I was way up on the northern coast of California over the weekend at another poultry show. Yes, January and February are very busy months for me when it comes to chicken stuff. I really love the show up in Eureka, and always have a great time. I feel like I've fallen in with a whole new crowd in the last few years, and I just want to say I know some wonderful people. I had a blast!! My birds didn't win a darn thing, but one of my bestest buds won the whole darn show, and that's exciting!
There's just one more show to go (for me, anyway) this season, and that's next weekend. I turned on the incubator today. It's going to be a wonky season, but I'm trying to get some chicks hatched out EARLY because if I wait til after I move I think it will be too late and too hot.
A lot of the drive on highway 299 looks like this, and a lot of it has really steep dropoffs and really tight turns. I would not want to make that drive in the dark! I have to say I'm going to miss my old route up 101... guess it'll be 299 from Redding from now on. Jen and I found bigfoot! These are the two BBRed cockerels I've been showing this year. Confession, they are both half Brassy Back. That's why they are too dark and stripey. I did that to put some tail length on them. Boy howdy, it worked. Their offspring should be pretty interesting: BBRed pullet: Brassy Back pullet: Black pullet: Blue Brassy Back pullet (she's rather friendly) ;-) These are some of my new neighbors that I'll get to know better when I move. That's part of the property where I will be living in a few months. A few months. Holy crap. It's only a matter of time until freak-out mode sets in!
I know, I know, another chicken posting, but this is a serious occasion.
Twenty years ago today I got my first Rosecomb Bantams. I'd had Old English Game Bantams for five years already before that, but today is my Rosecomb Anniversary. :-) That's a long time.
I couldn't find any pics from 1992, but here's one from 1993. That's the first generation of the Rosecomb X Old English, which is now my line of Black Breasted Red Rosecombs. And me, and the wild turkey I raised that year, and Gio (the dog in front), and Annie (the dog in the back).
I did something today that I have never done in January. I set up all the chicken breeding pens for the season. That doesn't mean that I built anything or moved coops, it means I caught ALL the birds and decided which females will be spending the next few months with which males. Chickens are pretty open-minded about such things, they don't seem to mind these "arranged" relationships...
Normally I do this no earlier than late February, and "normally" (it varies widely, but if you average out all the years) I have chicks hatching between mid April and mid June.
Since I'm going to need to be moving me and all the birds some time in April, I'd originally thought I would just start hatching after I get all settled in, but it's quite possible the chicken coops might take some extra time to get finished, and I don't want it to suddenly be June without anything hatched yet, because it gets stinkin hot up there in the summer and I never have much luck showing late-hatched birds anyway.
So here I am trying to have the earliest season I've ever had, I even put a light in the chicken coop that will go in a few hours before sunrise, so as to jump start some egg production! If I could be at least mostly done hatching by early April, that would be swell. Let's face it, moving the birds is going to be a giant pain in the asterisk no matter what...
There are FIVE pens of BBReds (told ya that's where I plan to focus!), 1 pen of Black, and 1 pen of Brassy/Blue Brassy. I don't plan to hatch many Blacks or Brassies/Blue Brassies (those two pens also don't have any lighting right now, so I don't expect much out of them yet anyway).
I'm happy with the numbers, I'm down to 33 birds once the rest of them are sold or shipped out. And I'm happy with the configuration, that seemed like the right number of Blacks (7), Brassy Backs (3), and Blue Brassy Backs (3) to keep to continue and preserve the lines but not be the ONLY one raising them.
Anyway, there ya have it. Like a friend of mine said to me the other day, it's going to be a crazy spring no matter how well I think I have it planned out.
So, changing gears from the big engraving show last weekend, I have a big poultry show this weekend. A lot of my engraver buddies were unaware of this "chicken thing" in my life, but I think they kinda got the point after thumbing through the 100ish pieces of chicken art in the portfolio... ;-) I answered a lot of chicken questions. All good, I'm used to it... There is always a bit of disbelief regarding the notion of washing chickens. Yup, I really do wash them in preparation for a show. Sometimes they just need a little, sometimes they need a lot. But even more importantly I think is the fact that washing and grooming a bird seems to do wonders for taming it.
Today was chicken-washing day in preparation for taking birds to the show on Friday, thus today I give you "Chicken Spa 101, how to wash a chicken." ;-)
Today I washed 13 birds. Here's my first victim, I mean volunteer. If pictures could talk, he's quite vocally expressing his displeasure. This guy has never been shown, and has not been handled much. They do eventually settle in and seem to like it, but I'll admit it can be chaotic at times. I didn't manage to photograph those moments, I had my hands full! Scrub a dub dub! I use dog shampoo. Some people use a mild dish soap. Girls are a little easier to deal with, they're more civilized toward each other so I can put a bunch in the sink at once!
