Monthly Archives: June 2013

Robins, Day 11, A Fledgling!

This morning I left Lily inside while I checked on the robin’s nest on my porch.

box

 

I noticed that the robins had reoriented themselves again, butts in, beaks out.

crowded

 

The oldest robin looked especially uncomfortable. There’s not enough room for it’s wings to be at it’s sides.

wings up

 

While I was taking this photo it leaped out of the nest and half-tumbled, half-flew to the porch floor, and then leapt into the air and landed safely on the ground! Take a close look. The young robin is to the bottom, left, of the stone wall. The parent is on the wall.

fledged

 

Maybe I had scared the baby out of it’s nest! I ran downstairs to “save” it. It ran away from me, but I was able to scoop it up and bring it back to it’s nest. I gently put it back it, and it immediately flung itself back out, over the railing, and back to the lawn, where a parent was waiting, with food in his mouth.

parental help

 

I guess it was time. Meanwhile, the fledgling’s siblings are sighing with relief that they have more space in the nest.

three

 

The parents will have their work cut out for them, taking care of the fledgling, and the three remaining youngsters in the nest. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to keep Lily off of the porch!

Automatic Chicken Coop Door

Protecting chickens from predators is an on-going concern. Hungry animals come across the lawn, they dig under fences, and they fly into pens. I know of no fenced run that is predator proof; a weasel can squeeze through a two-inch gap between the fence and a door. A fisher cat can rip off hawk netting. The danger is worse at night and I believe that you should close up your hens as soon as they’ve gone in to roost. Pop doors need to be secured from the inside because a raccoon is capable of prying open a latch.

The danger of a predator attack begins at sundown, but as much as I want to shut up the barns right at sundown, I’m not always home, and I’m not willing to have my schedule be totally dictated by the animals in my backyard. LIke many things in life, I balance my needs against the risks.  An automatic door closer can help. These electronic doors open and close at sunrise and sunset, and are either on timers or are light sensitive. I know of plenty of people who rely on them.

However, in all my years of keeping chickens, I’ve never used an automatic coop door closer. For the first 8 years I didn’t have electricity in the henhouse. Now that I do, I also have goats and a rabbit and dogs, all of which all need attention and require my presence. I’m always home within a few hours of sundown, if not, I have someone stop in to check on the animals. Also, Candy, having a wicked sense of bunny humor, used to sit on the pop door ledge and block the hens from going in at night. I worried that if I did use an automatic door, that the girls would have been stuck outside. Also, a rabbit needs to be secured safely in her own hutch – not something an automatic pop door can do!

Despite not having automatic doors here, when I thought through how to protect the hens at the nursing home, I knew that an automatic door was a necessity for that flock. Although the coop run has hardware cloth all around, there are gaps near the door into the run that wouldn’t provide nighttime protection.

back view

Also, staffing changes daily, as does the time that the coop needs to be secured at night, and opened in the morning. An automatic door solved that scheduling issue.The coop was purchased prewired for electricity, and an automatic chicken door was installed.

Chickendoors.com is the manufacturer of this automatic chicken door.

inside

It has several nice features. If the power goes out, it will run on reserve battery power. It’s made in the USA by some really fine people. You can chose to have either a timer or a light-sensitve opener.

door open

You can select a right or left opening door. I ordered the wrong one, which will be replaced, so that the view of the chicken ramp isn’t blocked.

There are plenty of other options out there. Some doors slide up. There are YouTube videos about how to build your own. Let me know if you have experience with an automatic pop door. Now if only I could figure out how to close the rabbit up at night… and the goats…

Baby Robins, Day 10

There’s loud, demanding cheeping coming from the nest. The robin parents fly back and forth with insects in their mouths. The youngsters have oriented themselves to the direction that the adults approach and land.

It’s getting crowded. But, there’s no manure in the nest because after the parents feed their babies, they fly off with  the poo. Still, there’s little room in there. From what I’ve read, these youngsters will be ready to fledge (leave the nest) by day 12 or 14. Soon! They’ll able to fly, but will still beg for food from their parents and so it will be noisy around here awhile longer.

day 10

 

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be keeping Lily off of the porch. Although she see ignores the robins now, a bird that drops right in front of her nose is sure to be of interest to her.

Hens and Heat

We are heading into the sweltering days of summer and I cannot over-emphasize how essential it is to keep a close eye on your hens. Heat can be deadly to your flock. Chickens die from heatstroke and they die from dehydration. Even if the heat isn’t lethal, you might notice them eating less and laying fewer eggs.

I’ve written about how to help your chickens cope with heat here. Today I literally pulled another bag out of my collection of tricks. Green beans are one of the few veggies that everyone in my family eats and so every year I plant a large row of green beans in the garden. But, every year I harvest far more than we can consume fresh. I freeze the excess into bags. When I can’t keep up with the abundance, and the beans get big and tough, I share them with the goats (watch them scarf them down and burp on this video.)

frozen bags

 

I confess to not really liking beans that have been frozen, even when vacuum-packed. Still, every summer I freeze them in hopes that this will be the year that I find the perfect use for them over the winter. I never do, and I always have a few bags left over from the previous year’s harvest, but they don’t go to waste. On scorching hot days I offer these frozen blocks to the hens.

The pullets have never seen such a thing before, but they investigate and start pecking. (Note that I have put an extra waterer in the shade, which is the best thing that you can do for your chickens when it gets hot.)

Veronica

 

The Gems know all about these frozen treats and attack the block with enthusiasm. Despite the lethargy that comes on during a heat wave, these green beans will get them to cool off a bit from the frozen bits they’re swallowing, and provide more water and greens to their diet.

sussex

Better yet, the green beans, which I put effort and energy into processing and freezing, won’t go to waste. Win-win all around.

Robin Babies, Day 9

There’s now little difference between the chick that hatched first and it’s siblings. They are all large and bristling with pinfeathers.

nest

 

I’ve yet to get a photograph of them with gaping mouths, demanding food. I haven’t seen them in that pose yet. Most of the time they’re sleeping.

sleeping

 

Perhaps the parents are doing a very, very good job of feeding them. There’s certainly food in abundance. Here is a robin parent in the maple tree, with an insect in her mouth, waiting impatiently for me to leave the porch so that she can feed her babies. (Note that this bird has one dark leg and one light. Not even robins are uniform in appearance!)

parent robin

 

The robins, though, are tolerant of Lily’s presence. How do they know that this dog thinks that they are of no consequence? She hasn’t even lifted her nose to sniff the nest. Lily says that she has better things to do than to pay attention to robins. She watches for important things, like UPS trucks and bicyclists.

Lily