Now THAT Is A Good Looking Chicken!

 

I was working in the house today when something caught my attention on the front porch.

Our hen Ethel was checking herself out in the mirror I set out.

I am in the process of moving some stuff from our house into the new guest house,

and I set it on the front porch for staging.

We have never once fed them on the front porch,

and I don't know what possessed her to leave the pack and launch out on her own.

I didn't want to disturb her,

so I took all the pics through the window in the front door.

She didn't seem at all disturbed by the image,

just interested.  Most of her "flock" are also Sebright's -- so it probably didn't surprise her.

What a hoot!

The Chooks Love Watermelon!

 

We don't eat watermelon much.  Neither of us really care for it.

But about once a year we buy a chunk of it in the summertime.

All of the seabrights loved it, and Millie the big black hen rejected it.

She is my tomato lover, so I was surprised.  

They will need to wait another year for more.

Millie's Egg

Could It Get Any Worse?

 Could it get any worse?  A person should never actually let those words come out of their mouth, because the answer to that question is always -- yes.  But this week has been a progressive series of things getting worse.  Monday our contractor knocked over our planter by the driveway.  Boohoo.


Also on Monday (and Tuesday) -- a sick chicken. She was in a kennel in our house and had to have electrolytes given to her every couple hours.  Whatever evil was inside her smelled even worse when it came out of her.  (By Wednesday she was doing better.)

Tuesday morning at 2:30 a.m. my husband got up to use the bathroom.

He stepped in an inch of water.  The bathroom that attaches to our upstairs bedroom was pouring out water from the supply line to the toilet.  Maybe a couple hundred gallons.

(We sleep with a fan on, so we didn't hear anything.) Totally saturated the old growth pine floor upstairs, and made it's way downstairs into our dining room which is right below the bedroom.  Every absorbable towel, blanket, bedspread, was used to soak up the water.  And of course the rugs were all soaked.  So Tuesday morning our contractor cut holes in the dining room ceiling and walls to get air in there.  I should have taken a photo of the stack of laundry I did Tuesday.  

Also, the insurance guy came Tuesday to say water mitigation company would be covered by insurance.  And he agreed that the pine floor would have to be refinished because of warpage (again, just had them done when we moved in two years ago.)  By the way, major pain.  You can't use that area for like two weeks.

 Mitigation company came yesterday.

They set up dehumidifiers and fans in dining room,

downstairs hallway, and upstairs.  SO LOUD.

They will be with us until Monday.  Did I say LOUD?

Sorry, can't hear myself think.

 My son is staying with us this summer.  Today (which is Thursday) he found out that the people

he visited last weekend have tested positive for covid.  So he is in quarantine for two weeks, at our house.  I put up this curtain to separate his area from the rest of the house.  He gets the guest room, downstairs bathroom, sun room and deck. (Basically the only places where there isn't loud machinery.)

 We will be sliding food to him from under the curtain.

Could it get worse?  Well, it is going to feel like 100 degrees today,

so the deck is probably not going to be usable for him.  It hasn't rained in weeks,

so I do need to get out and water in this heat.  I need a vacation from bad news.

Waa.  Waa.  Waa. Call the wambulance.

Someone Is Snitching The Chooks Cornbread

A few weeks ago I posted my recipe for chicken cornbread.
No white flour, no sugar, no salt, no dairy, and olive oil instead of butter or vegetable oil.
Then I cut it into little pieces and freeze it.
The chooks get a little frozen piece of it every day as a treat.
I had a helper feeding them yesterday.

 Here he is thinking about how undeserving they are.

 Making his move...

and then finishing the frozen "delight" at his leisure.

And if there were any doubt about who snitched the chooks cornbread...

New Hen Millie

(Notice the feathers on her feet!)

It is difficult to find adult hens for sale right now.  And doubly tough to find bantam hens.  And almost impossible to find any at a decent price.  So when I found an ad for a black bantie hen for $15 I jumped on it. And such a gorgeous little bird.

Our little "flock" of four, was a little taken aback when they first saw her.  We kept her in a crate for the first couple of days, and then released her into the chicken run while the others free ranged around the property.

Fortunately she is significantly larger than them.  I don't know if she is actually a bantam or if she is just a larger bantam breed than they are.  They just kind of ignore her.  I hope that they will eventually accept her into their little group, but she seems pretty happy just pecking around on her own.  And Millie lays gorgeous light brown eggs.

Egg Thief

 My first hint that there was trouble in the henhouse

was when I found part of a snakeskin in one of the nests.

But it seemed small, harmless enough.

Later the same afternoon I went to check for eggs.

Almost every day I get two, and there was none.

Hmmm.

I looked around and found the culprit.

My husband put the black snake (and his egg) in a bucket

and shipped him off to a conservation area.

Even if you don't care for snakes, you have to be impressed

by how wide he had to stretch his little mouth to take in an egg.

Chooks Have Moved Into The Herb Garden

Cornbread Recipe FOR CHICKENS

When I saw how crazy my chickens were about cornbread, I decided to make a recipe just for them.  No sugar / no salt / no white flour / olive oil instead of veg oil / water instead of milk (just to make it cheaper.)

