Happy Harvest Blog
Mini release
She's got four! Two and two. They're still ridiculously small, but in spite of being the size of golf balls, they are developmentally old enough to be bold adventurers. Time to prop open the chickeries so they could creep out and join the chicken greenhouse society. Here they come! Mom immediately dove into a sprawly dirt bath. Nothing celebrates freedom like throwing dirt over your head. Brown Bonnet was a bit more furtive.
The last chicks?
The last broody hen is hatching her eggs (well, there's one more broody in the coop, but she doesn't have any eggs and I'm not letting her have any. It's too late for that). They're having a hard time too. Shortly after Brown Bonnet hatched, I came in the morning to find the disgustingly distinctive smell of rotten egg. This one had an exploded egg under her (so gross, but it happens - instead of growing a chick, it rots, and they're keeping the eggs nice and hot...so boom!)
Every morning I have an exploding box of chickens
Every morning I have an exploding box of chickens. Most have them have pushed out of the cardboard boxes they so tranquility spent the night in, and are jumping, and pooping, and scrapping all over the top of the boxes, frantic to get out. We're all cooped up! The broody kennels too (now night occupancy for the greenhouse chickens).They all come busting out, scratching and fluttering, and then vanish, absorbed into the jungle. They love a good hay bale. Brown Bonnet has three little chicks, including the chick that Apples hatched. This was a terrible hatch for her.
Frost casualties
The frost was surprisingly fierce. The tomatoes took a bigger hit than I thought. The watermelon was obliterated. Same with the basil. The greenhouse is full of little birds scampering around. She'll be coming through the peanuts when she comes. They're all sneaky and hidey in the pepper jungle.
New hen boxes
The hens with chicks got an apartment reno. It was time to retire those battered old boxes. So I set up a new condo system, each with a little bed of hay. But will they use them? All the other chickens came and inspected of course. Well, I left the most popular box, double occupancy in a pinch. Oh! A promising amount of attention.Look, Mom, we found a new place!They approved. 2/3 were occupied, and it was much nicer to transport these boxes with closed lids
Overcrowding
I went out at bedtime to close everyone up, which means picking up the cardboard boxes that the wild chicks and the moms they're still attached to have retired into, and carrying them into the safe box in the greenhouse for the night. There's a lineup of three boxes. One was empty. Oh, great. Foxy and her set have found someplace to sleep outside. I put the other two boxes away, did a quick low crawl to look around the base of the brush piles where they like to rest (wow, they've got a proper labyrinth in there),
An experiment in chick freedom
Ursa Minor was protesting the confines of the chickery, so I tried something. I let all the moms and chicks loose. This is not rain day, these are the tiny chicks in their first few days of life, that are typically in chickeries in the greenhouse (warm and dry), before they go out to chickeries on grass for a few days, before they run wild with their moms (a staged transition to free-range). So I propped up the chickeries so they could leave, but still, get back in their familiar box.
Chick party in the greenhouse
Rain day! It did not start well. The forecast, usually accurate to the hour, was predicting rain starting at 9pm tonight. At 6am, pat. pat pat. patpatpatpatpat! I leapt up. I needed to give the pigs access to their house. Yesterday I'd moved their house (thank god!), but I hadn't cut out the path to reroute the electric fence around it. Really crappy work that I planned to do today before the rain (plenty of time!), as I was so tired and sore yesterday.
new chicks
Clever's chicks made it! (sort of). I didn't expect them to because the eggs were poopy, and that can choke off the exchange of air and humidity to the developing chick. She rolled one egg away from her a week ago, and it was rotten. I should have known she knew her other two were alive. However, one died after hatching. This is quite rare, for a chick to die after hatching under a mom, and after being alive long enough to dry out and fluff up.
those feather askew blues
One of Foxy's (the oldest of the small chicks) chicks has a feather issue today. This sometimes happens, more often to the Silkies though. Can you spot it?What?It has little outrigger feathers growing sticking straight out from its shoulders. It's so funny. It's like only two feathers are committed to flying. They'll be gone in a couple days. Guineas doing their guinea thing. They're growing so fast. Galahad has a feather stuck on his face. A keet is about to notice and pluck it off for him. It's the most beautiful time of year.
