Replacement Crop

Mr. Fox has been especially cruel to us this year. In 2 hauls he took us from 13 chickens down to 4. We close everyone in at night, but the fox must have been coming just before we got home from work.


Last year we had a couple hens disappear. We didn't really know what happened to them until one day we saw a fox creeping around the back yard. We thought it was a one time loss. Then one morning we had a big pile of feathers in the yard. The fox got our best rooster ever, Buffy. That one was the worst because we found his body in the woods. If your going to kill my chickens, at least eat them.....Then Pigee.




As much as we like letting everyone free range, enough was enough. We built a ramshakle run off of our ramshakle coup. I have no problem letting them out in the yard if we are around, but otherwise they stay closed in. We were lucky enough to find someone who was thinning out their crop of hens and we able to pick up 2 barred rocks, 1 buff orpington, and one light brahma. Our survivors are one arucana, 1 guinea hen, and our light brahma rooster. So we are back up to 7 birds, and that should so us just fine.

BLOOM

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Wish I had more time to post. Things are crazy around here. End of the year at school has the kids nuts....thank god we only have 2 weeks left. I will be teaching summer school this year so I have been busy designing my lesson plans. Also been writing lots of applications in hopes of getting a science teacher position for the fall. I hate the application process and some of the questions you are asked to write about.
Haven't had enough time at home to get all of the veggies planted yet. Tony did rototil the back garden, so it is ready. Flowers are starting to bloom..... the iris are almost ready. Need to do a lot of weeding and fill in the bare spots.
The Subaru is broken down once again, so I need to figure out what is next for it. The fox killed 7 of our chickens and one of my angoras died unexplainably last week. Bummers.
I need to get ready to head to work at the hospital.....wish I could play outside instead.

Fried

We have no food in our fridge this week except eggs, olives, and condiments. Luckily the girls are laying more eggs each day, so breakfast for dinner can continue. With the increasing daylight, we are back up to 5 eggs a day. We have 11 hens, not including the guineas. Mostly getting browns, but every couple days one of the ameracanas will lay a pretty green one for us.

A Bloody Mess

Went out to feed and water the chickens before work this morning, only to open up the coop to a bloody (and poopy!) mess. One of the guinea hens seems to have done something to her foot (toe?) and was dripping blood. At the time I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and had to get to work..... so I left her. And felt horrible. Spent the day hoping I wouldn;t come home to a dead hen. After work I checked again... She was out and about with all of her friends, leaving a trail of blood drops where she had been. She ate fine and seemed to be walking fine.
After watching her for a while I came in to drop my work stuff, etc..... and read some blogs. I went to check in on Danni at http://critterfarmgirl.blogspot.com/
and laughed when I saw it was a post about clipping her rooster's nails AND she happened to take a picture of the styptic solution she applied to her rooster's bleeding nail! What a coincidence. I hadn't thought of that. A quick phone call to the local farmers union and I was out the door to pick some up.

Cold and Cold

Its really cold outside (-5 without the windchill) and I have a cold. I stayed home from work today hoping to recuperate. Instead I got a phone call from the caregiver of the summer residence I help clean.... the alarm was going off that the water pipes were at low temperatures...could I go over and open the sink cabinets (as he thought that was all it was). I said sure seeing as it would only take about 30 minutes. Well I get there to find a freezing cold house. The indoor temps were ranging from 32-47 degrees! Long story short, they ran out of propane and I hung out for 3 hours in a really cold house waiting and working with the gas man to get the heat back on. One of the 2 furnaces wouldn't go back on and remains off overnight, but I'm done. I did my good deed.

Teachers meetings at work tomorrow. Still will be sick but not having the kids there will make it a bit easier of a day to get through.

The bunnies are living indoors in our sunroom for the duration of this cold spell. They can withstand cold, but I would leave them out there in these temps, especially with the wind.

Hagrid has dirty feet.

Sunoom/sewing room/library/bunny and cat romper room
See the bunny?