CORNBREAD FOR CHICKENS

2 cups cornmeal
4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs (3 if it is bantam eggs like I use)
1 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  In medium bowl mix together cornmeal and baking powder.  Beat eggs with fork before adding them to the bowl.  Mix in water and olive oil.  Pour into 8x8 pan lined with parchment paper or foil.  Bake for 20-25 until done (set or lightly brown).  Cut into 2" squares.  Lift out with foil and FREEZE (I only give them one square a day, and it lasts longer as they eat it if it is still frozen.)

My two year old grandson was feeding this to them the other day.  He started to examine the cornbread and before we knew it he had taken a big bite of it!  He took several more nibbles as he fed the chickens, so apparently he thought it was people-worthy.

Barnwood Egg Holder Trays

I saw my first wooden egg holder tray in a magazine this week.

And I was smitten.

Of course I wanted one.  

And I could have one if I wanted to shell out $25 - $89.

Or I could make my own.  

Fortunately I already had the 1" drill bit hole-maker thingie.

And since I have smaller bantam eggs, that is plenty big.

And I had scrap barnwood, leftover from my husband's boot tray project.

(Check that out here.)

I added a regular standard sized egg in the back so that you

could see the size difference between a "regular" egg and a bantam sized egg.

Really, they do pretty well for their size.

I have to say -- drilling the holes was not that much fun.

It took a lot of pressure and my hand got tired.  

My dreams of making one for every family that owns chickens

 in the state of Missouri dissolved after about the fourth hole. 

But now I have two for myself, and a few to give away.

My Husband's Corona Virus Isolation Project #9 -- Cheeky Chooks Sign

I don't know if the idea was ignited by the leftover edge of the goat house door (see goat house rolling door here) or if it was learning that "chooks" was synonymous with chickens.  But after the idea took shape, my husband routered and painted the sign in about an hour.

Just another home improvement for our little band of chickens.

And believe me, we do have cheeky chooks.

(But at least they have finally started laying again.)

Nothing Like A Good Dust Bath

Total crack up.

The chickens flip around, sometimes totally upside down.

All while making purring noises.

And for a finale they shake themselves off like a dog.

They are not stressed out by the corona virus.

New Habits Picked Up During The Corona Virus

-- sleeping in until 10 am without guilt

-- rotating three outfits (if you can even call them outfits) so I never actually have to hang up clothing

-- thanking my grocery checker for coming to work

-- not bothering to wear a scrap of make-up

-- trying to use the food I buy (sounds so simple!)

-- waiting outside (standing in the parking lot) at the local Mexican restaurant every Taco Tuesday

-- asking random people if they are doing OK, and caring about their answer

-- wearing plastic gloves while grocery shopping

-- calling my way through all of my phone "contacts"

-- being grateful each time the water comes out of the tap

-- considering a trip to the local True Value hardware store a major social outing (still not worthy of putting on make-up)

-- waving at every car driving by my house (what if I am the only person they see today?!)

-- sitting in my lawn chair and watching the birds & chickens

-- cutting people slack (they may have gotten laid off, had someone they love fall ill....)

-- not watching or reading more than 15 minutes of news per day

-- whacking at my hair a bit every time I look in the mirror

-- streaming church services (in grubby clothes, with snacks, sometimes with eyes closed for     "meditation)

--last but not least.....blogging every day.  It will help me remember what I was up to during "the Great Quarantine of 2020"

Where Are The Eggs?

We were newbies to chicken just 17 short days ago.  During the first five days, we were blessed with five eggs.  And after that?  A big fat zero. What in the world is going on here?  We talk nicely to them.  We compliment them. We gave them a nice ladder up to the nesting boxes.  We change out all the bedding in the coop once a week (which is more than we do in our own home.) We feed them their crumbles, plus a few treats. They have their own coop, run, and yard. What more could modern chickens want?

So after doing some more reading about what chickens like, (yes, you read that right) I made some revisions to the chicken coop.  I admit I didn't understand initially about the whole roosting situation (in my ignorance I thought that the ladder rungs would be serviceable).  So the first night that they were in the coop, they looked the situation over (sighed with disgust) and decided the 2x4 above the door would have to due.  I didn't see any problemo with that until I started doing more in depth chicken reading.  So now the chickens have a tried and true branch-roost.  Whether they will use it or not is yet to be decided.

Their water was also a problem.  We had a large metal waterer to start with.  It leaked.  So we started using the small one that we bought when nursing the sick rooster back to life.  It was ok, but even when elevated got so much hay in it that I had to change the water a couple times a day.  Now it is hanging, and they seem to like that quite a lot.

Light.  Newsflash - chickens need 14 hours of daylight to lay eggs.  (And I am not talking about per week.)  Does partly cloudy even count?  In April we are probably lucky to get 12 hours of sunlight.  And the darn chickens put themselves to bed about 6:30 pm. We are going to try putting a light on a timer in their coop from 6-9 pm.  

One of the blogs I read suggested putting dried herbs in her hens nesting boxes.  Yep, I ran right outside and cut some oregano, sage and bee balm to start the drying process.  AND went to a local greenhouse and purchased some orange mint.  I may even plant a box of herbs next to their run so that they can nibble on the their fave herb leaves through the fence.  

Lastly (although I am sure it won't really be the last thing, just the last today) I bought some egg layer concoction to put in their water.  What spoiled chickens.   I was telling a friend recently -- so far each of those five eggs cost me about $50.  The bantam hens that layed the golden eggs.