The crowing contest, crowing at night and other facts about roosters

First let me say that if you don't have roosters you'll probably be amused by this post. If you do have roosters, you'll be happy that someone else is sympathetic to your plight! lol I think just about everyone who met a rooster for the first time was surprised to hear him crow in the middle of the day because as city slickers we are conditioned to think roosters only crow at sun-up. 

Every day.

Coffee commercials start with a sunrise and rooster crow. Farm movies do the same. When you don't actually live on a farm, you tend to believe these stereotypes.  Then you get your first rooster and cold hard reality sets in. The crow A LOT....and all day long!

Frozen chicken treat for a hot day (super easy!)

It's been ridiculously hot this summer. The unreal kind of hot that makes you want to just lay in the air conditioning and not move. Unfortunately for chickens, that's not an option. Since summer is here to stay, I had to figure out a way to keep the chickens cool in this extreme heat. 

I decided to make them a frozen treat that used up some of the excess produce in my kitchen and garden. 

Before giving chickens treat you might want to check this list of foods they can't have. Most everything humans eat is ok for chickens with just a few things you'll want to leave out including one that can normally eat, AKA corn! You should absolutely not feed chickens frozen corn in summer. More info down below!

Helping the chickens stay cool

One of the biggest problems in summer is dehydration which makes the heat so much more unbearable! People can remember to drink extra water, but animals usually don't drink more than they immediately need. Sometimes, they have to be tricked into it.

How to dry out a wet chicken coop

We had a whopper of a rain storm last week. During the worst of it there was an active tornado alert and what looked like a river running through our yard. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the yard is our main coop. It houses roughly 20 poultry. 10 standard size chickens, 10 guineas...and on this occasion...7 chicks. Our whole yard is on a slant so as you can imagine, lots of water made its way into the coop. 

The rain came so fast and furiously even the French drain failed and we were left with a huge mess to clean up. 

First thing I did was scrape all the water out the door using a small shovel (and my feet...but hey, I was desperate!) Then I pushed the wet bedding onto the rubber mat that covers the back half of the coop. I let it spend the night back there....it was too late at that point, but the real work was to come in the morning! 

Are earwigs living in your chicken coop?

Ya'll...I found earwigs in my chicken coop! Here's how it happened: I don't often go out to the coop and kick around the litter at midnight, but I did yesterday. I happened to go down to check on some babies who's mama decided they were are all grown up at 3 weeks old. I wanted to get them off the floor and with the other mama for bedtime. 

When I entered the coop I noticed the bedding had gotten piled up in front of the door a little so I kicked it back and that's when I saw them. Earwigs. Lots of them!

Creepy, right? Is it a problem though? As gross as it might be, if you have red mites, earwigs might be the answer to your prayers! Earwigs will eat red mites and love to hang out in the crevices and cracks of wood, which is exactly where the red mites live. 

That's a whole other post though, for now let's talk about earwigs alone.

Earwigs in the chicken coop

The only white baby chick

Did you know that white Guinea keets are the only poultry that the white birds hatch pure white and not yellow? They are not albino, just pure white. Chickens, turkeys and even ducks & geese all hatch yellow.

They keep their snow white feathers as they grow but their face does turn to the 'clown mask' that all Guineas have. 

Just an interesting poultry fact I thought I'd share with you!

~L