A Dunk of Diesel and Dettol

On Tuesday afternoon Nath, Kara, and I rounded up the chooks into the hen house and closed them in with the corrugated metal panel. Nath had prepared a mix of Dettol and diesel to cure the mites growing scaly on the chickens' feet. As I guarded the door, Nath went after the chooks with the net and Kara clipped each one's wing and dipped their feet. The chooks were going absolutely nuts of course, but once we had them in our hands they were much easier to handle than I thought. If you place your thumb on their knees then the chicken can't move its legs. We snipped their primary feathers down on one side (no need to do both) so that they can't fly off. If you clip their wings young enough they won't ever learn that they can fly. It sounds like a traumatizing process, but the chooks were just as friendly and food-seeking as usual the next morning and laid a good dozen and a half eggs.

In other chicken news, we have 4 chooks sitting up in battery cages to get them off the cluck. Once chickens get broody their hormones keep them on the cluck, but they don't produce any eggs. Putting them up on cages gets air under their bums and cools their body temperature down to egg laying conditions. We give them food and water and take them out once they start laying or seem off the cluck. We're still trying to sort out Araucanas from the brown layers (there are 2 green egg layers in the main run). We've checked at least 8 chickens now and none of them are the culprits! We're starting to get down to the chooks we were so sure couldn't lay green eggs. Ever elusive. Distinguishing Araucanas is tricky if they're half-breeds.

We also have brand new "bock-bocks" as Kara calls them. I found a squacking mother and 4 chicks outside the run last week and they've been captured and placed in a box with straw, feed, water, and a warming lamp. After much ado and tramping through the woods behind the hen house Kara and I weren't able to capture the mother who'd escaped above our heads into the trees. We think she's returned the to hen house, but with so many hens looking alike we can't be sure. The chicks were struggling quite a bit when we brought them in, traumatized from the capture and being separated from their mother. We taught them to drink by dunking their heads in the water feeder and now at least three of the four are happily pecking away in their new quarters. The fourth is getting extra TLC from Kara. Its left eye was shut this afternoon and it hasn't grown as much as the others. This wee bock-bock escaped the initial capture and got separated from its mother when we went after her. The chick managed to find its way into the hen house and was laying outside the box of its siblings when we found it. A rough start so we're trying to help it catch up.