Rinse the soap off! All clean and wrapped up! Waiting on the washing machine while I clean up his brother... Chicken burritos! The laundry basket is a good way to transport them from one room to another! ;-) After they've been in the towels for a while, it's time to trim beaks... Oh, I have to share with you something totally cool I learned last weekend from a friend. I seriously thought he was pulling my leg. Sodium Hyaluronate, derived from chicken combs, is some sort of magical goo that's used in some types of eye surgery. I don't know enough about it to explain it, but I had no idea. Now I want to know where the chicken combs come from... I've never heard of the combs being specifically harvested in any sort of poultry industry. Anyway, little tangent there for you to ponder. Trim the toenails (this can be a little scary if you've never done it before). And everyone gets a numbered leg band for show. Normally this time of year it's cold and rainy, and I end up drying birds in the kitchen, where I put them in cages and crank up the space heater. But it warmed up enough today that I could let them dry out in the sunshine, which is so much better! Look at those guys! Holy tail feathers, Batman! All those girls, he probably thinks he won the lottery... Everyone's tucked in for the night. They normally live in big coops, but are spending a couple days in "show cages." These are the types of cages where they are housed during a show, and they settle in much nicer at the show if they have spent some time in these cages beforehand. There you have it! A day at the chicken spa. Now come on down to the fairgrounds in Stockton on Saturday and say hi!
Hmm, good thing I didn't make a resolution to be better about blogging, or I'd be seriously failing already... ;-)
I am trying to spread the word about this as much as possible, so I'm posting it here for the chicken folks who read this. I am selling many (most?) of my birds. As much as I would like to continue to raise the four varieties of Rosecombs, it's really not feasible for me to try to take them all with me when I move. None of my current chicken coops can be transported, so I'm going to have to start from scratch (aaaack) and I can't deal with that many birds.
My plan, which is admittedly wishy washy, is to keep the BBRed flock (about 20) plus a handful of Blacks and Brassies for the purpose of crossbreeding with the BBReds as needed. But everything else... most of the Blacks, all the Blues, the extra BBReds, and almost all the Brassies and Blue Brassies... they need to go.
Selling the Brassies and Blue Brassies feels somewhat like cutting off a body part, so if you are under the impression that I really don't want to part with them, you are correct. But if the right person is out there who will continue my 16 years of work with them, I will sell them. Otherwise, I will not. I'm not going to have another Red Pyle incident... where I sold the whole flock and the buyer promptly dropped off the face of the earth, apparently taking the birds with him. I have too much invested in them to let the bloodline disappear. So if there is a serious committed breeder out there who has been admiring them for years and would like to raise them, I will consider offers on the whole flock. Or half the flock. But I will not sell them off one bird at a time.
The whole chicken aspect of the move is really extremely daunting, I keep thinking it would all be pretty easy except for that. But I REALLY want to continue working with the BBReds so I'm determined to make this work somehow. Let me just say, chicken house costs... holy cow. All proceeds from selling birds are going toward a new chicken house.
Thanks for the suggestions on yesterday's post about the coop door. Obviously I don't know much about raccoons, and I haven't managed to trap the varmint yet either. But I made the door on the little house in the pullet pen ("little house in the pullet pen"... could be a novel or something, right?) a bit more Fort-Knox-ish today.
That plastic mesh is a whole lot stronger than you might think (I can barely cut it with a wire-cutter!) but I put a piece of wire fence over the top, and then added another strip of wood to keep little prying fingers from the bottom of it.
There has been a terrible predator problem this fall, and a lot of coops were not originally built to be very predator-proof, because, well, there weren't predators to contend with. Boy that has changed all of a sudden. One of mom's big chickens was nabbed from the coop two nights ago and dragged out into the pasture (trail of feathers). I found her dead in the morning, missing her head and one wing. Oh geez that is heart-wrenching. :-(
The ground conditions were different than when Pablo disappeared. It was muddy, and the footprints I found by the fence between the corral and creek (by the gap where the water drains out to the creek) really shocked me.
Raccoon tracks, after almost 14 years of never having a raccoon on the place: And... fox tracks?!?! Yikes! These are too small for Angus and too big for the cats and there haven't been any dogs visiting here. For comparison, this is footprint from Angus (dog). Much larger, with big deep claw marks: So I had to build some hasty modifications onto the coops that are out by the barn. I'll be the first to admit my construction skills really suck. Sometimes I think I have it all planned out but I always end up redoing something. I make things the wrong size, I put the hinges in the wrong place, it ends up all wonky... sigh. On the upside, this crappy stuff will manage to get the job done, and I used all scrap stuff from around the barn, so it didn't cost a dime.
On the egg chicken coop, one of the modifications was to put a little door on it so I can close the birds in at night. That way anything that comes in through the outdoor run can't get to them. They don't appreciate being jailed at night, but I don't think they appreciate being murdered either.
