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