the scary balloons that were blowing over.

Poppy has these wonderful purple iridescent ear lobes.

Sprinkles LOVES it when I talk to her.  She watches me like she's hanging on my every word.

Current Photos of the Ladies

Sprinkles, like all my girls, wants to see your hands to make sure you don't have treats. 

Honey Bear (left) and Coco (right) working the fence line in their newly landscaped yard.

Honey Bear is just this beautiful big fluffy hen.  I have all I can do not to just pick her up and snuggle her all the time.

Check out Poppy's beautiful purple iridescent ear lobes.

Ginger doing the limbo with a beak full of Camellia blossom.  Don't know what it is about those Camellia's but they can't resist them.

Almost got the whole gang in one photo.  Must work to make that happen.   I need a good family portrait.

Coco, who also answers to Princess Cacao, survey's her domain.

Sprinkles is the most shy and skittish of the flock.  But white hens are most vulnerable due to their bright color.  I suspect she knows this in her DNA.

Poppy is always busy.  She can dig a hole just as big and deep as Coco can.  And she's less than half her size.

Coco

Lulu (blue) and Sprinkles (white) disassembling one of my flower pots.  Sigh...

Lulu Lemon lays an egg

Lulu Lemon laid her first egg on Saturday.  Finding a hen's first egg just never gets old.  You buy them as day old chicks and watch them grow up.  And while they grow up so quickly.  It's that wait at the end as they mature, their comb and wattles turn red and you wait for a squat, just seems like it takes years!

My hens are generally fairly quiet.  But Saturday, there was squawking and all kinds of commotion.  I went out a few times to check up on them and Honey Bear was sitting quietly in her favorite nest.  Coco was in and out of the house and just making all kinds of ruckus.  And Lulu Lemon was nervously going into and out of the house which was new behavior.  So I had my suspicions.

I left to run a few errands and when I came home, I immediately went out to see what was in the nests and sure enough, there was a large brown Honey Bear egg, and a large spotted Coco egg and one teeny, tiny white egg from Lulu Lemon.

Lulu Lemon is a Blue Andalusian.  She's a BEAUTIFUL bird.  Doesn't want to be held but will come up and eat treats out of my hand.  Her comb is big and starting to wobble and it's only a matter of time before it flops over to one side.

And it's funny but her egg doesn't look that small next to Honey Bear's brown egg.  But as you can see on the egg scale, it's in the Pee Wee category.  They will get bigger over time, thankfully.  Because at this size, it would take three eggs to equal a regular sized egg.

And this afternoon, Sprinkles, Lulu Lemon's sister squatted.  YIPPEE!!!

Fatty Liver Disease

This is so important that I feel compelled to blog about this; fatty liver disease in backyard chickens.

Here in California, we have a wonderful service in that we can send a deceased chicken from a backyard flock to UC Davis for a free necropsy.  It give the students a wonderful opportunity to put practice what they learn.  It gives the bird owner insight into what caused their bird to parish.  And gives the state valuable data as chickens are considered sentinel birds.

I'm a member of a local chat group and have seen a number of these necropsy reports over the past few years and was amazed at how many came back showing the chicken had fatty liver disease.  And I will be honest, I scoffed at how these chicken owners could be so negligent in letting their hens get fat.  I was horrified when my first UC Davis report came back detailing that my 1 year old hen had fatty liver disease.

I am totally guilty of tossing out handfuls of sunflower seeds and other fatty seeds to my hens.  I rationalized that they would eat these things in the wild.  Which, while true, isn't exactly correct.  In the wild or even in a farm/pasture situation, hens have to work for their food.  They walk and run, scratch and dig and in the process, burn calories as they hunt for seeds and treats.

Backyard chickens by nature, already live a sedentary lifestyle.  Even if they are let out of their run, chances are, they are limited to a small backyard and just don't get the same exercise that wild chickens do or chickens that have access to a large pasture environment.

About a month ago, I noticed Coco just not being herself and when I picked her up, felt a large bulge under her.  I thought that isn't right.  My fear was that it was fat and the vet confirmed my fear.  I felt awful but he was quick to say that it wasn't 100% my fault.  And went on to explain that backyard chickens are prone to this, especially the larger breeds such as my Jersey Giant.

