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Showing posts with label coops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coops. Show all posts
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Babies having Babies
Having eighteen pullets and five roosters all "coming of age" at the same time makes for a whole lot of crazy.
Can you believe that these little fuzzballs are laying eggs of their own now?
March 6, 2011
The puberty wave has brought with it a few strange new experiences -
*Waking (and sometimes going to bed) to the sound of 5 frisky boys trying to out-warble one another. Thunder is the undisputed crowing champ. His crow is like a scratchy air raid siren, especially when unleashed within the confines of the coop. Eardrums bleeding now!
*The chicken edition of "I didn't know I was pregnant" playing itself out daily. Some of our ladies' nesting instincts have not quite caught up to their ovaries, catching them off guard and thus necessitating...
*...a daily Easter Egg hunt. A high-stakes game of find the egg, if you will. The challenge being to find every egg every day without fail, lest you should find one that has somehow escaped your notice for a day or two and sat baking in the August heat. No es bueno.
*Squabbles and kerfuffles over the "good" nest box. Sometimes there's a line. Sometimes the gals don't quite make it, and you find an egg or two where the queue had been. Sometimes desperation takes over, and two hens will squeeze their fluffy booties side by side into a one-hen nest, or, even more rarely, one will sit on top of the other, sidesaddle.
The gals do not always maintain a dignified air while waiting either. If one hen is perceived as taking too long to get the job done, the others will BOCK! their everlovin' heads off until they get their turn in the hot seat, or scramble to find a suitable last-minute replacement for the coveted nest box. Sometimes this is in a corner of their coop or a batted down tuft of grass in the yard. There have been a few times that they have laid eggs under the new coop or, mysteriously, on the "wrong" side of the fence. (Are they escaping the yard, laying, then coming back? Or do they simply aim their derrieres to the south and pop an egg through the 4x4 fence, and into the great, wide world?)
Who can say? All I know is that chickens are generally under-appreciated for their entertainment value. Romances, bitter feuds, babies out of wedlock - it's like an episode of All My Children over here.
A Sampling of our lovlies ~
Curlie, the frizzled Polish Roo, looking, err... not his best.
Amelia the Americauna, in the highly-coveted nest box. Amelia is our super-jumbo egg layer. We're talking 4 oz eggs! Go Melie, go.
Beanie, one of our two Turken hens. Her sister, Vulture, looks the same, but has greenish black feathering like the Australorps.
Thunder, mid-crow, as ever.
Chick-Chick, our only white Americauna and the leader of the pack.
Blackberry, an Australorp pullet, one of nine. Her sisters, Agnes, Rockstar, Pinky-Pinky-Pinky, Skateboard and a few others are not pictured. Could you ever have guessed that I had the help of my friends' preschoolers when naming my chicks? ;)
Can you believe that these little fuzzballs are laying eggs of their own now?
The puberty wave has brought with it a few strange new experiences -
*Waking (and sometimes going to bed) to the sound of 5 frisky boys trying to out-warble one another. Thunder is the undisputed crowing champ. His crow is like a scratchy air raid siren, especially when unleashed within the confines of the coop. Eardrums bleeding now!
*The chicken edition of "I didn't know I was pregnant" playing itself out daily. Some of our ladies' nesting instincts have not quite caught up to their ovaries, catching them off guard and thus necessitating...
*...a daily Easter Egg hunt. A high-stakes game of find the egg, if you will. The challenge being to find every egg every day without fail, lest you should find one that has somehow escaped your notice for a day or two and sat baking in the August heat. No es bueno.
*Squabbles and kerfuffles over the "good" nest box. Sometimes there's a line. Sometimes the gals don't quite make it, and you find an egg or two where the queue had been. Sometimes desperation takes over, and two hens will squeeze their fluffy booties side by side into a one-hen nest, or, even more rarely, one will sit on top of the other, sidesaddle.
The gals do not always maintain a dignified air while waiting either. If one hen is perceived as taking too long to get the job done, the others will BOCK! their everlovin' heads off until they get their turn in the hot seat, or scramble to find a suitable last-minute replacement for the coveted nest box. Sometimes this is in a corner of their coop or a batted down tuft of grass in the yard. There have been a few times that they have laid eggs under the new coop or, mysteriously, on the "wrong" side of the fence. (Are they escaping the yard, laying, then coming back? Or do they simply aim their derrieres to the south and pop an egg through the 4x4 fence, and into the great, wide world?)
