Happy birthday *achhoooo!!*

Mike and Pip's first birthday was okay...I didnt know what special to do. I just gave them a cuddle :)

Next day i find Micro sneezing (poor thing, her whole body, tiny as it is, shook) and Pip was coughing and both of them were wheezing, and were lethargic. I figured they have a cold (the constant rain and its late october now) so I googled my ass off, researched like crazy and concluded that they have CRD (Chronic Respiratory Disorder) where all the above symptoms are characterised.

Best medicine for it is Tetracycline or duramycin or Oxytetracycline. U can use erythromycin too. I obviously dont know much about it, so its best to ask the experts... Why arent there enough chickens doctors here, i dont know! :/ ugh!

Today i held Pip and Mike one by one while dad opened up their tiny mouth and pused erythromycin syrup for babies down their throat using a syringe without a needle. Pip hated it at first but then finding it sweet to taste, gulped it down like a good boy. Micro, on the other hand, scratched me (and i could not even man handle her, she is so tiny!) and when dad pushed the medicine down her throat she started gasping, sneezing, and was pretty much mad at us.

Apart from the meds, i made sure that they were as dry as possible, and warm. I gave them warm water and brandy (which they enjoy ;) haha) and also their food consisted of puffed rice, garlic, ginger, chillies and so on. It tends to keep them warm. I plan to do this the whole winter...i hope they stay healthy!
There is nothing more awful than having your babies fall sick!

They are getting better...Pip wasnt calling for the past two days, but today i heard a faint coodookoo and I was so happy!

Babies, i tell you... <3

xoxoxo

Three more days!

In three more days, Micro and Pip will turn one year old!! I can't believe a year has passed! I feel like a parent who's baby just turned one. Correction; Fraternal twins!

Gosh, its been a hell of a journey- from their first night with us to their poopoo cleaning to egg laying to whatnot. AND I LOVE THEM SOOOOOO MUCH!!!

What special thing do i do for them on their birthday? hmm..

Back when their poop amount was manageable. Those were the good ol' days..

And now, when i wish there were Chicken Diapers available in the market.

Happy birthday, dear babies!! <3 I love you.

Italiano!

I did a bit of research (you know how Google makes us want to know more) and turns out, Leghorn chickens are originally from Italy.

Mike and Pip might not know but their ancestors used to run on Italian pastures and peck on Italian worms and seeds.

Ignorance is bliss, so I am not telling them anything about this.

xoxo



That goes for pipette.

Yellow alert!!

Micro and Pipette are dead scared of the color yellow. How did we find out?
Well one day we tried feeding them a few petals of a yellow marigold flower...and I kid you not, if my chickens were human, you would totally hear a shriek. And then they both ran far far away grom the harmless petals...

Then one day we tried feeding them food with some turmeric. The two needed time to bond with the food that day, unlike other days where they just gobble up the yummy parts.

Another day, my friend presented them with a yellow ribbon, thinking that they might play with it or something. Instead you could see the two of them hyperventilating and running about with sheer terror.

They were yellow when they were babies...I wonder why the colour scared them!

When they were babies, i would hold them in my hand, and it was winter so I usually wore this yellow sweater. Were they scared even then or did I classically condition them??

The post egg-laying break

Last time Micro laid an egg was on the 3rd of September...and today is the 8th of September...I have a feeling she is going to lay whenever she feels like. The egg on the 3rd was a birthday gift, i suppose!

She is still a baby...just 10 months old. So no pressure...

Lay as and when you like! :)

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Pip, on the other hand, is shedding feathers or whatever you call it. His big bunch of tail feathers has now ended up with just 3 of them hanging onto him (which is a very funny sight)...and i guess soon enough he'll have newer prettier feathers! Right now, there are feathers lying around everywhere. Some i take , make a wish and blow it into the wind, some i keep with the agenda of making a quill, and some i have to dispose because they are too dirty.

I wonder how and why he is so nice, clean and well maintained, whereas Micro is a dirty lump of feathers. She is so...blah! Probably because she knows that there is no way in hell that Pip is going to meet another sexy hen. So why bother?

