Chicken Emergency

So...one of our baby chickens died this morning.

Then we had a crazy-busy day in Narok...running around and meeting with WWF personnel, graduate students who have limited time and funding, a drunk mechanic for the Land Rover, and organizing a trip to the Masai Mara National Reserve with some local kids that live next door.

Then we spotted four of our remaining baby chickens running around the yard who appeared to all have a large lump on their right side. We have eight babies left but only the four black ones had these lumps. We snatched one up and took off for our chicken doctor in downtown Narok. Our worst fear was that for some reason, they had all developed some strange tumor and that they would all die a horribly painful death. I guess we were a little gun-shy because of the death of one of our chickens this morning. That chicken had developed a bad virus and didn't responding to treatment then finally succombed this morning.

So...we got this little baby chicken with the tumor into our chicken doctor's hands. He laughed. Good thing that our chicken doctor knows us well or he probably thought we are crazy. He said the only thing this chicken was guilty of was over-eating.

One chicken died and the others pigged out on the remaining food.

I was wrong...

J-Lo had 9!

When we thought she went broody, we gave her 8 of the eggs she and the other girls had been laying. She laid another one the next day herself. All 9 of them were successfully hatched.

Of special note, one of our layers that was stolen along with Magic, the largest rooster in Narok, was Cleo. Cleo was an all black bird. As you can see, five of these chicks are all black.

That's right...

J-Lo is a proud chicken mother again!  7 chicks hatched under her yesterday.  

J-Lo went broody right after Magic, the largest rooster in Narok, was stolen from our yard.  Magic "contributed" 1/2 to these chicks.  Hopefully we'll get another large rooster out of it.  

Chicken Thievery

Our first full day home in Narok and four of our chickens were stolen from the chicken coop in the middle of the day. Magic (the largest rooster in Narok) and three of our layers (Ruby, Cleo, and Rocket) all were snatched between 10AM and 1PM. We were not home at the time and our watchman was away for a short while as well. We found the portion of our barbed wire fence where the thief (or thieves) probably came through. Our network is hot on the trail so hopefully we'll figure something out soon. Unfortunately, there were not enough police in Narok yesterday so they were unable to come to the house, investigate, or take a report. We'll try again today.

The strange thing about this is that Amanda and I were just talking yesterday about how we have so many chickens now we should provide some to family as a possible income generating operation for a family in need. We were talking about giving a family one of our roosters and a few layers to get them started working with chickens and possibly selling their eggs locally or breeding them.

We still have about 14 chickens but most are very young. I guess we'll just have to wait till they grow up to be able to help a local family in need. Such a shame...

What Our Chickens Lack In Intelligence...They Make Up For With Charm.

Three of our chickens resting under a large rock suspended in the air with twine...

Jerry Lee Lewis

This is Jerry Lee Lewis. He is our neighbor's "colorful" rooster. He comes over every morning and spends all day hanging out with our hens. I had to take his picture because our neighbors have a very healthy appetite for chicken so we weren't sure how long he'd be hanging around...our hens have quite the crush on him.

Introductions...these are the Ladies

Ok....I think it is now time to introduce everybody to our little chickens.  We acquired these ladies a few weeks ago.  These ladies represent our second attempt at raising chickens.  Our first attempt ended over a month ago when all five of our birds were wiped out by New Castle Disease.  Turns out we acquired our chickens shortly after they had contracted the disease...so they spent their last days with us.  

These ladies are all fit as a fiddle.  Our chicken doctor raises chickens so he provided us with a few healthy birds from his flock in order to get started properly.  

Here they are:

This is J-Lo.  She is the bossy one.  She'll run and around and peck at the other ladies whenever she wants.  You can see that she is roosting right now.  All four of our ladies went broody at the same time...which the chicken doctor says is normal since they are all age-mates (sisters).  We made the decision that we wanted to have little chickens eventually and since they all went broody, we decided to get some fertilized eggs for them to sit on.  We only wanted one broody one though and we had to make the tough decision to which one would get to be a mama this time.  We consulted with our chicken doctor and he said J-Lo should be the one since she is the bossiest and she would be more likely to pick on the little chicks if somebody else was the mama.  So...here she is sitting on 10 fertilized eggs we got from the market (our ladies don't have a rooster so we aren't getting fertilized eggs....although we are still looking for that special rooster for them...just haven't found him yet).  

The side story is that since we only wanted one broody hen, we were told to dunk the other three in water...and that will snap them out of it where they will go back to laying eggs.  We tried that a few days ago...only to return home yesterday from Nairobi and discover that J-Lo is no longer sitting on the eggs....our other hen Goldie is!  So we may just let them all stay broody and figure things out as we go.  

This is Cleopatra.  She goes by "Cleo".  She seems the youngest and J-Lo picks on her the most.  

This is Ruby.  She looks a lot like J-Lo but J-Lo's tail feathers are much bigger.  

This is Goldie.  Goldie is the sweetest one...in my opinion.  She is the one sitting on the eggs now.

This is their home.  We made this chicken coop almost completely out of recycled materials that we scavenged.  So far...it has kept the hyenas out so we are quite happy with it although we have plans for an expansions when the new chicks come.  Our neighbors weren't sure how well the chicken coop would fare because it doesn't look great...but funcitonally it is tough.  The birds were laying 4 eggs a day for several weeks until they went broody....all within this coop.  The rumor is that if the bird is not happy in their home, they won't lay eggs....so we have over 40 eggs to testify to their comfort.  

If all goes well, the chicks will come 21 days from October 29th....around November 19th!

A chicken with a view