And Then There Was a Cool Front

My absolute most favorite season of the year is fall.  It's refreshing, dry and cool.  And after a summer of sweating even in a swimsuit, we've all been ready for a change to hit the air. (Because I totally cannot rock a swimsuit while buying groceries. Or in my own backyard, for that matter.)

Yesterday, a tiny cool front came along and threw us all into a tizzy.  Suddenly, everyone was scrambling to be outside for every activity.

Let me tell you something, fall changes people.  And animals, too.  Noodle and Hopers suddenly acted like alien children who liked each other.  And wanted to be with each other!

Weird.



They did all school work outside.

Sherlock was supremely happy with this idea because it meant he would be spoiled to death every waking moment.

 



And carried around as if he'd permanently lost the ability to walk. Or had suddenly turned into a very hairy infant.



Hopers took this photo.  She likes to steal my camera.  More and more, the photos are not of her thumb. *Sniff* My baby's growing up!

Don't be fooled by her momentary solemn expression. Poppy suddenly becomes "crazy dog" when cool weather appears. She runs around the yard at full-on torpedo speed, clearly overjoyed for some good weather.

The chickens are also really glad for the temperature drop.  They told me so, of course.



...and I thought my butt was fluffy!

I did manage to entice the children inside once in a while for important things like showers and using the bathroom.  Hopers decided to finish her sewing project she's been working on lately. Pajama shorts!  And yes, she wore them for the rest of the day.  And yes, the color combo with that shirt kind of hurts my eyes, also.

And then there's Noodle.

...who is so, so........... well, almost a teenager!  Plus, I think I need a new time machine because mine doesn't seem to be working.

My alien-invaded children set up a tent to sleep under the stars tonight.

You'll notice Seth is conspicuously absent from these photos.  That's because he's in the woods hunting things.  Yes, fall makes otherwise normal, non-rednecked men become camo-wearin', bow-totin' crazy people.


I, of course, am not crazy. At all.

Whatsoever.

 

Happy fall!

Keeping Kittens Alive, and Other Things to Do Today

About a month ago, a new addition occurred in the chicken coop.

No, it's not more chickens.

This new addition came when my dearest husband decided to bring home a darling little pop-up camper, given to him by a generous friend.  The cost of the camper?

A kitten.

(Cue dramatic music)

What happens when your husband wants to get rid of the rats in his barn and then visits friends with a cat that had kittens.

Let's pause for a moment and surface to reality here people.

1. Two out of four people in my household are allergic to cats.
2. My husband has always declared he hates cats.
3. Our precious, beloved doggy, Poppy, loves cats..........for dinner.

Who, me? I'd never hurt a fly!

And so, based on these three facts alone, normal, sane people would just accept life as it is.  Harmonious and cat-less.  Who needs to complicate things, right?  I can think of a fistful of reasons as to why I'm not a complicated person, but the fact that I now have a cat, a dog, 31 chickens, 2 snakes and 2 kids under my care doesn't plead the case very well.  (We ate the pigs and sold the goats!) Not to mention, I would've never guessed my husband would be the one to instigate this latest bout of insanity.  

Meet Sherlock.

Ha! I laugh in the face of danger!

Sherlock currently lives in the chicken coop.  His favorite activities include hiding from the chickens and then springing out suddenly upon a hen, only to get pecked in the face.  He's learning quickly who's the boss.

Trapped between Mary Poppins and Florence Nightingale!

The goal is to have Sherlock one day be an Ultra Rat Killing Machine in the barn (otherwise known as a barn cat) while having a healthy respect for our feathered, egg-producing friends out there.  At first, he only stayed in the chick brooder, a screened cage in the coop that allowed him and the chickens to get used to each other visually. We are slowly allowing him more freedom.  At night, he has free roam of the coop, and I have even found him snuggled up, sleeping, with a broody hen in a nest box.

Sherlock hiding.  Little does he know, Shirley the Rhode Island Red is stalking HIM!

The true test of whether or not we can keep a cat comes down to Poppy. Her sweet, humanity-loving demeanor turns into wide-eyed insanity whenever she encounters any animal trespassing on her property.  Heck, it doesn't even have to be her property.  (Remind me sometime to tell you the story of why we don't bring her to the beach anymore......seagulls!!)