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p.s- Micro is very pretty, just by the way <3

The Perfect Egg!

The other day I go upstairs to check on Micro and Pipette and I find the BEST birthday gift ever!
A small but perfect egg that Micro laid and she was least bothered about it! haha!!

Here is the egg:

Laid an Egg at last!!

Everyday before going for college, I feed my chickens at around 7 am.  So on the 31st of August when i went up tp the terrace to feed them and wish them good morning, i see that Micro, my baby hen of 10 months, has laid an egg!! finally!

Only sad part, the shell was weak and soft so when i found it, it was all cracked and broken.
Weak shells in eggs can be for various reasons such as:

1. Malnutrition
2. Not enough calcium in the body
3. Stress
etc..

I decided i will have to feed Micro ground oyster shell because that is good calcium for her, apart from a healthier diet. And i will also have to keep her and the rooster Pip, apart because Pip is a bully and Micro is often scared of him and that stress might be hampering her eggs.

Oh also, never let your chicken eat up her own egg. Not good.

Since this was just her first egg (my poor baby!), I am hoping that her eggs will get better and stronger by the time she is a year old!

I love the 2 munchkins!
xxoo

Obedient Chicken

Okay, first of all, does anyone know as to when and by what time a hen starts laying eggs???

Micro and Pip have been good. Pip even listens to me when i tell him to stop screaming for no reason which will disturb the horrible neighbor. Even though i want that lady to be distured like hell, but i dont want another neighbor fighting episode. So he is quite obedient, for a rooster. And Micro...she hardly talks.

I love them so much... they make me happy!

Why you no lay EGGS, lady?

My hen, Micro, is almost 10 months old and she still wont lay eggs! Every time Pip tries to mate with her she runs away, but still, she should lay eggs right?

I am feeling her proteins and fats and calcium...but she is still so tiny. I wish she'd lay eggs already...!

Help?



when, oh when?

Neighbor Nuisance!!

So my two chickens, Mike and Pip, ate currently 9 months old. And Pipette loves to "coodookoo" a lot. He does it in the morning, afternoon, evening, night, midnight and at the break of dawn. Which is okay...i mean thats their nature right?
and also Kolkata has a lot of crows, and other birds, so when those birds come to our terrace for a meeting or something, Pipette has to tell them that Its HIS territory, so how dare they come.

So yesterday this awful neighbor of ours starts screaming at us and picks a fight coz apparently her husband was unable to sleep last night because of pip's coodookoo-ing and she actually threatens to get rid of my chickens!! :O

She is all "have you taken permission from the cops and blah blah' and that she'll go to the police for not letting her sleep at night and apparently you are not allowed t keep pets in apartments. So we called up the police and asked them if its so and they just laughed it off..!

Stoopid crazy lady. Well now she doesnt make a peep, becoz she knows how wrong she is. I think she wanted to eat them up, basically.

And the more she screams, Pip screams too. So we told her to shut up and put cotton ear plugs or get pet chickens herself.

God, I have never had good neighbors!!

^ so that's is Pipette. My leghorn rooster. My baby.

Para-para-Paradise.

Thank God i went to the terrace to feed my two chickens at the right time, otherwise I would have never been able to see this:

Isn't it beautiful?

Thank you Micro and Pipette. xoxoxoxox

Fighting toddlers (with arthritis)!

By the time Micro and Pipette were like, 4 months old, they were very energetic and naughty, especially Pip. Micro was the small innocent and slow girl who had developed arthritis because of the cold, but Pip was perfectly fine, eating, jumping and sometimes even hitting and standing on Micro. And then the poor thing that Micro is, she'd scream and try to run away but because they were in a cage at that time, he'd succeed in irritating her.

One night i actually had to keep her separate so that she could sleep in peace. Pip was being a total jerk! And then the next morning i had to tell dad to tell our carpenter to build them a bigger coop. The cage was becoming too small for them. And it also meant that i had to clean their poop filled cage every single day. The bigger your chicken, the bigger their poop.

