Big Island Chickens

Growing Fast or, Life Can Be Hard We have had some storming rain the past two days, Hilo Airport reported 9+ inches for just yesterday. We have been worrying about the chicks getting back into the coop which means we have been doing a nightly chick check, well, yesterday we went to the movies and had dinner out, got back after dark but with the rain, we thought we'd check them again. We pulled out back in the Jeep (we didn't want to get wet) and used the headlights to see that there were no hens out. There is usually one roosting on the roof gutter, but not this night. Because we didn't have a flashlight, making sure everyone was inside was a bit tougher.  Well, we must have missed a couple, perhaps hiding under the ramps, but this morning JoAnn found one chick very wet and dead and another one that was shivering but alive.  She brought the live one in and found a box for her, towel dried the feathers while I set up a light to warm her by. JoAnn had a class to

Is there a Rooster in our Future? or, Hey! What happened to Chicken Math? Okay, two subjects in one post this week. JoAnn and I noticed that we had two chickens that wouldn't leave the nest boxes after laying, they were getting a bit sassy and even belligerent.   I looked it up and found out they were just broody. Meaning they were wanting to tend to the eggs they laid, not just drop and run. Since they had no rooster, they were in for a long wait. JoAnn thought it was sad that they would never be mom's with out a man in their life so we started thinking about how, where and when we could get a rooster. after thinking a few days, the girls weren't getting any less broody but we decided that we wanted our neighbors to stay friendly so no rooster crowing for us. We knew our Mealy Worm lady also had lots of chickens(100 by her count) so a few of them would be fertile and we called her to arrange buying a dozen fertile eggs that we'd slip into the nest boxes a