Happy Harvest Blog
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.
Dispatches from Silkieland
It's a bit like 101 Dalmatians around here now. Chicks everywhere. In the greenhouse, in the chickeries - I've lost track of how many sets there were this summer. Some hens went broody twice. There are a lot of chicks scampering around.
Chickery II
Well, the chickery is definitely occupied, by the mom of seven, but the chicks of the mom-of-three are coming up, and they must go outside.I thought Well, I have this big box, I can turn the flaps out and set it on the grass...
I finally cracked the case
I finally cracked the seven eggs that did not hatch under the white hen when she was sitting on so many.I think I was afraid of them.Every single one had a partially developed chick in it. Some more developed than others.
It's a muddy hair day.
I don't know what she does to get this punk hair style every time it rains-rub her face in some mud?
Box upgrade for the Brown Brood
It amazes me that they are so tiny, a third or less the size of a "normal" chick, and yet, there are any number of songbirds that are no larger as adults. A hummingbird egg must be the size of my pinkie fingernail.
One chick down.
The white chick expired.In a bizarre and macabre turn, her body was stuck to her mother’s belly, and the white hen was dragging her tiny carcass around, legs stuck out straight. So strange. What happened?
Chicken Mom / The In’s and Out’s.
I crawl in and start grabbing the chicks. Uhoh! At the sounds of distress, mom comes rocketing down the ramp, on a rampage! Flying attack beak! She’s battling me so fiercely, I have to protect the chicks I’m trying to grab with one hand from stabbing beak with the other hand. I should mention that being attacked by a two-pound hen, even giving all she’s got, is not all that threatening.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