I'd feed Micro garlic and some extra food and sometimes put mustard oil and turmeric on her swollen up feet (because they relieve pain) but it wasn't of much help. It did help, but Pip was smarter.

One night it was so cold that i even gave them a brandy in a bowl, with some warm water. Yep! And they did like it...they slept soundly that night. Or maybe they were drunk...I don't know ;)

Chickens are quite prone to arthritis. Its kind of genetic because it means that the chicken will sit and eat and eat and become fat and meaty. You'll know if your chicken has arthritis if:
1. She is walking slowly or not walking at all.
2. She is limping.
3. Her feet is red and swollen and warm.
4. If you put pressure on the affected feet, she'll react to the pain.

There is not much you can do, really. Just make sure your chicken is warm and is eating warm foods and if its sunny outside, let them soak in the sun for a while.

Micro is 9 months old now and she is perfectly okay, though she is a little slow and her fingers or whatever you call them is crooked. But its normal. As long as she is fine.

xoxo

That's them (about 2 months old). They both used to fit in both hands. now Only their head fits in our hand. <3

First bath!

So I just discovered that my babies are actually Leghorns and not broilers. But more on that later...

I remember Mike and Pip's first bath. Hahaha, no i dont think chickens usually take baths but well, these two are city born ;P
They were both very extremely dirty so we decided to give them a nice warm bath. so we take them to the terrace and we take this bucket with warm water (make sure its not too hot or too cold) and we put some turmeric powder (Indians love turmeric and it also kills germs) and we take them one by one and while my sister held one of them in her hands, i slowly poured water on them and wiped their tiny feathers and little butts! And all the time they were screaming like we were going to eat them up!

After the bath, we put them back in their cage. Both of them seemed to be very mad at us. Pip would scream at us, while Mike would turn her head as if she wont look at us, she is so mad, and her tiny fuzz bottom would be towards us. So adorable!!!!

And then we brought some garlic! yeah, its their favourite...they love garlic. So waving some garlic in front of their nose did the trick and in a minute both of them forgot what they were mad about.

That was their first and probably last bath. We realised they dont take baths.. haha!

Cuddled, in winter <3

Birds eat stones.

Okay, so you may or may not know it, but get this, birds eat stones. Tiny pebbles, not big stones.Reason? Well birds, unlike other animals, dont have teeth, and they lack teeth even when they grow up. that is why they eat pebbles and keep it in their stomach so that the pebbles help the bird grind the food in the stomach, which helps in digestion. Obviously, you cant digest non chewed food.

We found this out in a quite scary way, actually...
We fed Micro and Pipette some soaked lentils ('masoor dal' in Hindi) and they gobbled it up happily and then while playing with them, we saw this orange tumor like thing on the right side of their neck. 

"What the hell! Is that a tumor? Oh, my God!" was our reaction. Then obviously Google came to our rescue and we came to know that we had to feed them tiny stones immediately, or else they would not be able to digest the lentils and would die!

So we took out some tiny pebbles from our fish tank, boiled them to get rid of germs or anything, and then mixed it with some crushed lentils and force fed Micro and Pipette. We had no other option!

That night was tough on my sister and me. And mom and dad, perhaps. Even though um dad weren't thrilled to hear that my sis had got baby chickens home, they obviously melted when they saw the 2 yellow fuzz balls! :D

next day Micro and Pipette were fine. Their swollen gizzard (stomach) was normal and their poop was normal too! *phew*

How come there are no chicken doctors? like, hardly!

I can't tell which one that is. Probably Pipette. He is the energetic boy. <3

Tale of Two Chickies!

Those two obviously woke up at 4 am the next day, screaming and talking with each other I guess. Probably wondering where they are. Little did they know that they'd be brought up by two humans and not chicken parents. The life of my two chickens is the perfect example of Nature vs. Nurture.

