My favorite quote from the "News from Lake Wobegon" on A Prairie Home Companion last Saturday, October 23, 2010:

"Those chickens had a look of moral disapproval in their little yellow eyes"

Eggs!

Here are today's eggs -- what a variety of shapes, colors & sizes they are!

The tiny white one is the first egg laid by PeeWee. You can see her in the picture of all 13 girls below -- she's the little meanie marked with the red arrow.

The olive colored egg at the top is from the Aracauna marked with the green arrow. I've named Olive (short for Olive Oyl) because of the color eggs she lays.

I have no idea which of the old girls is laying the GIANT eggs (the one at about 3:oo in the bowl, but they all have double yolks.

The robin's egg blue Araucana eggs are almost round.

I just included this picture because I think the look on her face is funny -- her name's Marie (after Marie Antoinette). She's very friendly, likes to be held, is really curious & thinks she's the queen of the world.

Earning Their Keep in the Coop!

Yesterday, my friend the Bargain Hunter pointed out that I hadn't updated my blog in 6 weeks! I knew it had been a while, but had no idea it had been that long. I know everyone's been waiting to find out how my summer was so I'll be updating more soon.

First, though, is the happy announcement that the new girls have begun laying -- in the last 34 days we've gotten 105 eggs! Soon I'll be able to start selling them again.

The Red Stars started laying at about 4 months old & are really reliable. That great laying power, combined with their friendly, easy dispositions makes they a great breed to have.

The Araucanas finally started laying yesterday -- so far we've gotten 1 misshapen, strangely colored blue-green egg.

Look at how much smaller the little 'pullet eggs' are than the big girls' eggs (actually, than Thelma's eggs, since she's the only resident of the old hen's home who still lays an egg every once in a while).

Here are the eggs from one of the first days -- all different in size & color:

Nobody here but us girls!

There's peace in the hen house again! My roosters (2 Araucanas and 1 Red Star) were lovely to look at, but getting to be too much for my girls. On Wednesday I took all 3 roosters to a lady in met at the feed store who finds home with 4H kids for unwanted fowl. She assured me that the kids would continue to raise them until next year's fair, where they'll show them as 1-year-olds.

One of the Araucanas -- the baddest man in the coop!

I won't miss the Araucanas at all -- they were both already mean, aggressive and loud and making everyone's lives miserable. The Red Star, though, was a real sweetie and I was very sad to give him up. He was so gentle -- when I went out and sat by the chickens he jumped right up into my lap! I know, though, that sooner or later his rooster nature will come through, so keeping him would just be putting off the inevitable. What's disappointing, though is that Red Stars are 'sex-linked', which means that the male chicks are a different color than the female chicks -- there shouldn't have been a mistake made at the feed store! I'll just be more careful double checking that the lady there picks the right chicks next time.

Mr. Nice Guy and his girls

Now it's time to wait for the eggs to come & the girls to earn their feed -- maybe in September!

Movin' On Up...

Cue The Jeffersons' theme song, 'Movin' On Up'. . .

Today the babies moved in with the old girls, and it was an exciting day, indeed!

I haven't updated about them in a long time so here's a quick catch-up:

Remember these little cuties
and their two-level chick-o-miniums?

Well, they quickly outgrew their brooder bins and
we put the Aracaunas in a cardboard box home
(Turner found this FASCINATING).
Then they outgrew that and we put them in a chicken wire circle in the barn.
When they started having nightly (and then daily) jailbreaks,
we decided that it was time to move in with the big girls.

Today, we created an open chicken wire playground beyond the chicken run so that they could all meet on turf that was no one's territory. Then we allowed the babies access to the door of the chicken coop. You can see how that went!

Belle was very interested in them, but they were afraid to leave familiar territory.

Finally Jim got into the circle and chased them all into the chicken coop. When they finally went outside, I'd expected the big girls (especially LaVerne, the Black Australorp) to pick on them, but there was no bloodshed or fighting (at least not yet -- they haven't all had to find perch space yet!

