Live & Learn

I recently lost one of my hens, Nellie. She was a large, beautiful Black Copper Marans, with feathered feet, though she had no copper on her neck. She had a condition called Sour Crop, where food gets stuck inside the crop instead of being digested. The mass gets larger & larger, and feels like a sandbag. After doing much research on the subject, I decided to use a dropper to force a mixture of water & Apple Cider Vinegar down her throat. Then I tried helping her to regurgitate, to get the gunk out of her crop. Unfortunately, as she had so much food stuck in her crop she choked when I regurgitated her, and she died in my arms.

Female that I am, I cried like a baby. I’ve experienced death before, but never like this. Watching the life get sucked out of Nellie's little body was so hard to see. I felt so responsible. I should have noticed there was something wrong with her.

Dad was sad about it too. I think we were more upset that it could’ve been prevented. I’m still not sure exactly how it happened, but it appears she ate some long blades of grass. According to what I read, the grass gets tangled up in the crop, and keeps other food from being digested, thus creating the huge mass in the crop. This mass then breeds bacteria, and the hen will emit a foul smell, which is where Sour Crop gets its name.

I have mourned, and rallied. Now I'm a little wiser for the experience. I will certainly watch my girls a little more closely, so I can be aware of any health concerns.

Live & Learn

Nellie:

Hey Folks!

As I was reading blogs by other chicken keepers, I decided it was high time to join them with my own blog. My little flock gives me plenty to share and talk about. Although I am new to all of this and am learning daily, I’ve grown rather close to my feathered friends already.

To introduce myself, I’m a 26-yr-old female living in a small town. I’ve never owned chickens before. I spent my adolescent years in the “city,” so moving out into the country in my early 20’s was a bit of an adjustment, but one I took to a lot quicker than anyone expected. I lived with family until the summer of 2012, when I purchased my first home even farther in the country. My dad lives with me, and you’ll notice me mention him often in my posts.

In the last few months I’ve learned so much more about chickens than I realized there was to learn. The main purpose of this blog is to simply share my experiences, the sweet, the funny, the sad, and the outrageous, with whomever wishes to read about them.

I’ll start with the best place: the beginning.

Though I wanted chickens ever since I moved into my house, it was not feasible at the time. Once winter was almost over, I started planning earnestly to get my chicken coop built. I picked the spot I felt was best, nestled under some young Oak trees at the very back of the yard near the wood line. Dad & I started with the chicken wire we already had, and we stapled the wire to the trees, using stakes to hold up the wire along the middle. A few weeks later, we got more chicken wire, which we used along the sides above the first round of wire to make the pen taller. Then we used the remaining wire to cover the pen.

A friend gave me a metal frame containing 10 next boxes. Immediately, I nailed it to 2 of the trees inside the pen, quite high off the ground, and thought that was all I needed to do. Please don’t scold – again I admit I knew NOTHING about building a chicken coop when I first started this process.



Dad & I didn’t feel right about the coop, and felt something was missing, so we decided to hop on Google and see what we could find. Behold, the best website I ever encountered for information on all things “chicken:” backyardchickens.com.


Immediately, thanks to my friends at backyardchickens, I realized I hadn’t built a coop at all. I simply had a run, and the nest boxes were in the last place they should be. Dad quickly went to work thinking and designing the coop. We decided to build 2 separate “houses” inside the run, versus building an all-in-one coop. One was dedicated for the roost, and the other for the next boxes. We also built a shelter for the water & feed.

Two stressful weeks later, the coop was completed. Let me just say, building a coop is in no way easy, unless you are naturally inclined in carpentry.

Finally, I acquired my flock on Saturday April 27^th 2013: 10 tens and a rooster at roughly 3 months old. After just 2 days, it became obvious that one of my hens was a “he,” with the possibility of a second gender mix-up.

So the following Tuesday I returned the 2 offenders & got 2 more hens. However, my flock did not take kindly to one of them, and proceeded to peck at her & ostracize her so that she couldn’t eat or be anywhere near the others. Off she went the next day & I brought back a little black game mix.

At first I was afraid the same thing had happened, as I watched her get bullied by some of the other girls. However, this one had spunk, and soon she was standing her ground. I now had an established flock.