Too Many Chickens!

Every night I stick my head inside the coop door and say goodnight to the chickens before I lock them in. This is not just because I am a nurturing chicken owner. I also do it to make sure they’re all there, as Boss Chicken once spent the night outside in freezing weather because I hadn’t noticed she was missing. I can also often get a better look at them while they’re roosting than I might normally while they’re running around. Of course, when I stick my head in the door the chickens use to enter and exit the coop, I am right at butt level. This isn’t always the place you want to be. However, on more than one occasion, this view has allowed me to save the day by noticing something was wrong with a chicken. The butt can often be the window into a chicken’s health. In the past, I’ve been able to spot vent gleet, thanks to its telltale symptoms that give it the nickname of “nasty butt disease.” Your grandparents possibly frequently asked you if you had had a bowel movement. They probably would have been good with chickens, as what comes out, or does not come out of a chicken’s butt is something you need to keep an eye on.

They’d ask anyone, anytime.

It’s always a surprise to peek in and see something amiss, and sometimes, given the way the chickens like to sit on top of one another, I don’t always get a good look. But sometimes I do, like the other night when I stuck my head in and got an eyeful of Henny Penny’s alarmingly featherless hind end. I had been a little worried about her anyway, since she had had really long molt this winter. Long enough that it made me paranoid. Like months. She’s seemed fine otherwise, but here was some evidence that maybe things weren’t great. My first thought was that she had been getting pecked there, since my mom had been calling me about problems with her own chickens pecking butts. I figured if this was it, I should put some Bag Balm or something on the raw area, so I’d need to grab her. The small door my head was in was too small for me to get at her, so I had to go around back where she would be farther away. I had no good options, but the need to protect her kicked in, and I managed to get her with one quick nab. She made an unholy noise, but I flipped her on her back and she calmed down. I took her inside, and realized the Bag Balm was deep inside the house. A house full of cats. Then I remembered that I had some Blu-Kote, which I had just recommended to my mom, in a catless part of the house. I brought her there, swabbed her with some dark blue antiseptic goodness, and brought her back to the coop. Then I remembered why you’re supposed to wear gloves with Blu-Kote. Luckily, my hands weren’t too Smurfy, and I put them to work on the computer, checking on any other possible causes for this feather loss.

Gotta keep my Smurf hand strong.

Feather loss can also be caused by an egg being stuck inside the chicken. We have had days where we get 5 eggs in the coop, but there are 6 chickens in there. That doesn’t mean anything really, but this created enough doubt in my mind that I knew I was walking into another “I stuck my finger in a chicken’s butt” story. I got my rubber gloves, grabbed poor Henny Penny again, and once again stuck my finger in a chicken’s butt. I didn’t feel an egg, which is good. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel, but there certainly wasn’t an egg right at the threshold. Still, I figured I should keep an eye on her, so I brought her inside and put her in the dog crate Boss Chicken spends the winter in. She walked normally, so that was another egg bound symptom dismissed. I put her to bed, and went to bed myself.

Egg Bound For Glory – The Woody Guthrie Chicken Story

The next morning, as I was getting the chickens’ breakfast ready, I was debating bringing Henny Penny back out, or if I should keep her quarantined, just in case. Then I opened the door and got hit in the face with the smell of the Chicken Butt Apocalypse. I went in, and not only had she pooped, but it was enormous. I knew then that no egg was blocking anything, and I brought her back outside. Maybe she’s getting pecked, maybe it’s something else. I’ll continue to monitor the situation. But that smell left no doubt in my mind that there were no clogs in this bird, and she was o.k. to rejoin the flock. At least one problem is ruled out, and time will tell what the cause of this actually ends up being. In the meantime, I’ll add another notch to whatever it is I use to track my exploratory chicken probings. That seems like the best euphemism for this.