As you can see below, they keep themselves in 3 flocks!
The big girls are in the foreground,
the Araucanas are in the middle
and the Red Stars (and PeeWee) stayed in the run.
They've stayed almost exclusively in their flocks all day.
In the end,
after an afternoon of sweeping and scraping chicken poo off of lots of surfaces,
we got our barn back!
Now the next step is to find a home for the 2 Aracauna roosters
*****
Anybody interested?

As Angelica used to say, "You Babies -- Be Quiet!"

With 13 chicks in our guest bathroom (in the bi-level chick-onimium), there is a constant din of peeps, baby squacks & tap-tap-taps as they peck & scratch at the floors of the brooders. The sound is starting to drive me crazy!

The chick-onimiums

I can hardly wait until these little girls have their feathers and/or are big enough to go out to the chicken coop to live next to the big girls (not exactly with them yet, but near). That will bring the next challenge -- integrating 2 flocks of chicks into one and then integrating that flock into the flock of 3 old ladies (including 1 mean girl, LaVerne).

All this for fresh eggs and the fun of having chickens!

Chicks - Catching Up

I haven't kept up with 'baby pictures' of the chicks. It's amazing to us how big they're getting -- it seems like you could watch them grow before your eyes!

Here they are at 6 days old:

and here they are at 2 weeks.
They're starting to look less chick-like and more chicken-like.
They're already getting their adult feathers:

Today I picked up 6 new chicks...oops, make that 7! There was one little girl (I hope) I just couldn't resist. More on her in a minute. The six new girls are Red Stars. 3 are 1 week old and 3 are newborns.

Here are the newest chicks (the video is whacked and they look like they're doing head-bobs or something):

You'll notice that there's one very tiny brown chick. She's a Mille Fleur bantam -- she'll be very small and lay tiny eggs. The Red Stars will weigh about 7 lbs. as adults, but she'll only weigh about 1 1/2 lbs. She's so tiny and so sweet, I just couldn't pass her up! Here's a picture of Jim holding her in one hand a large egg in the other.
Oh, did I keep referring to her as 'her'? Well, there's a chance that she might be a he...the hatchery tries to make sure that they ship hens if you want hens, but there's always a chance you'll get a rooster. I want to name her Precious, but may end up calling her Elvis...

Here's what she'll look like grown:

And now, on to the housing problem! How do you put newborns in with 2 week old chicks? We didn't want the bigger chicks to overrun or pick on the tinies. We tried an apartment:
A problem arose, though, when the little ones stuck their heads through the chicken wire (that's why chickens don't rule the world).

So, we ended up with condos:

Now we have 13 chicks in the guest bathroom, and there are constant little 'peeps'. Lucky Charlie and Sarah get to share that bathroom with the girls when they come next month!

Here are Laverne, Belle & Thelma just waiting for their 13 little sisters to come out and play!

It's a girl...and a girl, and a girl...

I picked up the first six of our new chicks today.  Here's a slideshow (including videos)!

Customize your own digital slideshow

There's NO place like home...

I recently updated from Photoshop Elements 2.o to 8.0 (there are LOTS of improvements) and have just completed my first slideshow with audio. I know it's a little rough and that many (if not all) of my faithful readers could do better, but I'm pretty excited about this. Check it out and see what you think!

What's New?

I haven't updated in a while. I've just been busy planting, watering and weeding. We've already got our first tomato growing (!) and have picked so many wonderful strawberries! I think the garden will be great this year, though the season is starting out really hot. New this year are leeks -- I'll keep you posted on how they do.

One of the girls died this week. Tiny, the Aracauna, had gotten so thin that I don't even think she weighed 1/2 pound. She just had less and less energy and hadn't laid an egg in months. All the girls are 3 years old and I believe that's old for hens, though they don't have a long life expectancy. My girls certainly don't face many hardships or much stress in their sheltered world!

We leave tomorrow for the Rotary Convention in Salt Lake City. From there, we'll go down to Las Vegas and will be going to see the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam at some point. It should be a fun trip, with lots of sightseeing. I'll try to post at least once from there.

The chickens, cats, dog and plants are all going to be in the care of Danny -- I hope he's up to the pressure (and Turner's early mornings)!