From the outside, open and closed: From the inside, open and closed (fancy hinges, eh? It was the only matching pair I could find in the "hinges" container!): The aviary that has all my show pullets is even more vulnerable. Closer to the creek, and totally not raccoon-proof. So I built them a door too to keep them in the little house at night. They don't appreciate being jailed either. And I don't love having to go out after dark every day to tuck in the birds, but... I gotta do it.
Open: Closed: By the way this is my 1500th blog post.
Sometimes a chicken is more than just a chicken, sometimes they leave an impression on a lot of people.
So if Eddie put the BBRed Rosecombs (and me) on the map back in 1997, Pablo made the competition sit up and take notice nine generations later when he won Reserve Champion of Show in January of 2006. That was the first, and so far the only, BIG win with a BBRed. Pablo was an incredibly good bird with exceptional type, except for that silly fold in his wattles (which I still see in the bloodline, "Pablo wattles.") You really couldn't walk past him at a show and not look at him.
But he was also tame and friendly. Years after he "retired" from show biz, he got to star in an infomercial sponsored by the USDA. I don't know why I don't have photos of this, but I don't. It was about Avian Influenza, and he perched on the fence out front while the news lady gave her report. See, I had to teach him to do that, to just stay put. And he excelled at sitting and letting himself be admired.
A couple years ago a friend of mine who is a teacher had a farm day at her school, and she borrowed Pablo and took him to school, where he sat and sat and everyone got to admire him.
In May of this year, a friend of a friend was putting on a painting workshop, all about chickens. In need of a model, I volunteered Pablo for the job, and he enthralled everyone there.
Pablo vanished from his coop overnight on November 10th. I have no idea what happened, he is the victim of a unknown predator. I've set a raccoon trap, though I'm not sure what if anything I actually expect to catch. I'll let you know what happens. It's been a rough couple months for the birds with various predators around, worse this year than ever before. It just breaks my heart that something happened to Pablo, he was my favorite bird on the whole place, and such an important figure in my chicken-history. Rest in peace sweet boy. :-(
I've been posting this all over the place, might as well post it here too. I am selling all of my Blue and Splash Rosecombs. There aren't that many, but they're all available. They are from a Blue Brassy Back bloodline, so they do tend to produce colors other than the expected Black/Blue/Splash combo. For someone wanting to work on Blues, I'd suggest immediately breeding them to an unrelated strain of Blacks (or Blues) as mine are VERY closely related... full or half-siblings. For someone wanting to put some Blue into another color and work on something like Blue Red, this is perfect.
They are GORGEOUS birds. Seriously, they knock my socks off, and I'll be showing them until they sell. I LOVE the Blue color, but in an effort to streamline a little and keep the "chicken thing" under control, I'm focusing on BBRed, and only keeping colors that will be helpful in breeding BBReds. I don't need Blue. I want to see them go to a good home with someone who is interested in working with them. I am not in a rush to sell them. Just puttin' the word out.
I will ship. I'm not NPIP certified. I can deliver to a few shows in CA.
"More chickens?" Oh yes, I can hear you now. Why would I get more chickens when I keep trying to cut back?? I'll explain... This has been in the works for a few months. A flock of 11 BBRed Rosecombs, descended from birds I sold 6 or 7 years ago, was available (in Oregon). I'm REALLY trying to work hard on my flock of BBReds, but I've run into inbreeding problems, so I'm thinking these "related but removed" birds could be a big help. Conveniently, Jen needed to go get some waterfowl in Corvallis, so when it finally worked out that the waterfowl were ready and everyone was available on the same day, a road trip was quickly put in motion. So I left here late Friday afternoon and went to Jen's place near Redding. We took off at 6:30 Saturday morning (eww), and got back a little after 9 Saturday night. I can't complain much because she drove, but that does push the limits of a day trip. But it sure beat having to get the birds shipped. It was fun though, pretty drive and we had a lot to talk about, some of which was wildly funny but definitely NOT going on the blog! ;-) Big shout out to my Rosecomb friends for driving down from the Portland area to meet up with us, that was a huge help!!
Look, photographic proof that I was up early!: Mt. Shasta: Part of northern CA that has decided it wants to be on its own, or something like that: Oregon: Oregon: Just an observation, but Oregon has a lot of these places... just sayin'... Oregon: Ha! I live off Dillard Road, in California! I didn't know I'd see one in Oregon too: Oregon: Ha! Sounds like when I have to deal with Creepy Guy when I'm out walking... Oregon: Hmm, I think that would aptly describe some people I know... ;-) Oh my my! Can I visit?! Driving back down the central valley. It's very very very flat, and all looks remarkably similar: These are some of the new chickens in their new digs. It's kinda funny, I was describing this as similar to looking at relatives. I know these faces. I'd recognize my bloodline anywhere. They won't all stay, there are specific traits I'm breeding for that I don't see in all of them, but several will make a welcome addition to next year's breeding flock: And of course I had to curl up and take a power-nap with my favorite little guy when I got home: Back to work! I'm so far behind it's not even funny.
