A Tale of Two Chickens

A friend of ours who raises chickens supplements their feed with Flock Armor, an egg and immune boosting powder. He's had great success with it. G sent me a picture of the package and it was all ingredients we had at home or would be easy to source. I smell a DIY project coming on! 

Of course I ran the ingredient list through chat gpt to get correct ratios. I also had chat adjust the recipe so one batch could be mixed in with 100lbs of feed (our normal chicken feed batch amount). Here's what it came up with for 12 chickens and 6 ducks: 

I had oregano from our garden last year and a bunch of old turmeric G brought into our marriage along with just enough nutritional yeast for the recipe. I had a jar of very old garlic powder I brought into our marriage that got used up. Lots of old spices used up! 

I ran a few things through the spice grinder, just to smooth it out a bit. Then I stirred it together and put it back into the empty brewer's yeast container. 😅

The chickens seemed intrigued by the sprinkling of powder I dusted over their feed. They don't have a great sense of smell, but all of these spices must have been strong enough for them to catch a whiff. 

I also dusted it over the feed bowls of our two mama chickens. Yes, those two broody hens up in the haymow hatched their eggs! 

They did a good job incubating them. We counted 16 hatched chicks. Unfortunately, most of them were dead when we found them; only five survived. 😭 

At first, we thought the cats had been picking off the chicks. The hens still had eggs underneath them that hadn't hatched yet, and G spent a good chunk of time making a fortification around the hens so the cats couldn't get to them easily. 

We debated pulling one hen and the hatched chicks and leaving the other pen to hatch the remaining 9 eggs. We weren't sure if the other hen would stick around to incubate the eggs if the chicks were gone. But, our incubator is up and running (another batch of duck eggs), so if she abandoned them, we would be able to transition the unhatched eggs into the incubator. After they hatched, we could reunite them with their mothers. 

That's what we ended up doing. G grabbed one of the moms and the four chicks and moved them to the back area where the goats kidded. Unfortunately, as soon as the chicks were gone, the other hen jumped down to fight the other hen for her babies. That's when we wondered if the dead chicks were a casualty of the moms fighting.

It wasn't until G left the shed and felt bugs crawling all over him that we realized there's a mite infestation in the haymow. Chicken mites don't transfer to humans; they love sucking chicken blood at night. During the day they hide in cracks, wood, and most likely in our case, hay bales. G checked the two mamas and found lots of the bugs on both. Ugh. The mites probably feasted on the babies and they weren't strong enough to withstand the attack. 

How to get rid of mites? Clean the coop, diatomaceous earth, and dust baths. These poor hens probably weren't leaving their nest long enough to take a dust bath. Mites have a lifespan of only 5-7 days, so we should be able to clear them out soon. 

G separated the two moms, sprinkled diatomaceous earth on the hay, and got them all settled with feed and water. He split the chicks up- two for each hen.

Only one more egg hatched after we relocated the eggs to the incubator, and the darker hen seemed to want it. She fluffed up as soon as she heard it peeping and came up to the door of her pen, ready to fight G for her baby. 

So, we have two good broody hens who are also good moms. Hopefully they'll be able to keep them alive and well once we turn them loose.