Who can say? All I know is that chickens are generally under-appreciated for their entertainment value. Romances, bitter feuds, babies out of wedlock - it's like an episode of All My Children over here.
A Sampling of our lovlies ~
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Farm Girl Truism #1
Whoever invented the expression "Happy as a pig in $h!t" must have never seen a chicken in fresh straw. They lose their freaking minds over it.
My hens were scratching so feverishly today that they looked like they were moon-walking through the coop. It's nice to be surrounded by at least a few beings that are so easily pleased. ;)
Monday, January 17, 2011
Wrestling with my demons Hens
Sometimes, when the wind blows just so it will slam the main door to our chicken coop shut, hard. And when that happens, boy, that door is shut, buddy, and takes a good bit of joggling and yanking to get it open again. Well, the wind was up a bit today, and we were out running errands until after dark, which meant that the hens couldn't get into their hen house at dusk, and needed a plan B night roost.
Two of the hens chose to roost on the top of the chain-link fence that surrounds the chicken yard, and the other four (who typically stick together), were found sound asleep in a large rhododendron right next to the coop.
As I'm sure you know, chickens left exposed overnight are very likely to become some critter's midnight snack, so we really had no choice but to pick them up one by one and stuff them into their hen house. For this noble, lifesaving service, the hens are about as grateful as your cat might be for you giving it a bubble bath.
When a chicken is asleep, it's brain is basically turned off. It remembers to poop and breathe - it is strictly primal. And so, when you attempt to pick up a sleeping chicken, however gentle and prefaced with sweet talk, its brain shrieks Predator! and the body treats you accordingly, as in, a flap/scratch-o-rama ensues. Well tonight I got the goods times six. Trying to move a sleeping chicken is like trying to dress a nine month-old in the dark - furious wiggling, squawking and occasionally, the infliction of minor injuries to the one doing the "helping".
In the end, the sassy six were returned to the safety of their hen house and will probably wake up with no memory whatsoever of their evening ordeal. I, however, will not so soon forget the experience of having the palms of my hands raked by claws, while having both sides of my face slapped frantically and simultaneously by chicken wings. All this hoo-hah forgood really good the world's tastiest eggs now and then? Apparently so.
Two of the hens chose to roost on the top of the chain-link fence that surrounds the chicken yard, and the other four (who typically stick together), were found sound asleep in a large rhododendron right next to the coop.
As I'm sure you know, chickens left exposed overnight are very likely to become some critter's midnight snack, so we really had no choice but to pick them up one by one and stuff them into their hen house. For this noble, lifesaving service, the hens are about as grateful as your cat might be for you giving it a bubble bath.
When a chicken is asleep, it's brain is basically turned off. It remembers to poop and breathe - it is strictly primal. And so, when you attempt to pick up a sleeping chicken, however gentle and prefaced with sweet talk, its brain shrieks Predator! and the body treats you accordingly, as in, a flap/scratch-o-rama ensues. Well tonight I got the goods times six. Trying to move a sleeping chicken is like trying to dress a nine month-old in the dark - furious wiggling, squawking and occasionally, the infliction of minor injuries to the one doing the "helping".
In the end, the sassy six were returned to the safety of their hen house and will probably wake up with no memory whatsoever of their evening ordeal. I, however, will not so soon forget the experience of having the palms of my hands raked by claws, while having both sides of my face slapped frantically and simultaneously by chicken wings. All this hoo-hah for
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sacré Bleu!
Things have been a little slow around here, so the excitement surrounding the discovery of our first blue egg this morning can scarcely be overstated. My husband came in from letting the hens out of the coop and like a goofy magician turned over his opened palms to reveal two fresh eggs - one brown and one blue.
Needless to say, the girls were equally delighted, and briefly debated which of our Americaunas was the likely mama, before somehow deciding that this must surely be Strawberry's egg.
We aren't sure how much longer we'll be getting eggs, as according to Yahoo Weather, sunrise and sunset are now just over 9 1/2 hours apart, with the folk wisdom of chicken-rearing stating that hens must have at least 10 hours of light per day to continue laying. We could throw a blue light in the coop to keep the girls cranking away, buuuut....
a) The idea behind this whole raising chickens thing was to simplify life and consume less. Having a light burning in the coop 14+ hours per day kind of defeats the purpose.
b) My feminist credo is not reserved exclusively for the human female. These girls deserve to take a break, if they so choose. I won't love paying for eggs and feeding non-laying hens at the same time, but fair is fair - this is not a sweatshop.
c) Not knowing if we'll get more, and if so, how many more before the chickies decide to take their break makes every single egg that much more precious - and worth using well.
