Happy Harvest Blog
Two moms
We have our first Silkie chick. Cute little thing, brown spider markings, so it will turn out brown. The neat thing is that two hens are parenting it. I've never had this happen before. The hens sat on eggs next to each other in one of the apartments in the coop, always eager to swipe eggs from the other, but also always jammed in side by side.
The latest chicks
I had a whole passel of Silkies go broody this summer. Some of them give up, two more go broody. The usual, in other words. I’m not letting them reproduce this year- I have so many Silkies. I did give them five of Cheeks’ eggs between them though. Drama central! If any of them stood up to adjust themselves, another one would rob an egg. Every morning most of them would go out for breakfast, and then there would be lamentations when they came back and their eggs had been swiped by another hen.
We have different cultural ideas about how we should look after a bath.
We had rain! (Blessed rain!) Dust baths are closed, mud baths now available. I was pretty surprised to find this little enthusiast digging in. Really digging in. Naturally, onlookers.Because when you’ve planned to go to the spa, you go to the spa.What? Some people pay good money for this. The Colonel included for dirtiness comparison. Yes, the Colonel is still the big boss, my v first rooster from my v first collection of chickens.
Phi kappa peck
The boys came trundling out of their new house in the morning to start a long day marching up and down along the fence separating them from the girls like they were picketing Jericho. The girls are inside the orange fence, the roosters are inside the white fence. All-day, back and forth. In one day they tamped down a groove in the dirt along that fence. They took breaks for shade, and food, but barely. On the girls' side, it was all How's the serenity?
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:
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.
Boxed In day
You're doing it wrong. This little rooster is cerebrally challenged. In other words, he’s kinda dumb. The last surviving rooster of the refugees from the horrible, terrible chicken place (all the hens recovered and relearned how to chicken, although they are all super small), he gets to stay in with the hens because of his beautiful colouring and mild, meek attitude. His brains, on the other hand, leave something to be desired.
Ursa's chicks
Ursa and her four fluffballs are out in the world, bouncing around. Now she’s out of the bath and willing to be a tea cozy again. It seems like a moderate challenge to find their way under her.
We're goin' to China, kids
Ursa’s first day in the chickery: she celebrated her first day out of the broody box as the hens always do, with a vigorous dirt bath. I placed her in the former location of the peat bag (the overflow spot), for premium dirt bathing. The kids start to come around, Hey, I’m kinda cold, can I get under you? Stand back, kids, mama’s getting her bath on! She’s like a round fur tornado, spraying everything down with dirt. Evidently, it feels incredible.
Chickyback ride!
There are now an astonishing TEN unseasonal chicks. Ursa has four, and the other hen has six. Only the two of them stuck out broodiness to the end; all the others gave up (thankfully!) Ursa has graduated to spending days in a chickery, so the other mama is in the bigger corner coop suite, for a few days, as her chicks are more freshly hatched. A couple are brand new out of the egg. I think this is Chocolate, but I’ll have to check photos to be sure:)
unseasonal chicks
Who has chicks in winter? Ursa Minor does. Ursa’s got four little chicks (living). Two were already dead. The future is not bright for chicks hatched at the beginning of winter. But I’ll do my best to help her. One piece of cardboard and she’s got a student apartment now. That’ll be enough space for a few days, as they’ll spend most of their time under her. I moved her back from the kitchen so the chicks would tumble out so I could get some pictures.
New things! New things! - Greenhouse Rearrangement
I got some more work done in the greenhouse. Specifically, I untied all the strings crossing the top third, that suspend tomatoes in the summer. You can just see the strings in this pic. So I’m taking them down and crochet looping them up to decommission them until next year. The guineas will be able to fly around in the upper third of the GH again. This festooning makes sense to me. Then the irrigation came out, and the pool went in, and coops were shifted – oh my!
Suet woodpecker
The woodpecker was so absorbed in the new dish at the buffet that he let me get quite close to him/her. Then, GAH! I didn't see you there. The suet looks like I'm about to camp-toast some bread. The new floor chips caused consternation this morning. I dropped the Silkie ramp and all the hens came pouring out as always, then erkk! Put the brakes on partway down the ramp, staring down at the chips I'd liberally sprinkled around before opening them.
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.
Apples is an unfit mother
It's very disappointing. I wanted her to pass on all her gentle characteristics. But it seems she's not interested in passing anything on. This morning she was up, and there was a tiny chick! White with some brown, I think a Silkie. Since she was up, I moved them all to a chickery, but she was noticeably inattentive to her chick, not warming it (and it was a cold morning). I repeatedly placed her on top of her chick and the remaining eggs in a box, and she'd just squawk.
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.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
