Flock Friday for October 30

Welcome to Flock Friday. This week, I am highlighting 20 chicken-related pictures plus 12 duck pictures, along with a summary GIF of 59 candidates.

What’s a more fun way to start the week than mucking out the chicken coop:

Mucking out chicken coop

Fresh bedding in the nesting boxes:

Mucking out chicken coop

And a pile on the floor for the chickens to scratch and spread:

Mucking out chicken coop

A duck interlude — Betty in the grasses:

Betty in the grasses

It’s a little warmer now, but earlier in the week it was freezing overnight, resulting in a frozen waterer:

Frozen waterer

The hose wand is actually dripping water to top up the waterer, which is what caused the big icicles (and helps stop the hose from freezing):

Frozen waterer

Frozen waterer

Frozen waterer

GIF of dripping icicles (as you may have previously seen on my personal blog):

Frozen waterer GIF

On afternoon rounds, the chickens waiting for me:

Chickens waiting for me

They then all rush into the new coop to wait for treats:

Chickens waiting for treats

Thusly:

Chickens with treats

Ducks in a leafy pond:

Ducks

Ducks

Also previously posted to my personal blog, photos and GIFs of ducks flapping wings:

Ducks flapping wings

Ducks flapping wings GIF

Ducks flapping wings

Ducks flapping wings GIF

Ducks on the lawn, hunting for worms and such (I like the peek of the white gazebo in the background):

Ducks on lawn

A bunch of pictures of chickens; they’re all pretty much done with their molting and feather regrowth now:

Chickens

Chicken

Chicken

Chickens

Chicken

Chicken

Chicken

Chickens

Pecking at my boot:

Chickens

More pictures of ducks on the lawn (the grass is a bit long, but I’m probably not going to mow again till next spring):

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Finally, the aforementioned summary GIF, with the above and lots more photos from this week:

Summary GIF

Flock Friday for October 23

Fabulously freezing Flock Friday, friends! (The temperature was below freezing overnight.)

28 degrees F overnight

A shot from the new coop cam of three chickens on their favorite roost by the window:

Chickens

A GIF of a fourth flying from the other roosts, and knocking the camera off:

Chickens GIF

A freeze-frame of landing on top of another chicken, causing that chaos:

Chickens

The camera is magnetically attached to a metal plate wedged under the window screen; here it’s just hanging by its wire:

Camera

The ducks on the back lawn, rooting for bugs:

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

A time-lapse GIF of a chicken flying up to the roost and back down again:

Chickens GIF

Chickens hanging out on top of logs etc:

Chickens

A bunch more pics of the chickens:

Chickens

Chickens

Kiwi is still looking quite scruffy, but you can see the new feathers coming in:

Chickens

Ditto with Buffy:

Chickens

Chickens

I had a cunning idea, to make it easier to see if the pop doors are open or closed in the dark: I added reflective tape on the pop door:

Reflective tape on pop door

And on the outside:

Reflective tape on pop door

The old coop too (the horizontal one acts as an extra indicator, only being visible when the door is closed):

Reflective tape on pop door

Here are roosting chickens again, with the light on:

Roosting chickens

A little spooky after the light goes off (it’s on a timer):

Roosting chickens

As it gets darker, the night-vision of the cam turns on:

Roosting chickens

The pop door closed; now clearly visible via the reflective strips:

Roosting chickens

I can see the state of the door outside too, via the reflective strips:

Coop outside

In the old coop, door open:

Roosting chickens

Door closed:

Roosting chickens

The ducks have recently been hanging out on the bank to the left of the pond deck:

Ducks

Ducks

It started raining, so the ducks came up to the lawn to hunt for worms that come to the surface during precipitation:

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

Ducks on lawn

A GIF of a Rouen running up the bank, using her wings to assist:

Ducks GIF

Sassa doing the same:

Ducks on lawn

She kept on going:

Ducks GIF

Exploring more of the lawn:

Ducks on lawn

Flock Friday for October 16

Some hummingbirds, ducks, chickens, a jay, and even a cat. Plus some sad news. It’s Flock Friday.

Seven hungry hummingbirds on a rainy day:

Hummingbirds

Did you see the slow motion video of the hummingbirds?

A time-lapse animated GIF of ducks having breakfast:

Duck breakfast GIF

Ducks on the edge of the lawn:

Ducks

Sassa standing tall and stretching her wings:

Sassa

Ducks on the lawn; I love Rémy’s green head:

Ducks

On the lawn:

Ducks

A wide-angle shot of the ducks, with the brown gazebo and two chicken coops in the background:

Wide angle ducks

Sassa flapping her wings again:

Ducks

A cheeky Steller’s Jay in the duck house:

Steller's Jay

Ducks in the pond:

Ducks

Ducks

Concluding my recent saga on the ChickenGuard pop door opener for the new chicken coop, I bought and installed a replacement unit, so it now works reliably, at last. While this has been quite a hassle, I’m very pleased with the customer service of the manufacturer — they were very responsive in trying to help, and even sent a front panel (with electronics) and another motor, at no charge, even after I told them I replaced it, so I’d have a spare:

