Happy Harvest Blog
Frat house
Of course, I should have taken a pic or two while building it, and didn’t. I just got it in place in time for the night and the rain I wasn’t expecting until tomorrow. Coop building is becoming a standardized activity. I’ve got my pattern down. I have not yet landed on a design for making a freakin’ heavy box of chickens readily portable, though. The Silkie box with the axle works, but it’s still heavy. Not something you look forward to.
The loaners
Two hens are on loan to another family who needs some chicks. They are sitting on eggs and will return when their chicks are grown enough to not need their moms like Cream Puff did last year (with a boyfriend in tow). Broody hen rental service. The hens, one Silkie, and one standard got boxed and transported at night, installed in their brooding accommodations, and after a day to adjust, they have settled in extremely well. I visited.
Rain risk vs worm reward
The pig house (pig-less this year) is repurposed as a chicken rain shelter, and they LOVE it. When it's pelting down, almost the whole flock crowds in there, and the guineas come running in too. The hens rock the rain pretty hard, but when it gets too heavy they jog for shelter. Rain makes the worms come up, but they don't like to get too wet either. It's a chicken risk/reward analysis. Adding the laundry rack was one of my finer brain waves.
A nice nest
One doesn't think of chickens as being nest builders per se, but they definitely do nest construction. Guineas, ground nesters like chickens, craft quite beautifully careful nests, if extremely minimal ones, out of a few blades of grass. It's more of a saucer than a bowl - a slight bank to keep the eggs from rolling out, I suppose. When I set the Silkies on eggs, I think I form a perfect nest in advance, but no.
The first chick of the year
Let's try this again. I had a hen go broody. Try as we might to break her up, she was determined. Kick her out of whatever corner she was trying to warm eggs in and she'd march around in full turkey mode, every feather flared and growling until she could sneak back in another coop. Then Cheeks started making eggs again, and I could give this hen something to do. What does she do? Halfway through the process, she jumps up off the eggs, bursting out of the coop one morning and not returning.
Knock knock?
Cheeks progressed to spending all day outside. She started eating from the trough with the other hens, then started laying her eggs in the nest box of the coop! I hardly saw her from the morning post-yelling eviction until the evening. She would still come to the door of the house at bedtime, or if it rained heavily. Hello. I still live here. And I'd put her back in her banana box for the night. I can't reach the handle. Ah!
How is Cheeks?
Cheeks is great! Her brief supervised outings and chaperoned dates quickly turned into twice a day solo forays that got longer and longer. At first she would come in wiped out, eat (or skip eating), drop into her banana box and sleep for hours. You could see her building strength though, and she could stay out longer and longer before wanting to come in. She was more of a solo chicken at first, as the other chickens still lived in the greenhouse and gravitated towards their food dishes over there, while she stayed very near the house.
Chicken play date
Cheeks has been having chaperoned outings. I carry her out with me and set her down near where I'm working, in the field or the garden, and she moseys around, scratching and eating. She loves it. What I expected, was that after a couple of hours, she'd be tired, and willing and ready to be scooped up and carried home for a drink. I've handled her daily for months. She's as tame as a chicken could possibly be.No. Oh, no no no. No! Not yet!
I WENT TO THE LIBRARY AND CAME HOME WITH A CHICKEN
I went to the library bus and while I was in the parking lot, the manager of the liquor store popped outside and waved me down, asking me to come to the store before I left. What in the world, I wondered, could I be required in the liquor store for? Who knows, though, really. It's a small town. Well. It turned out to be about a chicken. There was a hen that had appeared some days ago and was living in the snowbank and brambles behind the liquor store.
Out on the range.
The birds are all out free-ranging again. They're so excited!! Mostly out. They are free to come and go, for the last week or two since the snow has been going. They are so happy! All the young ones (1-2 yrs) and the guineas spend all day out, pouring out of the greenhouse when I open the doors, popping back in when they get cold or thirsty, then back out for another shift of foraging. Inside, the older chickens are less adventurous and content to have the dust baths to themselves.
miracle on banana box st.
Cheeks has been doing very well. She still lives in the house, as she has for months, continuing to be low maintenance (except for a predilection for beak-sweeping her food); and self regulating, staying in her banana box or on her Rubbermaid (her proscribed territory) and moving between the two on her own. She has been doing better than ever, although the swelling on the top of her foot continues to grow. It's a bubble that looks about to drain every day.
Escape escapades
Little Nosey, being herself. I'm teasing her with a litter grabber. She's like Why. Why are you pointing a robot arm at me? The guineas had a big adventure, escaping in the morning. Good day for it. They came yelling down the trail, went grazing in the woods, but around lunchtime they were wanting back in. It's cold. We would like to be back with the food. They found this challenging. I propped the fence open, away from the corner of the greenhouse.
Jacket chicken visit
It was a COLD morning, and husband noticed this little hen shivering up on a perch, so he grabbed her (Get your hands off me! Put me down, you big brute!) and stuck her in his coat (Oh. OH. Ok. This is good.)Then he took her for a walk. When they went outside in the cold cold air she sucked her head all the way inside the jacket like a turtle.
Next I would like to try poached
Cheeks' condition is about the same. She seems quite well, other than her foot, which she only sometimes uses. HW is starting to accuse her of just milking it. Cheeks gets a fried egg.
I'm back
I survived my mini-collapse, and have been digging my routines back out for the past few days. I hope it was worth it. I’m all sugar free now (again), so I hope that transition was worth a week’s lost productivity. All is well. Cheeks persist, and is gunning for permanent house chicken status, like a pet parrot; the ten untimely chicks are all well and growing their feathers; all the birds are fine but getting cranky about the GH confinement, and my hives are all still alive.
New dimension
There was a death in the family yesterday. One of the red layer hens died in the coop. They do that. They go in the coop (not the nest box), hunch up, pull in their feet and their heads, close their eyes, and go to "sleep"- really a pre-death trance. Their combs go pale, and they depart slowly. The whole transition seems very peaceful, and like a death happens by degrees. You can look at them in the last hours, and they aren't dead yet, but they aren't all there either.
Not a bath day
There's Nosey, pecking at my pants. She's growing!It was a nice sunny day, so I figured it would be a big bath day, with the pool overflowing with Pigpen chickens, but I went out with my camera and only three Silkies were in that mood.This guy found he had the pool all to himself, and seemed kind of pleased about it, but was only thinking about having a bath:
Operation Cheeks
Cheeks is well. She needed her afflicted foot addressed, and redressed.HW likes to hold her up sitting on her tail, and that it makes her look like a little person. She is surprisingly very ok with this. Whatever you do, don't put these pictures on the internet! From this upright position, she is very involved in the whole operation. Quiet and still, but watching it all up close. I had to flush her wound and try to squeeze out any pus.
chicken cuddling
While I’ve been gone over the holidays, my husband has been grabbing chickens. He spends quite a bit of time holding Cheeks the house chicken, who seems determined to remain designated house chicken indefinitely, I’m no trouble. No trouble at all! but also grabbing “wild chickens” in the greenhouse, to cuddle them against their will.
I'm back!
I was sneaky; I was posting chicken pictures while I was away. But I’m back home and everyone is fine, including the 10 little unseasonal chicks. They’re bigger than they were. Also, I’ve started producing new content experimentally at steempeak. So far the platform is so easy to use that it’s like finally getting a drink when you’re thirsty. I’m so ready to say goodbye to WordPress. When I make the switch, the web link happyharvest.ca will just point over to the new site, so that little will be affected.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