He sent me home with a bottle of SAMe, an herbal supplement that is known to help jump start the liver.  I was skeptical.  But the pills easily tuck inside a split raisin and she had no trouble taking it each morning.

Two weeks later, the difference in her is simply AMAZING!!!  She's much more active, and back to her chatty old self.  The difference is so amazing that I went off to the vet this morning to pick up a bottle for my other two older hens.  They were raised in the same manner so I am suspicious that they too could have fatty liver disease.  And if an herbal supplement can help improve their liver function and keep them alive longer, then I'm all for it.

It is highly suggested that you toss eggs from hens who are on any medication as they really don't know what passes through to the egg.  Although, the vet did confide in me that if you were accidentally to eat an egg, it probably wouldn't hurt you.  But we'll toss eggs for the next month or so.  The hens will each be on SAMe for two weeks and then we'll give them two weeks to flush it from their systems.

And no more fatty sunflower seeds for my girls.  Not by the fist full anyway.  If I do dole out seed treats, it's no more than once a week.  I like to stand on the patio and toss them one at a time out into the garden and let them run and find it.  I do still put some veggie scraps out for them such as spinach a few times a week.  Hens do love and need their greens.  Especially, in the winter months when many ares of the country are under snow and hens don't have access to weeds and other greens.

Watch your hens.  You know their personality and behaviors best.  If you notice a change, don't hesitate to take action.  Be aware of over treating and don't do it.  Offering a few seeds to each hen every few days probably won't hurt them.  But it is possible to over treat and none of us want to kill our beloved pets with love.

I hope you are all well and your hens are happy this holiday season.

T.T.F.N.

Yes, Ta Ta For Now.  I've had the worst two weeks of my life with chickens and I'm going to go silent for a while while I ponder this.

For those who don't follow me regularly, some history.  Last December I picked up 4 baby BO chicks.  We lost one after a week.  But the other three grew up healthy and strong.  Or so I thought.  At 6 months, Sugar developed a respiratory issue that was so bad, she was simply gasping for air.  We put down but did not necropsy her.

Several days later, Spice showed the same symptoms but not as severe.  And she never seemed in pain so we just let her be.  She continued to eat, drink and lay eggs.  But she was not right.  And she became a bully.  I could tell she didn't feel well and was acting out from her condition.  I tried trimming her beak, I put a pinless peeper on her and even tried giving her Prozac to mellow her out.  Nothing worked.

A came home from work a few weeks back to a blood bath.  Spice had gone after Honey Bear and it was awful.  I still can't believe that one bird could lose that much blood and still be alive.  It took me three hours to clean up Honey Bear and blow her dry, wipe the blood off the other hens, scrub all the blood off their waterers, feeders and their hen houses.  The fence and ramps up into their houses are still covered and serve as a constant reminder of what happened that day.

I removed Spice to a dog crate for the evening and took her to the vet the following day to be euthanized.  This time, I sent her to UC Davis for a necropsy.  The results simply stunned me.  She was suffering from moderate to severe fatty liver disease and pneumoconiosis.  She was clearly bullying the other hens for the sunflower seeds and eating way too many of them.  And inhaled DE which damaged her lungs.  Why just Sugar and Spice and not the other birds?  I'll never know.  Was it a one time incident or did this happen over a long period of time.  Again, I just don't know.  I've reached out to some people for answer but they either don't know.  Or want a fee to tell me. 

What I'm left with is my sweet Honey Bear who cries.  She is terrified to go to bed and stands outside and cries at night.  It breaks my heart.  She knew she was in for a good pecking by Spice when she went to bed and she can't get over that.  It's been more than two weeks.

I've tried to put her to bed in with the babies but she just comes right back outside.  Not sure if she knows I'm still out there or if she wants nothing to do with them.  I suspect it's a little of both.

Before I got chickens and even once I had them, I read books and plowed through the web for information.  I follow other blogs and grasped at any information I could find.  I desperately wanted to be the best chicken mama I could possibly be.  And yet, I've experienced a number of issues that no one every said were even remote possibilities.

I've learned a ton over the past two years and would do it very different if I could go back and do it all over again.  And then I have moments like I'm having this week where I wish I had never got chickens to begin with.  I'm just not sure the overwhelming heart ache is worth the bits of joy.

So with that, I'm signing off for a while, maybe for good.  My heart is just not in the right place to continue.