Nicole's Farm: Post Bear Flock

I am officially finished incubating and hatching birds until I am able to upgrade and bear proof my outdoor brooding capabilities. We have reinforced the entire aviary with plywood and 2x4s and put three bolts on the outside door to the coop. Suffices to say that although the bear keeps coming around and tore the moulding off my car trying to get to a bag of chicken feed I had in the trunk, we have managed to fortify the bird habitat enough to keep the bears out.

As of yesterday afternoon, I have NO birds in my house, save for the occasional humming bird that comes in an open window and I am relieved to say the least. Poultry are stinky, messy, high maintenance creatures and I would prefer to wait a little while before resuming my flock expansion. Not all is lost however as you will see in the photos below three hens have diligently taken over the responsibility.

For those who supported the Nicole's Farm Indigogo campaign and would like to name a chicken, here are the fruits of my labour. The smallest of the chicks are six weeks old and examples of the silkie dominant breed that I am aiming to develop. I do not know whether they are males or females yet, but when they mature the hens will lay blue eggs.

Hens in the coop. The golden one with blue colouring has been sitting on over a dozen eggs for some weeks now. She is too small to cover the entire clutch. The red faced hen tries to take her place every morning when she gets up for her few minutes to eat and drink. Now they seem to be sharing the space which could turn out well as the second hen will take over any protruding eggs.

These three chicks are the first of my hatch. They are mixed breeds and I believe the black one and the black and dark orange one are roosters.

My silkie chicks. There are seven in total. Three white, two darker and two grey/tan. I'm very happy about the tan coloured ones as we lost their mom to the bear a couple months ago. Glad to see her line carried on.

The Alpha rooster in my flock. We've name him Bon Jovi. His breed is Polish Crested. He stay pretty clear from people but has never displayed aggression towards us and keeps the flock in good order despite the abundance of lower tier roosters.

This is Bon Jovi's son and the first chick I hatched from our eggs.

This is the best mommy out of my hens. This is the second chick she has raised since arriving at Nicole's Farm.

This is one of the other roosters. He is HUGE and has a very deep crow. I look forward to finding some attractive black hens in the future and creating a line from his genes.

White Silkie Chicks

Grey and Tan Silkie Chick with great colouring on its face

Broody silkie momma. She has hidden herself in the dark in the very back recesses of the coop. I tried to move her and her clutch of eggs into a more reasonable location with easier access to food and water but she wanted nothing of it and I find her back here the next morning.

The three pheasant chicks that made it to outdoor viability. It looks like three females but I am not going to know for sure until they fully reach maturity.

Proof you can off leash train a jack russell terrier. Bongo killed a number of my birds when we first brought them home and hadn't fully reinforced the habitats. I wouldn't trust him unsupervised but he has been trained to abstain.

The other chick that was successfully hatched by one of my hens.

My favourite hen. She rarely lays an egg, is tiny and brave beyond her size. She escaped from the coop one afternoon late last year and Bongo got her and chomped her a couple times. I nursed her back to health in the house and she mothered Bon Jovi's son in returned when he was the only chick that made it through my first small hatch. She is the first to jump out the door when I allow the chickens to free range and the last to go inside.