New ChickenGuard opener

Speaking of the chickens, here are some pictures of damp and scraggly chickens, still going through their annual molting:

Chickens

Chicken

Chickens

Chicken

Chicken

Chickens

Merida in a nesting box:

Chicken in nesting box

Back to the ducks; you may have seen some of these on my personal blog:

Ducks

Ducks

Clara showing off her wing:

Ducks

Ducks on the lawn:

Ducks

Sven stretching:

Ducks

Heading back to the pond:

Ducks

I mentioned sad news… it’s Sven. I discovered him floating dead at the back of the pond yesterday morning. Looking at my cam footage, it looks like he died on Wednesday. No sign of injury or attack, so my best guess is that he may have choked on something. So now we’re down to 12 ducks; 3 male, 9 female. We have that many to allow for attrition, but it still makes us sad when we lose one.

Think seven hummingbirds was a lot? How about ten:

Hummingbirds

A GIF from that Live Photo; can you spot all ten?

Hummingbirds GIF

I moved one of the cameras in the new coop:

Coop cam

Did you see the time-lapse of a day in the coop from that vantage point?

Ducks in the rain:

Ducks

Paladout investicated the duck house:

Cat in duck house

Eww, that isn’t food:

Cat in duck house

The ducks were very curious too:

Cat in duck house

Finally, a summary GIF of 116 photos from this week (excluding the GIFs and a few others). Including as a link instead of embedding, since it’s fairly large.

Flock Friday for October 9: the chickens

Since this morning’s Flock Friday post didn’t include any pictures of chickens, and I had to go into the chicken run to close some vents for the forthcoming cooler and wetter weather, I took the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures.

And rather than save them till next Friday, I thought I might as well do a bonus Flock Friday post of just chicken pics.

So without additional commentary, enjoy 18 pictures of chickens, some of them looking very scruffy as they continue their molt.

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Flock Friday for October 9: the ducks

Welcome to the first Flock Friday with all of the ducks together! I have so many duck pictures, there aren’t any chicken ones this time — I’ll make sure to include some next week.

There were 248 pictures this week… so I picked 30 not-previously-published ones to highlight in this post, and included the rest in a big summary GIF at the end, if you’re interested. (Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, to avoid loading issues.)

As mentioned in the last daily duckling post yesterday, you can review the duckling posts in chronological order via the tags “ducklings 2020” and “ducklings 2020 again”, if that’s a thing you want to do.

As a brief review, we started the past week with the new ducks still enclosed in the duck house and run:

New ducks

A week ago I removed the fence, allowing them to join the older ducks in the pond:

New ducks

Which they did very quickly:

New ducks

Here’s another shot of their first swim in the pond:

New ducks

Sassa and the older ducks:

Sassa and older ducks

Betty and Sassa, back before she cleaned herself up:

Betty and Sassa

Some ducks by the (currently off) waterfall:

Ducks by waterfall

At the edge of the lawn:

By lawn

The two groups of ducks are becoming more integrated over time, but started out mostly separated:

Two groups

Betty and the new ducks enjoying leafy treats:

Leafy treats

The old position of the food bowl, before I moved it into the duck house:

Food bowl

I added a new island to the pond, and cleaned the fountain; I captured a few pictures while standing in the pond (see the GIF for more, including a couple selfies):

In the pond

I mucked out the duck house; now that they’re only going in there to eat, I shouldn’t need to do that as often:

Mucked out duck house

The boys:

The boys

I discovered that the fake heron that was on the bank went for a swim; someone must have knocked it off. It was supposed to discourage the real heron from visiting the pond, though didn’t really work:

Fake heron

Sven flapping his wings:

Sven wings

Relaxing amongst some grasses:

Amongst grasses

The boys again:

The boys

All the islands occupied:

On islands

Betty:

Betty

Rooting in the lawn for tasty bugs; unlike chickens, ducks don’t really damage the lawn, just a nice bit of aeration:

On the lawn

On the lawn

On the lawn

In the pond:

In the pond

Mealworm treats:

In the pond

In the pond

One chicken-related thing — ChickenGuard sent me a replacement motor to try to solve the issues I’ve been having with the opener on the new coop. But it arrived with a broken wire! Oops. So I gave up and ordered a new unit. This morning, they said they’ll send a new circuit board as a goodwill gesture, so I’ll have a spare. It’s frustrating when a device doesn’t work, but it is three years old, and I’m generally satisfied with the devices and their customer service. For the convenience of not having to manually open and close the pop doors every day, it’s worth it even if I have to replace them every few years. (And their 3-year warranty is very generous, especially when they send free replacement parts when just outside that period.)

ChickenGuard motor

The ducks in the pond, looking towards the hidden path (you can see a peek of the white gazebo; that’s the entrance to the path):

In the pond

The reverse view, from the hidden path:

In the pond

All the ducks:

In the pond

Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, as it seemed to cause some loading issues.