Squirrel?!?

So now we are smack dab in the middle of trying to train an old dog new tricks.  Like, don't eat the kitten, Poppy, or you'll cause a bunch of little girls to cry for weeks.  I have to give her some credit.  She's actually doing really well so far.  No kitten murder to report.  

We have introductory sessions between them.  "Poppy, this is Sherlock.  Sherlock, this is Poppy.  We like you both.  Please be nice to each other."  I light candles and play soft music while serving them tea in the parlor.  They talk about the weather and avoid eye contact.

Actually, we've been doing a very slow, daily move toward togetherness.  We hold the kitten and have the dog sit or lay down.  We pet them both and tell Poppy calmly and sweetly about 8 million times that she is a good girl.  This seems to be working.  They sniff each other. They roll their eyes.  No one gets too excited.  Today, I let Poppy watch as Sherlock walked around in the barn.  She chose to stay where she was for the vigorous belly scratch she was receiving.

Sherlock was glad.

I was glad.

Then I was sneezing.

Sigh...Can't wait to do it again tomorrow!

Feather Ornaments

I have a yearly tradition of making my daughters an ornament for our Christmas tree.  Usually, it corresponds with some new craft I learned that year or something that was new for the kids.  One year I knitted little cardinal birds with their initials on them.  This year I was inspired by our Year of Chickens.  Having begun the chicken raising adventure at the beginning of this year, I thought it might be appropriate to design an ornament to commemorate that.  After all, my children are the ones who now snobbishly refuse to eat store eggs because in their words "they taste like chemicals!" :-)

Once I got on the ornament making train, I couldn't stop myself.  I made more than just one for Noodle and Hopers.  I made one for an ornament exchange party.  I made one for a friend.  One for my mom.  Here are a few of them that I grabbed photos of:

I used only things I had already, like buttons, fabric scraps, beads and lots of hot glue.  In the aftermath, I only ended up keeping the two I made for the girls, but I want more, more, more on my tree!  Plus, they were fun to make.  If you're not careful, I might end up making one for you too!

Hanging With My Peeps

When I last posted about the chicken situation, we had about 18 (or something like that) of them.  I thought that was a lot...  especially considering that we originally thought we would have only 3 or 4 when we first discussed the idea of keeping chickens.

Well, I'm gonna break the news gently.

They've multiplied!

Not in the traditional birds and bees sense, of course.  More in the sense that we're crazy and we keep collecting them from local places, friends, and family.

Seriously, I'm done now.  I think 26 is a good round number, right?


So, here they all are, named and photographed, and grouped with their respective buddies, for your viewing pleasure...

The Three Musketeers

These are the ones we hatched from eggs.  Uno and Checkers being very rooster-y these days, beginning to crow and have an interest in the ladies.  Uno is top dog, so to speak.  Nugget ought to start popping out the eggs in three weeks or so.  They are almost 4 months old.




The Seven Dwarves

I know Snow White was not a dwarf in the story.  My little girl named her, okay?

These are the bantam (miniature) mixed breed chickens that we started out our flock with.  They are around 8 months old and are laying eggs daily for us.  They are the only chickens we own that are laying eggs right now. Victoria, Snow White, and Helga all lay a blue-green egg.  The others are a light tan color.  Maxine and Francine are practically identical in their looks--I may even have taken a picture of the same chicken twice.  Snow White is the only one that will allow us to touch her.  The others all have a lightning fast ability to escape human contact.  Poor Snow White is probably just slow.



The Brooder Babies

We just got these two little chicks from a friend who hatched them especially for us.  They are 5 week old Ameraucanas.  Turbo is is most likely a rooster because he always stands like that...neck stretched, proud stance...uh huh...I know that look well.  Gretyl is definitely a girl.  She'll be a blue-green egg layer one day.  These two live in the brooder box inside the chicken coop along with Mei Ling the Silkie.  They are still too small to be out with the big chickens  Not to mention, they could easily fit right through the chain link fence that protects two sides of the run, and Poppy the Chicken Eater will be happily waiting for them.