Coming soon to a theater near you.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music bed: Fluffy Ruffles by All Star Trio)

Those of you who are regular listeners and readers know about Boss Chicken. For those of you who aren’t, or are just forgetful, let me give you a crash course. Boss Chicken was my first alpha hen, who we really worried might be a rooster until she started laying eggs. She was that aggressive, and had been since she was a week old, when we got her. She and the late Suzy Creamcheese had a real rivalry going for a time, which involved a lot of chest bumping, and basically Boss Chicken being up in Suzy Creamcheese’s business at every turn. I suppose you don’t get to be called Boss Chicken without having to constantly remind people why that’s your name. But one morning I went out and found that Boss Chicken had spent the night under the coop, in temperatures in the teens. “What’s up with that?” I asked. The chicken didn’t answer, but when she tried to walk, I figured it out. Her legs no longer seemed to work properly, so she obviously could not have gone up the ramp into the coop. The vet said it could be Marek’s Disease, a potentially deadly affliction that can affect the legs, and can be fatal. There’s no way of knowing though, until you do a necropsy, which you need a dead chicken for, and she was still very much alive. I later met another chicken enthusiast who described a chicken with similar issues, and he was under the impression that his bird had had a stroke. So I suppose that’s a possibility too. Whatever the cause, she got way less aggressive, and since she couldn’t move quickly, we had to keep her separate from the rest of the chickens. You’ve heard of the pecking order, right? It involves real pecking. Gruesome “Planet of the Chickens”-style pecking. Suzy Creamcheese now rose to power, and in order to assert her position, pecked Boss Chicken bloody the first time they met post-injury, and so Boss Chicken now lives in a nice rabbit hutch. She can see the others, but at a safe distance.

A tense peace.

Since Boss Chicken lives by herself, she doesn’t get the benefit of clumping together with other chickens on cold nights. Her hutch keeps her out of the wind, which is very important, but I often worry that on really cold nights, how cold is too cold? Minnesotans and Canadians often post online about how cold it gets where they are and their chickens are fine. But that’s usually a flock, not a lone chicken. And I am a worrier. So is one chicken capable of withstanding extreme temperatures? Is this a test I’m willing to undertake?

My new reality show.

As we entered our first cold snap of the Fall, this was on my mind. Some people wonder, “when is a good time to turn on the heat?” I wonder about when a good time to bring Boss Chicken inside is. I have a dog crate in our storage area that I put her in during inclement weather. I had almost made up my mind over the summer that she would be fine alone all winter, as long as I gave her plenty of wood chips to nest in. And then I noticed that she had a few bald spots on her wing bones, sort of what amounts to a chicken’s elbow. This is probably because when she walks, it’s so wobbly that she has to balance with her wings. The skin looks fine, and not irritated, but some of the feathers have worn off. So now I had to consider if the bare skin could take the cold. My sense was that this was risky.

You can’t get this map at rest stops.

Then a weather forecast called for nights to get into the twenties. This could have been the big test, except I couldn’t help but notice that the rabbit hutch was looking more feathery than usual. Of course she had also started molting right as the cold front came in. I’ve had other chickens molt in very cold weather, but they had the rest of the chickens to act as blankets to make up for their lost feathers. It seemed like I had to bring her in now, except that molting can make it painful for chickens to be touched, and obviously, I had to touch her to get her inside. I looked at the forecast again. It was going to hit the teens in a few nights. I apologized for any discomfort I was about to cause her, and carried her inside, leaving a pretty large trail of feathers behind me.

Now I can find my way back to the coop.

This may seem like a lot of unnecessary worrying, but Boss Chicken is a special case for me. Even when she was a terror, she was my favorite, because she had such a big personality. Now she’s ill, or at least damaged in some unknowable way, and her days could very well be numbered (though sometimes I suspect she’s lived this long, she may outlive everyone). If something happened to her and it was my fault and preventable, I would be devastated. I’m going to play it safe. If it warms up, I’ll bring her back out. But for now, she can enjoy her tropical vacation to our unheated storage room. Some chickens have all the luck.