We put their cardboard box with them in it, in the balcony so that they could get some fresh air and sunlight. We gave them a tiny deep saucer kind of thing with water in it. Now the big question: what to feed them now? We ultimately settled for puffed rice and oats, crushed of course, and put in in another dish and they started pecking it and eating it, which was a relief. Its not easy, feeding a baby bird with huge human hands.

That afternoon, my sister went to the market and bought a big cage and some hay for them. For two tiny baby chickens, it was a pretty big cage and we made them a nest kind of thing with hay and grass for them and also put a shoe box with tissues in it, in case they wanted to explore the world! Turns out, they were not too excited to enter the dark shoe box. We lined up the cage with newspaper so that their head or beak or feet did not get stuck in the wire and also put a newspaper on the cage floor, to collect the poop. Turns out, chickens love eating newspaper! They would keep eating it and poop small newspaper pellets until we removed the paper because we were scared that they were ingesting the ink as well. Taking away the paper made them very angry! If you want to treat your chicken, just give him/her a piece of plain paper. ;)

They had an early bedtime, dusk, but they'd go off to sleep at around 8 pm. So from 5:30 pm (when the sun sets) till 8 pm, they would scream at the top of their voice, like, literally scream their lungs out, probably protesting the early bedtime because they have so much energy to play, and the screaming wore them out so that they'd be quiet and off to sleep by 8. Those 2 and a half hours were very noisy!

The First Night

Mike and Pip's first night at home was exciting and scary at the same time. I mean, who normally knows how to  take care of two new born chickens? What are you supposed to feed them? Where do you keep them? How do u feed them?And what if something happened to them...then what do u do?

When my sister came home on 17th october, she told me that apparently the 2 chickens had hatched, climbed down the incubator (God knows how) and were sitting under it, screaming for help. The incubator has this automatic fan kind of  thing that goes on and off on its own. One wrong second, and my chickens would be chopped up. So obviously i'd like to believe that them being alive is a miracle!

We kept them in a cardboard box with tissue papers and cotton balls (which were bigger than them in size haha) and we fed them baby food with our finger, somehow. And then fed them water by dipping cotton in water and putting it drop by drop into their tiny little mouth. They loved water for some reson! They'd close their eyes, and open their beak wide and you could see their tiny little pink tongue wagging as they asked for more water. And as if water was one blessing from God, they close their eyes and slowly start leaning back and ultimately would fall on their bum. They were the 2 most adorable little creatures ever. I'm so lucky to have them.

Then after their dinner, we shut their box but made sure there were gaps on all sides, and then we covered the box with my sister's childhood blanket so that they'd be warm in there. It was october...pretty cold. Then we blow dried their box from outside to make it nice and warm ad then soon they went off to sleep. All night my sister was up, heating their box every half an hour. it was like a chicken ICU...like the doctors say "we'll have to keep them under observation. the fist 24 hours are crucial."

Next day they were up and screaming, probably for food, and when we opened the box, we saw tiny drops of bird poop. I have never been so happy to see bird poop. It meant that they were functioning fine. We had been perfect chicken mommies.

And they were my little babies <3

My Pet Chickens and their journey...

Micro-Pipette

In case you are wondering that this blog is abut the lab instrument called the micropipette, well, it's not. Micro and Pipette are my two pet chickens!
I live in a city, and not in the suburbs or anything, so having pet chickens is [retty much a weird thing, but well, Mike and Pip were meant to be with us.

My sister was working with chicken embryos in her lab and the incubator had lots of eggs out of which these 2 eggs were unused and one day, just before her vacations were to start, they hatched (at the same time!). So my sister got them home...otherwise they'd die.

So they were born on 17th October, 2012 and are almost 8 months old now. Oh, and Micro is a girl and pipette is a guy. Destiny works in mysterious ways...

here's a picture of them on day 1-

They are the cutest things ever! I always wanted baby chickens, because they are like little yellow fuzz balls, but i never imagined that I'd actually have them! 

Do you have pet chickens? Let me know! I have a Ph.D in broiler chickens (if there is such a thing). If you have questions about ur chickens, like I did, I can definitely help you.

:)