Happy Harvest Blog
Nosey wishes everyone a Merry Christmas today
And wonders if perhaps it would be cozier with a fire... Actually she sees her reflection. Nosey took to letting herself into the house this fall whenever the door was left open. She wouldn't stay very long, just do a lap, walking casually all around, checking for crumbs, and then pop back out the door and leave. I just had to know what was going on.
Nosey is auditioning for role of house chicken.
Nosey the Nosy thinks that I have a chicken-shaped void in my life, and she’s the chicken to fill it. I see that you don’t have a house chicken at the moment. I’d like to leave my resumé. It’s true, it’s been a long time since Cheeks moved out. Nosey has an unusual degree of interest in the house. With the door always open and the screen on, she spends a lot of time standing on the threshold looking in. And riffling the screen with her beak.
Knock knock?
Cheeks progressed to spending all day outside. She started eating from the trough with the other hens, then started laying her eggs in the nest box of the coop! I hardly saw her from the morning post-yelling eviction until the evening. She would still come to the door of the house at bedtime, or if it rained heavily. Hello. I still live here. And I'd put her back in her banana box for the night. I can't reach the handle. Ah!
How is Cheeks?
Cheeks is great! Her brief supervised outings and chaperoned dates quickly turned into twice a day solo forays that got longer and longer. At first she would come in wiped out, eat (or skip eating), drop into her banana box and sleep for hours. You could see her building strength though, and she could stay out longer and longer before wanting to come in. She was more of a solo chicken at first, as the other chickens still lived in the greenhouse and gravitated towards their food dishes over there, while she stayed very near the house.
Chicken play date
Cheeks has been having chaperoned outings. I carry her out with me and set her down near where I'm working, in the field or the garden, and she moseys around, scratching and eating. She loves it. What I expected, was that after a couple of hours, she'd be tired, and willing and ready to be scooped up and carried home for a drink. I've handled her daily for months. She's as tame as a chicken could possibly be.No. Oh, no no no. No! Not yet!
miracle on banana box st.
Cheeks has been doing very well. She still lives in the house, as she has for months, continuing to be low maintenance (except for a predilection for beak-sweeping her food); and self regulating, staying in her banana box or on her Rubbermaid (her proscribed territory) and moving between the two on her own. She has been doing better than ever, although the swelling on the top of her foot continues to grow. It's a bubble that looks about to drain every day.
Cheeks the stork
Cheeks is doing much better than when this photo was taken a few days ago, and that aloe in the background is doing much worse. She’s done quite a bit of standing on both feet today, which is an improvement. She really likes to roost on the edge of the box when she’s done eating. She spends a lot of the day there, watching us come and go. She doesn’t miss anything, and I can tell when she wants to go in her banana box for a nap.
I feel like some aloe today
Says Cheeks. She took a whole arm off of this plant (right), and a couple of beak shaped bites out of another arm. Then she took the tip off another plant. She really ate quite a lot of it, despite the bits she left behind. Apparently, today she just wanted some aloe. It’s good for her. No one else is eating it (I’ve tried, I find it bitter). This is the box she stands on, to eat, and just to hang out for a lot of the day.
Chill and chilly
Melting ice for water. It’s so pretty. It looks like thick glass. It’s a goldfinch convention. They are usually here with the grosbeaks, but the grosbeaks are late today and the goldfinches have the place to themselves, for a bit. Cheeks is having a good day. It’s warm in a sunbeam on a lap and her head is high. She’s wearing a festive holiday scarf. She can see herself (and me) in the mirror of my computer screen, which is hilarious. Do the think the scarf is “me”?
cheeks and the baked goods
All very peaceful, until a croissant comes out. First, it was pie crust, similarly discovered by accident – I was eating it within her reach, and she stabbed out her beak- I’ll have some of that! Multigrain croissant has proven to be such a huge and lasting hit, that I’m like Ok, eat some more of your grains, and then you can have croissant. She’s like I’ll wait. I can carry a box of them through the room, and her little head periscopes out of her banana box, following me.
Shenanigans
Cheeks put herself back in her box after breakfast yesterday. I'm done. Either I spent too much time with the other chickens, or she thought if she was settled back in her box when I got back, she might avoid the pill procedure. Today she just settled on her box. In the greenhouse, all it takes to create a stir is a half dozen hay bale chunks set around. They disrupt the chicken run flow, make something to pick at, and they must all be inspected.
Lap chicken
It's nice to have a house chicken to hold. It's like a cat. I love cats and their hot water bottle properties, and I can't have one, but a chicken will have to do. You think they're all sharp beak and talons, but chickens are pretty nice to hold. They're soft, plush, and very warm. They burn hot, like a cat. Cheeks can sit on me for a solid hour, and she doesn't even peck my keyboard. She hasn't pooped on me either. Apples was not so polite.
Apples and corn
I had the first cob of my corn tonight - ever! I haven't been able to grow it before, but next to the greenhouse, it worked. Bit of corn earworm, yuck, but good. Sometimes the bees spend the night stuck on the sunflower heads. They hang down, sheltering like an umbrella. Apples the house chicken is broody! I keep almost saying "pregnant". Not pregnant. Sitting on eggs like a perfectly normal hen (how far she's come)! Just one of her own.
Garden chicken
I have accidentally domesticated a chicken. Well, she's a very unusually wired, different chicken, to start with, and since I am a softie, she is now a pet chicken, and I carry her around between work sites. Apples my companion chicken and I have been making garden rounds. I'm hammering all the remaining warm weather seeds in now that I really believe the frost is over (June 10!). My hands are sore and I got the backs of my hands painfully sunburned. That's a new one. In the greenhouse, five rows of six are in.
It's take your pet chicken to the garden day
First I carried my companion chicken (Apples) to the first garden for a while, but not too long, on account of the bugs. She strode right off across the garden and found a shady spot to scratch in the path. I was expecting slightly more reaction since I've never carried her so far from home, but she's just relaxed about everything. Then I carried her back, we did some potting up, then finished the day at the second garden, where I was transplanting lettuces. It was perfect, giving her a little socialization, without stress.
Apples in the greenhouse
I took Apples on a field day. I needed to spend some time broad forking the greenhouse, and thought she could do with some enrichment. Even the world's meekest chicken needs a little time out of the box. I carried her out and set her down in the middle of the greenhouse, and turned around to shut the big doors because it was windy. I look back - no chicken! I go to the other end to shut those doors, all the while looking for her. I can't see her anywhere. I get back inside and start looking behind the things still piled around.
Well, I'm back
Back on track. I survived my alarming and exhausting 5 days of wretchedness. It started out a big rain day. Only Cleopatra is out there wading for worms. The barred rocks say Nah, too wet for us. The first broody hen of the year has her own box, finally. She's been determinedly trying to warm eggs in the prime nest box of the big coop for a week, but I haven't been able to manage to get her own box. That means that the big hens have been laying eggs right on top of her some of the time.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
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