When all four hennies finally start giving us an egg each per day, we, not being major egg consumers, will likely be looking to share our wealth. Check in once in a while on my GGG facebook page where I will post about extra eggs and any other garden goodies that we have to share or trade.
Needless to say, the girls were equally delighted, and briefly debated which of our Americaunas was the likely mama, before somehow deciding that this must surely be Strawberry's egg.
We aren't sure how much longer we'll be getting eggs, as according to Yahoo Weather, sunrise and sunset are now just over 9 1/2 hours apart, with the folk wisdom of chicken-rearing stating that hens must have at least 10 hours of light per day to continue laying. We could throw a blue light in the coop to keep the girls cranking away, buuuut....
a) The idea behind this whole raising chickens thing was to simplify life and consume less. Having a light burning in the coop 14+ hours per day kind of defeats the purpose.
b) My feminist credo is not reserved exclusively for the human female. These girls deserve to take a break, if they so choose. I won't love paying for eggs and feeding non-laying hens at the same time, but fair is fair - this is not a sweatshop.
c) Not knowing if we'll get more, and if so, how many more before the chickies decide to take their break makes every single egg that much more precious - and worth using well.
When all four hennies finally start giving us an egg each per day, we, not being major egg consumers, will likely be looking to share our wealth. Check in once in a while on my GGG facebook page where I will post about extra eggs and any other garden goodies that we have to share or trade.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Chicken Wranglin', Part One
This past Spring, our family, as a part of our new locavore lifestyle experiment, decided to give backyard chicken keeping a try. “City chickens” have become increasingly more common over the past few years, thanks to our death-spiral economy and the resurgence of the back-to-the-land sentiment amongst granolas and granola wannabes like myself. Therefore, between the library and the internet, we discovered a wealth of information available about how to build, populate and care for our very own coop full of chickens, right here in the city.
As most folks would before bring home a new pet, my husband and I researched every possible calamity and pitfall of owning chickens – irritated neighbors, funky smells, predator raids, exotic chicken diseases, etc. – and still decided to take the plunge into chicken ownership. We were excited! After scouring the internet for a suitably predator-proof coop plan, construction began in earnest.
By mid-May, the coop was done and my husband and I were being besieged daily by our daughters with, Can we get the chicks today? Pleeeeease!, until we finally gave in and headed out for the feed store to pick us some chickens.
Hooboy, the feed store. There are few places where I have felt like a bigger poseur/idiot than I do at the feed store. While the employees there are always very nice, I can sense their amusement and maybe just a smidge of irritation with me for all of my naïve questions and aimless wandering of their aisles. Luckily, my hubby grew up in the country in a small town called Yelm, and knows how to talk the talk of the country feed store – i.e. – the g’s start falling off words like hail from a storm cloud. What type a bailin’ wire you recommend? I call it his “Yelmese”.
Strange as it is to witness, his assimilation into country culture is most effective. Especially when contrasted with his stuttering, dingbat, city slicker wife asking what she had no idea were ridiculous questions.
Awkward questions and all, at the end of the day we were 6 chickens (and their copious accessories) richer, and $100 poorer. We were officially chicken owners.
To be continued…
As most folks would before bring home a new pet, my husband and I researched every possible calamity and pitfall of owning chickens – irritated neighbors, funky smells, predator raids, exotic chicken diseases, etc. – and still decided to take the plunge into chicken ownership. We were excited! After scouring the internet for a suitably predator-proof coop plan, construction began in earnest.
By mid-May, the coop was done and my husband and I were being besieged daily by our daughters with, Can we get the chicks today? Pleeeeease!, until we finally gave in and headed out for the feed store to pick us some chickens.
Hooboy, the feed store. There are few places where I have felt like a bigger poseur/idiot than I do at the feed store. While the employees there are always very nice, I can sense their amusement and maybe just a smidge of irritation with me for all of my naïve questions and aimless wandering of their aisles. Luckily, my hubby grew up in the country in a small town called Yelm, and knows how to talk the talk of the country feed store – i.e. – the g’s start falling off words like hail from a storm cloud. What type a bailin’ wire you recommend? I call it his “Yelmese”.
Strange as it is to witness, his assimilation into country culture is most effective. Especially when contrasted with his stuttering, dingbat, city slicker wife asking what she had no idea were ridiculous questions.
Awkward questions and all, at the end of the day we were 6 chickens (and their copious accessories) richer, and $100 poorer. We were officially chicken owners.
To be continued…
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