Happy Harvest Blog
Turns out the bag of dirt on the deck seats two.
Turns out the bag of dirt on the deck seats two. But not three.
chicken drill bit
The Silkies have picked a spot to dig a hole, and are digging the hole with their bodies, removing the dirt in their feathers and shaking it out elsewhere. Slow and steady. They take turns, and now they have the hole twice as deep as this so that they are fully below ground level. Odd little birds. Sidewinder unwinding in the pool. I haven’t bought them a bag of the pro-mix outside of the greenhouse before because, in the greenhouse, they are doing the work of distributing it for me to amend the soil I will grow in, but hey.
Well, I left the bag of dirt on the porch.
What? Nothing to see here. I’m brown. I almost didn’t see her at first; she was holding still. Set down a basket for two seconds and it draws a crowd…and a fancy caterpillar.
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.
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 can't enjoy my bath when you're standing over me like that
This guy’s really into standing on the edge of the bath. Now in a new location! Must inspect!
back to our regularly scheduled chicken programming
The chickens are having a ball with their dust baths. There’s quite a bit of spillover. First dirt spillover out of the bag or box. Then spillover of chickens bathing in the surrounding area. Cleopatra is hogging one of the bins, but there’s plenty of bathing outside of the bin. Cleopatra can spend all day in there. She regularly chooses to stay in come lunchtime, putting off eating. Eh, I can eat later.
Best day ever
The girls have found their dirt bath. It’s bean awfully quiet in the GH. I came in and everywhere, filthy chickens. Chickens walking around with dirt all over their backs, that had clearly just got out of the pool, and of course, a half dozen chickens in the pool. The Silkies have already emptied out one of their baths (seats four). Even Chris is in there, the big rooster. There’s Jacket girl, pecking snow off my boots. She’s got her jacket perfectly in place, but she’s also full of dirt.
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!
Poultry powder room
It was a warm and humid day. Almost the whole family was piled in the dirt bath by the house, making chicken angels. The family is growing. Except for Speckles, who's having a party of one in a private dust bowl out by the pigs. Yeah, and you're interrupting it right now. Got snacks?! Oops, I roused them. The pitter patter of chicken feet behind me on the path is quite a stampede these days. I didn't even have a bucket.
Baby bird bath
One of Foxy's chicks (all independent now) was givin' 'er in the big dust vat, all by itself. Rub a dub dub. In the greenhouse - paaaartayyy! The chicks are all staying dry and having a fantastic time with the foliage and variety, thanks for asking. I got wings! Settling down with Feisty for the evening. Here come the guineas! Look how they're growing up.
dirt bath and other shenanigans
Chocolate's out of the chickery now too. This is great. All the small chicks with moms are at large, meaning I don't have to constantly monitor do they have shade, do they have water? Their moms take care of that now (lots of water options). Soon enough there will be another round of chicks hatching. She's diving right into the dirt bath. There's two popular spots at the moment, an old pig wallow, and this one under the corner of the hen rain tent, which is a bit of a sauna in the sunshine.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
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