Jumpy Chicken Treats

It’s been a month since we added 5 hens to our flock and although there hasn’t been a whole lot of news, there is stuff to catch you up on. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve seen a bunch of this already, but there’s some new stuff too. FYI, no eggs yet. I’m hoping to find our first eggs in the next 6 weeks or so and when I do, I hope you follow on FB because that’s where it’ll go first!

So, we kept the new girls in quarantine for a while until we were sure they were healthy. During that time, we kept them in the service room of the coop. I am so glad to have this multi-purpose room in the coop. It’s where we can access the egg boxes without entering the coop. And we keep tools, feed and bedding in there. It also doubles as a quarantine area when needed, or separate space for raising chicks. But mainly, it’s a human only room.

But with 5 hens in there for quarantine, they very quickly made a mess of that room, as chickens will do. So when it was finally time to release them into the coop, the chickens AND the humans were really happy.

Since then, all ten hens have been getting along pretty well, although they are 2 distinct cliques of 5 birds. The leghorns hang with the leghorns and the new birds hang with the new birds.

The new girls are about 4-5 months old. The Leghorn chicks are now 2 months old. They’re getting so big, and they’re beautiful. I love their all white picture perfect chicken appearance.

By the way, everyone has a name now. Well kinda.

The large gray one is Ripley, affectionately named after Ellen Ripley from my all time favorite sci-fi movie franchise, Alien. Dandelion is the little speckled red, we call her Dandy, our friend Phoenix named her. And her sister, the frizzle, is named Fawkes after Dumbledore’s Phoenix. (No relation to our friend Phoenix, although she did suggest the name.) Fawkes and Dandy are sisters, bonded, and always together. They are so, so cute.

This is Arya and Sansa. Yes, hubs and I are GoT nerds.

The Leghorns are a bit more complicated. I had originally planned to name them after herbs and spices like, Basil, Paprika, and Cayenne. But uh.. I can’t tell them apart. And I might never be able to tell them apart. So instead I have named them The Spice Girls. Hahahaha. If/when I can tell them apart, they’ll be called… yep… Posh, Baby, Scary, Sporty and Ginger. I think I know who Posh is. She’s the biggest of the 5, and also the friendliest. Although “friendly” is kinda a stretch. More accurately, she’s the least spooked by the humans. But I’m working on their socialization.

I try to spend a lot of time with the girls. I’m still working from home, but every day at 5 o’clock, it’s treat time. My afterwork routine is to gather up some treats and head out and hang out with the flock. I’ve learned what they like to eat, and so far, their favorite treat is tomatoes. I’ve given them all sorts of fruits and veggies, strawberries, apples, grapes, corn, veggie scraps, oats, etc. They love grapes too, but by far, their favorite is a nice big juicy red tomato. When they see me with that red thing in my hand, they come RUNNING.

They love them so much, this is what I use to encourage them to be friendly. I hand feed them a half a tomato and while they’re busy tearing it up, I’m getting all handy with them. Giving them pets and scritches and picking them up and just pretty much bothering them. But they generally don’t mind, as long as I’m also holding a tomato. It’s a magical fruit.

Their other favorite is crickets. I bought a small bag of dried crickets on a whim, and that was a winner. They have been tearing through that in no time. So I bought a bigger 5lb bag of dried crickets and now they will have yummy crunchy snacks for months.

And then our friend Phoenix, much like when she said “hey you should get some chickens” and then we built a chicken coop, she says “hey you should raise crickets” and then she built a cricket breeder box. And so now I also have live crickets.

Aaaannndd I’m also apparently breeding mealworms (Darkling beetles) too because Phoenix says so and because the chickens love those too, so yes. Mealworms too. But those need to grow and develop, breed and lay eggs that hatch and grow into mealworms before I can treat the girls to mealworms. That’ll take a couple months.

But back to crickets. When the box of live crickets arrived today, I took the whole contraption out into the chicken coop to transfer the jumpy chicken treats to their container because I didn’t want jumpy chicken treats jumping around in my house. A few of them escaped, as expected, but they didn’t get far. The chickens are FAST. And although these crickets need some time to adapt and start breeding before they’ll become a magical refilling chicken treat box, I went ahead and shook off a few more for the girls. A preview of what’s to come from their amazing human that seemingly will do anything to spoil these birds and make them happy. And they were indeed delighted!

I mean, how fun is that!? It’s fun for me to watch, I can only imagine what their little chicken brains are thinking.

So yeah, that’s another project, and another critter in my life. If you’re thinking hey you’re kinda a pushover and that Phoenix girl can get you to do anything, I beg to differ. Because she has also persistently been saying for months, “hey you should get some pygmy goats”, to which I always promptly and firmly reply with “no”. NO. NO GOATS. I am not getting a goat. No.

The chickens were a good idea. And the crickets were a good idea. And the chickens agree that the crickets were a very very good idea. But no Phoenix, no. No goats. 🐓