Weeble

...or not. Weebles don't fall down, but my little Rhode Island Red hen Sophie does. Maybe she has an "inner ear" problem, because at least once a day (on average) she falls or is knocked over (by another chicken), rolls onto her back, and can't get up. The inability to get up from the toes-up thing is apparently a chicken thing. Like a turtle, once they're on their backs, they can't easily right themselves. This is handy to know if you ever need to immobilize a bunch of chickens for a few minutes. Of course, you have to catch them first.

Anyway, poor Sophie has had this problem for months. The other birds pick on her when she's down, so she hides from them. A lot. Which means it's sometimes hard to find her to check up on her. It also means that she's easy pickins' for a predator if she capsizes out in the pasture or the neighbor's yard, where they sometimes wander. I don't have their run completed, so they just free-range around the property.

I have to be away from home today, and didn't want to worry about her all day long, so I took a wire dog crate, took the tray/bottom out of it, and put it in the grass for an instant "chicken tractor" for her. Food, water, a stick jammed through for a perch, and some plywood over the perch for shade if she wants it. Perfect. She's in there eating her grain and scratching in the grass. Now I won't worry all day.

Peep!

A bit over a month ago my white Cochin hen, Ophelia, went broody. At first I took the eggs away every day, then she just had a couple so I though, "Fine, let her sit." She and Lobelia (an auracana who lays green eggs) have been taking turns sitting on the clutch, which is interesting. My rooster is a white Leghorn, so I was fine with little white cross birds, but the Leghorn/Auracauna crosses may turn out odd. I was starting to think I wasn't going to get anything, because the incubation period is supposed to be 21 days, and we were a week over by my estimate. Of course, I'd taken away some of the first eggs right away, so that would throw the calculation off...but I digress.

I went out this afternoon to do some yard work, and heard a little bird in distress, "Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!" I assumed one of the cats had a swallow or robin, but they were all empty-"handed". I kept following the noise...and found a little yellow-white peep in the garden! Poor infant! Must have hatched this morning, because she was dry and mobile. Maybe Ophelia went out for some air and baby followed her...then stupid mom went in without baby. I scooped her up and put her in the cat carrier with her mommy, and she disappeared under the fluff.

There are five or six more eggs under her....gah. I'm sure some will be boys, so I'll have to get rid of them eventually, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Actually, I'll probably put most of them up for "adoption" since I don't need a coop full of white and odd-colored birds. I'm happy with just one or two of each kind, thanks.

Anyway, it's very exciting. Yes, I'm a dilettante "farmer" and little things like this that are just business as usual for real farmers are very interesting to me!

Chicken Fashions

Fellow critter enthusiast friend of mine sent this link to a cool story about chicken rescues in the UK. Production egg "factories" are unhappy places, especially for the chooks. One of the side-effects of cramped and crowded conditions is that the birds often peck and pick at each other, resulting in some pretty naked critters. What to do with these girls who are past their prime and for some reason not destined for a can of soup? Rehoming and little knitwear until they grow their feathers back. Very cool.

Eggapalooza!

This may not be front page news, but my chickens are going crazy laying eggs. For those not familiar with poultry, most hens scale back or stop laying altogether during the Winter, due to the shorter days. Some people force the issue by turning on lights in the henhouse. I do not. Chickens, like everybody else in the egg business, only have a finite amount in them, so why use them all up in a hurry?. Anyway, I have ten hens, and right now I'm getting 4-8 eggs a day! Family and friends are taking some, but I think I'm going to have to make another batch of pickled eggs and do some serious baking. Maybe I'll make cookie dough and freeze it! Hm, good idea...

Green eggs (no ham)!

This won't be a big deal to anybody but me, but I just collected a green egg from my henhouse. Lobelia, my fluffyheaded Auracana, is laying again! All of my "older" birds stopped laying months ago, for some reason. Except Emma the crabby Gold Sebright (banty). She's been laying right along...until she went broody on me a couple of weeks ago. Now she just sits on everybody else's eggs and screams at me when I take them away. She's a little goofy.

Anyhoo, right now I'm getting 5-6 eggs a day at least, what with the new Rhode Is. Red, Sophie, in the mix. I have 3 dozen in the fridge because I can't seem to find takers for my extras. Methinks it's time for pickled eggs: yum.

Varmints

Do NOT go after my chickens or I will SO blast you with my, um, air gun.

D'oh!

