Happy Harvest Blog
Eggery
Most times when a hen goes broody she sits on the eggs and doesn't get up. I can put them in a cramped box with a water cup and snack bowl and they don´t budge until the eggs crack.This hen is different. I was sure she was broody, but I kept seeing her outside every mid-morning for an hour or so. I gave her some eggs, and thought that would change, but six days later, she was faithful to her eggs...as long as she had a breakfast break. Different.
When they were small...
I noticed she seemed to be digging with unusually single-minded determination in one corner.I looked in on them once and she had dug a hole. I thought, any minute, a chick is going to be able to slip out of there. Before I turned away, one did.
Oreos and the Cobra mom
The guinea hen is definitely setting.No idea how many eggs she´s got. Easily 20. Perhaps a chicken egg got in there too. In fact, she could be due any day. I don´t know about guinea terms, but she´s got to be close.And since there´s only three birds walking about yet, I suspect those three are the boys, and the other hen has found her own nest site somewhere in the woods. May she walk out healthy one day with a trail of chicks.
Oreo update
Mom and the Oreos are rather wild these days. Hard to catch on camera. I get distance sightings.So far so good.They´re often off on their own, in the pasture, roaming rather farther than the other hens tend to.Once I found the Oreos inside the pig zone, Mom running up and down on the outside of the electric fence.
Unexpected passenger
I stopped by a friend's, for something entirely unrelated to raccoons, and he mentions "You want a raccoon?" I hadn't noticed the live trap sitting there with a miserable raccoon balled up in it.
The sprinting chicken
Every morning when we open the layer coop, one hen is waiting in the blocks. There´s some jostling for pole position. If she´s on form, she´ll be the first down the ramp.Then the human coop-opener heads for the Silkie coop at the other end of the greenhouse. Inevitably, this hen passes us, legging it in the same direction at a flat out run. Racetrack chicken.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