Swanky digs.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Amorosa by Orquestra Internationale)

The new chickens are settling in pretty well these days. They’re sleeping in the coop, on the roost with the old-timers, which I’m happy to see, since it’s getting chilly at night. The “chicken clump” inside the coop is one of the ways they stay warm, so I’m pleased they get along well enough to clump. For a little while, Henny Penny would peck the closest n00b if I shined my headlamp into the coop while they were all roosting, which, to be perfectly honest, kind of ticked me off. I get that she’s in charge, but that just seemed unnecessary. I guess maybe in the spotlight she felt the need to play the role of harsh taskmistress that goes with being the alpha hen. But that’s been toned down, if not completely abandoned at this point. Maybe Henny Penny realized that the clump is more important than a pointless reminder of who’s boss. Whatever the reason, I welcome peace in the coop.

The Clump – It looks like an egg-laying hydra.

Since it’s getting cold, and a few of the chickens were molting recently, I’ve been putting out chicken scratch for them every morning along with the rest of their breakfast buffet (which is basically just their usual food, plus yogurt). Scratch is high in protein, which they need when they’re molting, and also need to keep warm when it’s cold. Keeping warm takes a lot of energy, and while it’s not particularly cold out yet, it can’t hurt to start the scratch early. The chickens love it, and I aim to please.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Since it’s dark out when I wake up the chickens these days, they don’t often want to come right out when I open the coop door, and frankly, I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t be out there that early if I didn’t have to be, but I have to be, so the coop door gets opened when I am there to open it. The Mandrell Sisters have figured out that morning now means scratch time, so they are pretty eager to get out there and dig in. It’s sort of like when they filled the cereal dispenser with Frosted Mini Wheats in college, which always caused a student stampede. You go for the food when it’s there, or someone else gets it. Henny Penny also comes out, since she’s running the show. Steve, John, and Suzy Creamcheese Junior aren’t quite as eager to come out as the others. I know they love scratch, because I’ve given them some when they’re out in the yard, in order to try to train them to come when called. (This makes it much easier to get them back in the run after free-ranging.) But the lure of gourmet treats isn’t enough of a draw. One of them, let’s say Steve (it’s either Steve or John, but it’s early and cold, and so cut me some slack on the recognition stuff) will come down, but she’s still too nervous around the grown-ups to walk right up to the pile of scratch and dig in. I figured, ok, they’re young and smaller than the others, I can see why they might be afraid to approach the main pile, so the other morning I added a secondary pile far from the other one, under the coop. The n00bs like to be on the other side of the run from the adults, so this seemed like the way to spread it out. Steve came out, found the scratch, and dug in. Until a Mandrell Sister figured out there was more and came over, sending Steve off into parts un-scratched. While all this was happening, John and Suzy Creamcheese Junior still hid inside the coop, possibly afraid of the dark, possibly afraid of the adults, possibly not ready to greet the day just yet. Meanwhile, the good stuff is getting eaten, and I have a “no food in the coop” policy, so they’re out of luck if they don’t come and get it. It’s a treat, so it’s not key to their survival, but it pains me to see them missing out due to shyness.

Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from eating all the scratch in life you’d like to.

Since this all happens in the dark, and I don’t have the time to stand there in my pajamas in the cold waiting to see if they eventually come and chow down when it gets light out, I don’t know how long it takes them to come out, and if any scratch is left when they do. What I think I’ll have to do is try my two-pile system on a weekend morning, when I’m allowed to sleep until the sun comes up, and observe the goings-on then. When it’s light, they all come out (and are usually cranky that I’ve slept so late – usually 6:30 or 7, how lazy of me)  and maybe, just maybe, they’ll figure out the system and find the courage to come out in the dark during the week. Assuming they recognize that there’s a system. I’ve tried to explain it to them, but like typical teenagers, they don’t listen. You’re on your own then, kids.