The Babies

We've been raising this crowd from around a week old.  They are now nearly 11 weeks.  Charlotte is a New Hampshire Red.  Miss Comet is a Golden Comet.  Charlee and Violet are Barred Plymouth Rocks.  The only way I can tell them apart is by a tiny extra bit of white around Charlee's eyes, but today I notice it was fading.  I guess they'll have to answer to both names :)  Winnie and Dottie are Gold Laced Wyandottes.  I think Winnie is probably a boy, but we shall see. They both hate being picked up even though we've been doing it from day one.  I've heard people say that Wyandottes are just like that.  Lastly, there are Qi-Qi and Mei Ling, the Silkies.  Qi-Qi is nearly the same size as all her other flock buddies, but Mei Ling...oh Mei Ling....  she is tiny.  She's 11 weeks old but smaller than the the 5 week old Ameracaunas she lives with.  She was very sick for a while with respiratory problems. It was so bad that we even told the kids to not expect her to make it.  But she has managed to rally through and is just now getting her feathers in.  (Hence the weird scraggly look.)


The Newbies

And just to round out our varied collection of chickens, we picked up a few more.  Hey, what's a few more, right?  I wanted two Marans (Marans-es-s? Maransii?) because of their prized dark chocolate colored egg-laying abilites.  Someone in town was moving and selling off their chickens.  We went to pick them up and ended up with five.  I think we need to learn how to count better.  Lucille is a Blue Copper Marans and Octavia is a Black Copper Marans.  Juanita and Shirley are Rhode Island Reds.  Buffy is a Buff Orpington.  We were getting a little lazy in the naming department at that point.  Seth's brother went to Bell, Florida (population 349) to pick up a few new chickens for his flock from a farm there.  He brought us back Belle the Black Australorp.  She's around 3 and a half months old, whereas the rest of this group is around 5 months.


So there you have it.  26 chickens, 11 different breeds, but no partridges in pear trees.  I never realized we would have so much fun with the whole chicken thing.  I meet perfectly (seemingly) normal people all the time who have begun keeping chickens and say, "Would you have ever believed it was like this??" They guesture at the chicken sitting in their lap, or the chairs set out for their daily "chicken TV" time.  We shake our heads and smile knowingly.

You'll have to excuse me now though.  I put an egg in my pocket this morning and forgot it was there.  Time to do some laundry!

Keepin' Up With the Chickens

For all two of you who have been keeping up with my chicken adventures, you'll be glad to know I have updates!  I'm sure you have so many questions, like, "Just how many chickens do you have, anyway?" and "Have you looked into medication for this problem?"  Hopefully, I can answer these and more today.

You may remember our little group of chicks that we hatched from eggs in an incubator.  They are now about eight and a half weeks old now and we have whittled them down to three chicks.  By "whittling" I mean giving them away, since the alternative meaning would be really gross.  We gave away Penny and Smoky because we felt 99% certain they were roosters.  We also think Checkers and Uno are roosters, too, leaving Nugget as the only female we managed to get out of the whole batch.



Uno

Checkers

Nugget.
Yes, she has a beard and fluffy ears.  She's a little sensitive about it, so don't bring it up around her.  I keep telling her it's fine, it's just an Easter Egger genetics thing, but she doesn't listen.  Ah....teenagers.

You must be thinking, "Why don't you just keep the roosters?"  That's a whole story by itself, but the main reasons most people don't want roosters are:

1. They crow.
2. They fight with each other, sometimes to the death.
3. They have a weapon--a spur--that grows on the back of the legs, and they'll use it on you if they don't like you.
4. They don't lay eggs.

Now, these are not necessarily all my reasons, but they are good ones.  There are also benefits to having one rooster per 8-10 hens:

1. They protect their ladies from predators.
2. Hens are happier and lay eggs better with a gentleman around.
3. They can be just as friendly as a mouse if they have the right temperament and are raised by hand.

We recently sold Benjamin, our bantam Old English Game rooster because of reason number 3 on the first list.  He was becoming mean, mean, mean...even drawing blood a few times on Seth.

Too bad he was so purty.  He had to go though.  Not to mention, I have Checkers and Uno, who are completely sweet and docile and will let a child carry them around the yard, who can fulfill their rooster-ly duties in another month or so.