My chickens are really stoopid. That's a redundancy, I know, like "annoying children" or "smelly dogs", but they will keep wandering out in the pasture where we no longer have a giant dog-eating draft horse. The current horses, when they actually notice the coyote walking right past them, pretty much say, "Huh, lookit the coyootie."

I've been very remiss about lining our board fence with wire mesh, to keep bird in and predators out. I'm slowly getting there, but my wonky back limits me to about an hour of fence work at a time. Feh. So, anyhoo, a short while ago I heard a commotion involving squawking barn fowl out in the pasture, and glanced up to see my gang of "teenage" hens fly-running in the general direction of the henhouse or the neighbor's pasture, depending on your perspective. I bolted for the kitchen door, jumped into my wellies, grabbed a rifle from the stack, and ran out along their angle of escape. Sure enough, there was a pile of yellow feathers under the cedar trees. I actually yelled "Aaaaagh!" as I poked the clump of fluff, looking for blood. Nothing. I still figured I was down one Buff Orpington. Of course I couldn't see a dog-shaped anything anywhere, although it was probably peering at me from the brush at the edge of the back pasture.

I found Roxanne (the barred rock) in Gallant's, the neighbor's thouroughbred, stall. The other girls were all, yes all, under a stack of tin roofing next to the stall. With the help of Mrs. Neighbor, who wondered what I was doing peering under her roofing materials, we flushed out the birds and I herded them back to their yard. One of the Orpies is missing a dog mouthfull of feathers from her left "hip", right in front of her tail. There's a bit of tearing, but I'll just put some antibiotic goo on it tonight when she settles down. It looks clean and she's not limping. Poor baby. I've seen worse, though, and maybe they'll stay closer to home now.

Note to self: do more target practice and learn what all those darned guns next to the kitchen door actually are. Even if I had actually seen the offender and shot at it and not missed, which I always do, I'm not sure an air gun would have dropped it. I loathe the idea of merely wounding an animal. No suffering, please, and fewer predators, double please. Sound cruel? Sorry, Mrs. Neighbor also informed me that the reason Mrs. Goat Lady, another neighbor, is down to one goat is that the coyotes got the female. I shoot to kill. If you're a dog, and you're in my pasture, I will, and I quote Capt. Mal Reynolds, (try to) "end you".

Peep Show

I was only going to get one of each, but the lady at the feed store gave me such a deal...! So now I have five little chicklets: two Rhode Island Reds, two Buff Orpingtons, and one Barred Rock. I may be able to trade one each of the Rhodies and Buffies at the chicken swap meet in Poulsbo this Sunday, but we'll see.

Gimli has been doing chicken toasting duty, sitting on top of their crate, since I brought them home day before yesterday. Today I caught Beany in the act. The stack of pewter plates and serving dish is to keep the kitties from interacting too closely with the peeps, because these peeps are much better than mere marshmallow peeps, you know. Luckily, they grow up to be big, scary clucks who chase kitties, as it should be.

Chilly

Got a little dusting of snow last night. Just enough to re-apply what melted yesterday when the outside temp rose to a sweltering 42 F or so. My suet bird feeder is empty, and now I can't find the mould to make another suet cake! Fooey. I guess I should clean my kitchen, then it will magically appear.

Bev brought over her big baby shire Honor yesterday to get him under saddle a bit. He's just four years and I think yesterday was maybe his third time with a rider. Nobody died. This was a distinct possibility considering that the ground is frozen right now, and coming off a 17+ hand horse could be ugly.

There is a lot of ice down by the drainage ditch/creek right now. In fact, there are huge sheets of thick ice where there has been seepage from all the rain we had. When Gordon went to retrieve Jaran and Woody from the back pasture, they were slipping all over the place: a giant wreck did NOT occur, miraculously.

Also of note: Natalie layed her first egg this weekend! It was actually a pretty decent one for a first egg, and (drum roll please)...she's a greenie! Yay! I'm on the way back to tutti frutti egg cartons! She layed her second this morning. I'm just positive that Americauna/Auracanas can lay blue eggs, too. I must find a blue girl somewhere...

At any rate, after a few months of maybe one or two eggs a week (from Ophelia, my die-hard Cochin fluff ball), we're back to business. Keridwen is almost grown back from her molt and should start laying again soon, especially since the days are getting longer. Lobelia should start pitching in, too (she's so lazy). Emma, little Seabright bird, will lay again when she darn well feels like it, because she marches to a different drummer.

Let's see. How much more prosaic can I be? I know...a cat picture!

Gimli loves his snuggly bed.