They’ll figure it out one way or another.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Ragtime Dance by Scott Joplin)

Fall is a time for change. The leaves on the trees are the obvious example of this, commemorated by horrible traffic as people from out of town drive really slow, while oohing and aahing. Our gardens whither and die, leaving us to rely on frozen vegetables as side dishes. And in chicken coops across the country, chickens begin to explode on their roosts, leaving nothing but piles of disembodied feathers behind.

Like spontaneous human combustion, but with chickens.

What?

Well, o.k., they don’t really explode, but it certainly looks like it. If you’ve ever seen a chicken, you’ve probably noticed that they are covered in feathers. Now imagine those feathers without the chicken attached to them. This is kind of what molting is. The chickens ditch their old feathers and grow new ones in order to be ready for winter. Think of it as buying a new down jacket each season. Maybe wasteful for humans, but chickens make their own, so they don’t have to worry about blowing all their money. Must be nice.

I’m going to be buried in mine.

Molting this year is coming as part of a perfect storm for me. It’s triggered by the days getting shorter, which also affects how many eggs the chickens lay. When chickens are molting, they tend to not lay eggs either. And my chickens are nearing henopause, so our egg supply is really running low, until the new chicks start laying.

Gollum had similar problems.

I’ve always thought it was a little crazy that they lose their feathers right when it starts to get colder, but I suppose the point is that they stick it out for a little while when it’s sort of cold, but are ready when winter hits. Being exposed to the chilly fall nights probably makes them tougher.

Or it just makes them cold.

Every year when my chickens start to molt, there are obviously feathers everywhere. I get most of them out of the coop when I do my weekly poop cleanouts and chuck them in the compost, but the run has too many hard-to-reach corners, and those ones end up just getting mashed into the dirt where they become one with nature. Or more than one with nature, since they’re already a natural thing. They get buried. That’s what I’m trying to say. They get buried. But there’s a part of me that feels like this is wasting an opportunity. I built my coop out of reclaimed materials, so I’m totally on the re-use tip. I find myself starting to wonder if there’s anything I can do with all these feathers. I just hate to have so much of something and not put it to good use. But what would I honestly do with them? Make a comforter? Some pillows? Re-stuff a sagging down coat? Make a boa? Just have an enormous pile of chicken feathers in the middle of the living room? The possibilities seem endless. The possibilities also seem stupid. Maybe there’s a legitimately good use for them, but I don’t know. This might be where I find the limitations of my DIY recycling attitude. Some stuff just doesn’t need to be reused. Since feathers decompose, I suppose that’s fine. It’s not like the chickens are shedding rubber feathers that take 100 years to break down. We get a ton of leaves in the yard every fall too, and I don’t do all that much with those (though they do make good compost). I need to pick my battles, and maybe it’s time to concede to the feathers.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Frogs Legs by Columbia Saxaphone Sextette)

I’ve got a chicken who is molting for the second time, in the middle of winter. I thought this was a little strange, and so I asked over at backyardchickens.com about it. The feedback I got was that certain things could trigger a second molt, like, say, extreme weather. And I thought, “Oh, you mean like TWO POLAR VORTEXES?” So, I think we may have the answer.

Regardless, poor Suzy Creamcheese looks really rough, but is holding out o.k. in the cold. I was tempted to bring her inside, but I think she’s better off with the others, and people said their chickens that had this happen were fine in the cold. She lost her tailfeathers this week, and looks stubby.

Guess what?

And we just got 8 more inches of snow yesterday, with more on the way tomorrow and Monday night. The chickens won’t see bare ground until August at this rate.

But you’ll see new Too Many Chickens! full posts starting again on February 28th, when Garden Guys returns to the internet airwaves.

Is everyone keeping their chickens warm in the Polar Vortex? Mine stay outside without any source of heat but themselves, and have been fine. The key is to have ventilation to keep the moisture from hanging around. I have had to bring one inside at night, since she seems to think molting in winter during a cold snap is a sensible thing to do. She should be all re-feathered shortly, and then can have sleepovers with her friends.