They do seem to love their outdoor living quarters though. I blocked the underside of their hutch in with straw and laid down a deep bed of it on the ground. They have a nice little burrow going under there.
The chickens seem to be fairing well even with these temps. We have a light up in the coop which keeps it a bit warmer. They have also been getting lots of extra table scraps to help fatten them up and keep them warm. Red, our rooster also gets special vaseline treatments to his comb and waddle to help ward off frostbite (been there and done that with our first rooster, Buffy).

Then there were two

We have three roosters. Three is too many.......Three was too many.......
The Silver Laced Wyandotte was the roughest with our hens.....

Rooster before:

Rooster after:
I would have preferred finding him a new home, but Tony had other ideas. I came home from work yesterday to a giant pot of boiling water, and when I asked what it was for, his reply was 'you don't want to know'. You could say I was less than excited about eating my dinner last night, but I had to try it........I will be sticking with supermarket bought organic chicken. It was not bad, the texture was different, kind of soft/mushy. The dark meat was the darkest I have ever seen (gross) and Tony said it was a little tough.There was also a little bit of furry feather things sticking out........ I have read that you should let it sit in the fridge for a day or two to make it less tough. The leftovers should be good for soup, with negative temps tonight a warm bowl of soup should be good.
We have two roosters left, Tony talks about taking one more down. I refuse to go along with this plan.....

Getting big girl feathers

Gold Speckled Wyandotte:

The chicks are growing fast now. In a week or so we are going to have to move them out of thier current cage and into a bigger enclosure. We are also expecting to get another hal dozen or so day old chicks that will be moving into their cage once the older girls move out.

Buff Orpington:

Golden Comet:Guinea Hen, Silver Speckeled Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red (L to R)Light Brahma (the yellow one):Guinea Hen, Rhode Island Red (Red is the friendliest and the 2 guineas are the most skittish)

Ckick Day!

I picked up our chicks after work today. We got 8 babies today and are probably ordering a few more with our friends up the road sometime soon. I have them set up in our former lizards cage in the garage.

We have 2 guinea keets, 1 rhode island red, 1 buff oprington, 1 light brahma, 1 golden laced wyandotte, 1 silver laced wyandotte, and 1 golden comet. I will post more pictures with the breeds listed another time.

h

We shall call him Stew.

I think T is going to kill one of the roosters. They are so brutal with our poor hens, so bad in fact the Whitey has run away from home. The two roos gang up on her all day long. They have plucked all of the feathers off of her back and it got to the point that she either couldn't or wouldn't stand up after they were done with her. I saw the last attack happen and eventually, after she did get up she bolted into the woods towards the pipeline. 3 days passed and I figured she had died. Then one morning, when I was walking in the woods with Nora, Whitey came running over to us. She followed me to the yard and ate for a solid 5 minutes. I had to run into the house for a minute and when I came back, she was gone again. She has been living in the woods for about 5 days now, probably roosting in a tree at night. Somehow avoiding any predators. Today we talked about killing off one of the roosters and then trying to get her back into the coop. I am warming up to the idea, but not ready to do it quite yet. Something is going to have to be done before our new chicks arrive.

Big Birds

Just though I would put up a few pics of the chickens to show how big our two chicks have gotten. These two are going to be big birds. We were right in our assumptions of one hen and one rooster. He's not crowing yet, but he is certianly doing other things that boy chickens do. He is a very pretty bird, as long as he doesn't start attacking me like Buffy (our old rooster) used to do.

After about 3 or 4 months of no eggs, two hens have started back up. The problem was that Ambrosia went broody and was then busy raising the chicks and out other two hens went into a hard molt (during which they stop laying). There is a slight possibily that our new hen layed one of these eggs, but I am not sure just yet.

The rooster is the black one with lots of orange on his neck. You can see his comb and waddles which will become more and more pronounced.

Weather man says we are getting into the 40's and 50's this week so I am hoping to clean up the coop a bit once things in there thaw out a bit. I also need to give my angora bunnies haircuts and now would be a good time.