Chick freedom day
Feisty and her chicks liberated themselves today. They usually let me know when they're ready for the big world by starting to leak out. Thing is, Foxy's chicks are days older, and they weren't the ones to start getting out. Once Feisty was out and about though, Foxy got excited. One has such beautiful wings. Who, me? I helped them out by lifting up the side of the chickery, and they started leaking out. One.Two.Three and four.No, I'm back in. All out.
Puff Mommy is fine
Yikes! Puffycheeks gave me one hell of a scare. Even though I had seen her walking around thirty seconds earlier, she looked stone dead on the path. I saw her eye, though, so the cold chill surging over me passed, and I got the camera to capture the dead bird pose. Then she hopped up. It's hot, it's just really hot! She is molting a bit, getting patchy and sparse around her neck. Beards are definitely hot in the summer. Galahad and the keets visiting the chicks. And Philippe visiting the chicks.
Oiseaux Tableaux
The Famous Five. These didn't grow up together (different Silkie moms), but they have found each other. They clearly share genes. These are the smallest of the free chicks (they grow up so fast!), and they're very adventurous. There once was a time when chickens perching in low branches was a novelty. Now it's de rigeur. The tweens. At least one of these culprits is starting to practice his crowing. Little Pepper is still in this mix despite getting quickly outgrown (Silkie/Barred cross) by the big Chanticleers.
All they needed was a keet ladder
Last night when Galahad and the keets went to bed in the greenhouse, there was a lot of noise, and G was running laps around the greenhouse-like he wanted out. He settled down, but I felt he was distressed, and maybe frustrated with sleeping on the ground. Tonight after bedtime, I thought the greenhouse was remarkably quiet. I peeked...and just about died! In case it's unclear what you're seeing, that is one keet perched on Galahad's back, yes, and all the keets lined up on the (swinging) perching rail, at 6' in the greenhouse.
Hens and their chicks
Daisy's chicks have the greatest outfits right now. Worthy of Björk. Silver is still special cottons chicks are little screamers. Always yelling, no apparent reason. They're moved up to the big Silkie house with the grownup hens. Making the rounds of the dish, literally. Feisty's chicks are the newest. Foxy's four: And Galahad's chicks! Monopolizing a feed dish.
Cutest keets
I put a chair in the greenhouse for visiting the chicks, and the keets took advantage. It must have been perching hour because they were all having a little bit of vantage time, Galahad, etc perched on the edge of a chickery, one with broody hens in it. SO CUTE! There's quite a crowd for him to look after now. He's busy. What a star. And of course at night I found him in the peppers, all fanned out over the little crowd, some heads poking out. So he is sitting on them
The look you get when you walk in on someone in the bathroom
I didn't know she was in the bath. I thought this pine tree was unoccupied and I walked right up to fill a water bowl. I was definitely interrupting. I think I got a bigger start. She had the pine tree spa all to herself and was enjoying her privacy with wild abandon. She got over it though. *Foxy has four! Her last egg hatched a couple of hours after I was taking pictures of the three new chicks,
A lot of pictures, for a day I didn't take any pictures
All the things I didn't take pictures of today: Moving the piggies into some lush new jungle land. I paid for it in bug bites, but they're piggy pleased. Chris and Cream Puff canoodling. They really are always together. Two new chicks, little Silkie chicks. Two new broodies, and wooo Nelly, one of them is vicious! This one was broody without eggs. I wasn't sure she was broody because she was sitting, but not on eggs, and she didn't know what to do with herself because she didn't have eggs,
Of mice and marauders.
Uhoh. The tobacco is taking off. It seems to like it hot in the greenhouse! It was just this tiny a couple of weeks ago. Yay! The ground cherries grew up while I had my back turned. They were also tiny and dismally flea beetle bitten, and I left them a ton of space for a back-of-seed-pack-described potential I was skeptical they'd fulfill, but they just might. They're surrounded by volunteer tomatoes from when the greenhouse lived here. The potato beetles have found me. I was told that was inevitable.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
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