Came across this video today. I agree that maybe chickens aren’t as smart as dolphins or pigs, but sheesh, lighten up, Werner.

(Garden Guys will be back on the air late January/early February, and then you’ll get more new Too Many Chickens! posts. Hang tight!)

Boss Chicken decided to molt right when it got really cold, so I brought her inside. She’s out there by herself with no other chickens to keep her warm.

She lost a few feathers.

The bad cold snap has now passed, and she seems done molting, so I decided to put her back outside today. She was psyched.

She lives in here, since the other chickens will attack her due to her disability.

The red eye is actually a gleam of joy to be back outside.

(Garden Guys and Too Many Chickens! will be back in full in January.)

(Broadcast 11/22/2013)

I know there are a lot of products out there to help people hide their gray hair. You can just dye it all, or you can leave some gray to look “distinguished,” or you can do just your beard, if you have one and it’s giving away your grayness. I have no problem with gray hair. I think it looks nice. Of course, as my wife likes to point out, I don’t have any, so I should shut up about it. If I was already going gray and I talked about how gray hair looks good, it would sound like I doth protest too much. I’m laying groundwork here for my inevitable be-graying. I just want everyone to know I thought this before I had to think it. Anyway, chickens, as far as I know, do not go gray. They look distinguished in their own ways, I suppose.

Now in the chicken aisle

You might recall that the Mandrell Sisters are my three Buff Orpingtons who are nearly identical (at least to my eye). This has caused me no end of grief, the thinking being that I am not seeing their uniqueness. Well, there have been some developments. All three sisters have now gone through their annual molts, and things are not the same.

The first difference I noticed was that one of them was much, much lighter than she had been. She’s no longer yellow, but not quite beige. I’d say she’s become a sort of Silver Fox, if a. that wasn’t creepy to say about a chicken, and b. foxes didn’t eat chickens. I don’t want to call her that which intends to eat her. This is what got me thinking about gray hair. She might look a little distinguished, for a chicken. I don’t know that I will go to her for advice or anything, but something about her seems more respectable than it used to.

Must be the glasses.

The Mandrell Sister who has had issues with vent gleet, a.k.a. Gleety Mandrell, has stood out from the other two for a while now. At first, it was because she had the nasty butt typical of nasty butt disease. Then it was because I trimmed off all the nasty feathers, and she was the only one with a featherless hind end. As if this poor chicken hadn’t been through enough, her molt was pretty rough, too. Her tail feathers looked ragged to the point that I thought she was being picked on, until I noticed that she was bald around the neck where other feathers had fallen out. She was definitely on the “mange” end of the molt spectrum. The feathers are coming back in, but what I’ve noticed is that the new ones are lighter, but there are still plenty of old ones that are the original darker color. I’d say she looks mottled, now, if that’s what mottled means. Almost a calico, in way. I like calico cats. Calico chickens? She looks like the equivalent of wearing clashing plaids. I’ll try not to judge.

Just like this, but more feathery.

Then there’s the third sister. She has molted, but everything looks exactly the same, like that little black dress that never goes out of style. Maybe she’s behind the times as far as what’s new in chicken fashions, or maybe she’s doing that whole retro thing. Or maybe she’s like that friend who never seems to get old. Don’t you just hate that person? I don’t know. What I do know, is that I can now tell them apart, and this is fraught with issues. Do I now give them individual names? I liked the idea of a group name, though if anything happened to one of them, how would I cope? There are three actual Mandrell Sisters. What if one of the chicken Mandrell Sisters died? Would I have to have one of the human ones whacked for consistency? I have been known to go a long way for a joke, but I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. Yet. Should I give them nicknames, like, say, Gleety? Do I just roll with the changes? Or do I do like the third chicken, and just stay put? These are big questions. Perhaps in the New Year, I will have answers. For now, I will keep the chicken ship steady as she goes, and if a new name (that isn’t Gleety) should present itself, I will be ready. Who knows, maybe I’ll even have some gray hair by then.