Flock Friday for October 2

Alrighty, today’s the day: some of the ducklings seem keen to explore beyond the duck house and run, so I’m going to let them out today. We’ll see if they take advantage of the opportunity. Stay tuned for tonight’s duckling post!

In the meantime, one last Flock Friday without the latest ducklings. In next week’s post, they’ll be all together.

Firstly, did you see the video of the hummingbirds last weekend?

Hummingbirds

Here are the older ducks having a meal:

Ducks

Hey Betty:

Ducks

On the pond amongst fallen leaves:

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Boys’ club; the four male ducks (aka drakes):

Male ducks

Since the pop door opener on the new chicken coop is malfunctioning, I have to go out and reset it each evening, so I added a hook-&-eye to hold the hatch open while I do so to make that easier:

Pop door opener hatch

The manufacturer is sending me a new motor, which hopefully will fix that issue; we’ll see.

The four chickens that prefer that coop always look startled when I turn up around sunset:

Chickens

Exploding chickens! It’s molting time, so there are feathers everywhere:

Chickens

A totally normal thing at this time of year. They stop laying while molting, though, so we’re down to only about five eggs per day, instead of the 12-17 we were getting in summer. Which is still plenty for us, we just can’t give them away for a while.

This is nifty; if you look closely, you can see her third eyelid half closed:

Chickens

More pictures of the chickens:

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

A favorite dust bath location. Though Buffy looks embarrassed; “don’t look at me, I’m hideous!” It’s okay Buffy; you may look messy while shedding your old feathers, but you’ll grow fancy new ones:

Chickens

Back to the ducks; the ducklings watching duck butts in the pond:

Duck butts

Let’s all go this way:

Ducks

What’s that strange red thing in our food dish? (It’s a tomato, which I haven’t offered them before; they prefer green treats.)

Ducks

Hanging out on the path, and Sonja flapping her wings:

Ducks

In the pond; Rémy showing his shiny green head:

Ducks

Video

ChickenGuard pop door opener demo

I recorded this video to show ChickenGuard’s customer support the issue I’m having with the opener on my new chicken coop (three years old, to be fair). It is having a door jam error when closing, requiring recalibration, but works once done, until nighttime when it is supposed to close.

I thought others might find it interesting too, to see how the coop pop door opener works, and the innovative way I have it mounted on a door so I can access it from inside the coop, and have the cord go straight down from the opener to the pop door.

Flock Friday for September 25

A big Flock Friday today, with 33 photos of ducks and chickens, plus a GIF with those and 31 more at the end, as if 33 weren’t enough. But I took lots of nice shots of the ducks, so wanted to share them.

Firstly, via the pond cam from while we were evacuated, a wild duck visitor:

Wild duck visitor

Our ducks with the wild duck visitor (left); much smaller than ours:

Ducks with wild duck visitor

The ducks discovered the other upturned pot islands in the pond:

Ducks on islands

Ducks eating:

Ducks eating

When we got home from our evacuation, I collected eggs. Several under broody Martha:

Broody chicken with eggs

And a bunch in another box:

Eggs

That would be about one day’s worth in the peak of summer, but they are slowing down for fall, so are from several days. Currently they’re down to about 5 eggs per day.

Chickens waiting for treats:

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

Yay, rice treats:

Chickens

Chickens

Chickens

We let them into the veggie garden while evacuated (after our mid-evac visit), and they denuded the kale, except for the high leaves out of their reach, though left most of the pumpkins and tomatoes:

Veggie garden

I’ve continued to have issues with the ChickenGuard pop door opener on the new chicken coop:

ChickenGuard opener

So have had to go out to the coop each night to manually close the door. Here are the four chickens that prefer the new coop at night:

Chickens at night

From outside (on another night):

Chickens at night

Back to the ducks, with a bunch of pictures; the males are putting on their colorful feathers now, so they’ve changed a bit since you last saw them:

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

Ducks

GIF of ducks during a rainy night:

GIF of night ducks

Betty has been hanging out in the grasses, maybe thinking of nesting, though a bit young for that:

Betty in the grasses

Here’s a GIF summary of 64 photos from this week, including the above and a bunch more:

GIF summary

Flock Friday for September 18

We’re still at Mom’s place (current thought is maybe heading home tomorrow; continuing to evaluate the smoke). But I still have some chicken and duck pictures for you.

Here’s another picture of the chickens from when we visited on Monday:

Chickens

And a couple of previously-unpublished duck pictures from that visit:

Ducks

Ducks

One of the things I did while there was turn on the UPS for my Camect camera server, so I can now see several of the cams. Here is a capture from the pond cam from yesterday:

Ducks

And from this morning; everyone still there:

Ducks

Also from inside the new chicken coop. There’s an issue here — the pop door opener is stuck partially open, so at risk of raccoon invasion. Hopefully they won’t notice the opportunity:

Chickens

The old chicken coop; still lots of food:

Chickens