(Broadcast 9/27/2013)

Recently I’ve noticed loose feathers around the coop and run, which is really not shocking in the least. We’ve got a bunch of birds hanging out in there, it seems pretty obvious that there will be the odd occasional feather that comes detached from it’s host, and there you go. O.k., well, see you next week! Then one day I opened the coop door to get eggs, and it looked like one of the Mandrell Sisters had exploded. First thing I had to do was confirm that all chickens were in a non-exploded state. Check. Ok, so then what would make this happen? My first thought was someone was molting, but of course, being the paranoid type who likes to look things up, I decided to make sure there weren’t other, more sinister things at play.

What evil lurks in the parts of chickens?

There are a number of things that can make a chicken lose her feathers. One is a change of diet. I knew I could rule this out, since we’re very much steady as she goes in terms of the commercial food they get. We supplement that with vegetable scraps and other odds and ends, but nothing that would cause a shortage of any nutrition, or be considered a shocking change. They’re nothing if not well-fed.

They like variety.

That brings us to the issue of parasites, which always makes me a little itchy. There are plenty of little nasty critters that can make a chicken’s feathers fall out, so this was a worry. These can usually be ruled out by an examination of the chicken and the coop. Having cats, I know what to look for if fleas are involved. They leave the innocuous sounding “dirt” behind, which is their poop. It’s not as helpful as chicken poop in the garden. It’s really only good for figuring out if fleas are around. But I didn’t see any of this dirt on my birds. I didn’t see much of anything, really. A lot of parasites will leave bites or other marks on the skin, which will be a giveaway, even if you don’t see the bugs themselves. All I was seeing was lovely clean chicken skin. If chicken skin can ever been called lovely. Let’s say normal chicken skin. The normalness of their skin also helped me to rule out another nasty cause of feather loss – aggressive pecking. I had a chicken pecking at another one once, but I caught it very early on. I know what the results look like, and they aren’t pretty. Lots of blood and scabs. I’d have noticed this.

Somebody say “parasite?”

Molting can be triggered by the change in the length of days. Well, here we are with it getting darker much earlier, so I was beginning to suspect this was definitely my culprit. Chickens do go through an annual molt, and since mine are just over a year old, it looks like it may be time to ring in the New Year. As time went on, it became clearer that one of the Mandrell sisters had lost some feathers. The area around her neck started to get very thin. A typical molt starts at the neck and then moves down the body. What’s cool about new feathers is that they look a little like fish bones when they first appear. The soft part of the feather is contained in a tube, which slowly breaks away and then the feather as we know it emerges. What’s cool in concept can be very freaky in reality, especially when you look at your chicken and she seems to be wearing a necklace of spines. So edgy.

It’s all the rage in London.

There are two types of molting. One is the “typical” molt, and one is the “rough” molt. The typical molt means that the feathers fall out, but it’s sort of like a cat shedding. The chicken still looks fairly normal, but may have some spots that look a little sparsely feathered. The rough molt is something out of a chicken horror movie, or maybe more accurately, The Chicken Road Warrior. There’s a lot of skin, and weird tufts of feathers sticking out all over the place. It looks like mange, but because chickens look so odd when you can see their skin, it’s much, much creepier.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.

Luckily, we seem to be going through a typical molt. The first chicken I noticed was molting had some spiny feathers on her neck, and now her wings look a little ragged, but otherwise she seems fine. She just looks a little shabby chic. Another Mandrell Sister seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, so they can at least commiserate about the indignities of molting in front of the others. Chickens need support groups too. I just hope the feathers are back before it gets too cold. I understand the biological mechanisms behind sunlight triggering the molt, but it seems silly to have it happen when it’s getting cooler, rather than when it’s really warm out. But I assume they know what they’re doing. Which is probably a bad thing to assume, since they are chickens.

Speaking of not knowing what you’re doing, this caterpillar is in way over its head.

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