We still have his little harem of ladies out in the barn.  They have all finally started laying.  Between the 7 of them, we get three or four eggs a day (little eggs, since they're little chickens!).

The Seven Dwarves.  Eating scratch feed I threw down for them. 

And then.....

Let's see, that's three teenagers plus seven hens...that's 10 chickens we have living out in the barn.  But wait!  There's more!

We have babies too.

They live in the house, in one of those big blue storage bins.  Sometimes, they get to play in the yard. They're extremely cute.  Check them out:

Charlotte. She's a New Hampshire Red.  She is very sweet, learned how to fly out of the brooder very quickly, and will one day be a rust-red-colored chicken.

Mei Ling.  A Silkie. Hopers picked her out.  The tiniest little chick you ever held, she feels like holding a dime--a warm, flapping dime.  One day, she'll be a little ball of fluff.  Kind of like she is now.

Qi Qi ("chee-chee"). Also a Silkie.  Noodle picked her out.  Silkies are known for being good pets, their funny looks, having an extra toe on each foot, and not being able to fly because of their unusual feathers.

Charlie and Violet.  These two are Barred Plymouth Rocks.  They look almost identical, and are the same size, except that Charlie has white eye makeup.

The Golden Laced Wyandottes.  These two are older than the rest of the chicks by a week (they're 3 weeks old).  They balk at being held, but will one day be beautiful with lacy black and gold patterned feathers.  Meanwhile, they're scraggly, skittish, and I haven't come up any good names for them.  Any suggestions?

Miss Comet.  A Golden Comet.  She is super sweet and calm and I know she's a girl for sure because boys of this breed are an entirely different color. YAY!

So now you have the low-down on the chickens.  That brings us to a total of 18.  For now....
I met a lady the other day who had 49.  That makes me totally sane in comparison, right? No need for medication yet!

Although, I did see a Chocolate Cuckoo Maran chick online that....

*Ahem*

Stay tuned for more chicken adventures!

Egg Hunters and Memory Loss

At our house on Easter Sunday, we like to enjoy a traditonal egg hunt. With all these kids, it's a must. Mom and I hid 135 eggs (yeah, yeah, overkill, blah blah blah) boiled and plastic, around my yard. The dads were working swiftly on the new treehouse during the hiding, so it was up to us ladies to remember where every single egg was.

 . . . .

What was I talking about?


Oh yeah.  Easter. And so,

Underneath these calm, smiling faces are wheels and fireworks waiting to burst into action!  How cruel of me to make them wait just one more moment.... Ready, set, GO!

In a blitz of energy, everyone sprints off to find the little hidden treasures.

Like father, like son.  Tate and Dad wore their matching work blues today.

Victoria's eggs were the coveted "golden" eggs of the day.  There were only two, but Tabi found one.  The prize was a grand feeling of victory and a pat on the back.

Tate.

Hopers found a few of the eggs we dyed with turmeric.

And Faith found the other Victoria egg.  Give yourself a pat on the back, honey, I'm holding a camera.

Teegan.

 

 

Faith and her Daddy, searching for more eggs. Somehow (yet not surprising because it happens every year) we didn't find all the eggs. I swear the missing eggs are the ones Mom hid.  She swears they're the ones I hid.  But at any rate, there are nine out there in my yard right now.... or in my dog's stomach.

 

Happy Easter!

Spring Break Kids, Chicks and The Egg

We had a big day today. It was the first day of Spring Break (Monday). We had 11 kids from the neighborhood and beyond come and play at our house, including Noodle, Hopers, Tobi, Tabi, Jeremy, Micah, et al. The kids had a blast playing hide and seek, building a fort in the barn, holding chicks, riding bikes around the yard, playing tag, doing Tinikling (a Philippino dance), and generally eating everything in sight like a plague of locusts.

Meanwhile, Victoria, our only fully adult hen who has been holding out on us laid her first egg!

It's little (she's a Bantam chicken) and blue-green colored (she's an Easter Egger breed) but we couldn't be more excited about it.

And in other news, the chicks are 4 weeks old now.  We have moved them to a large dog cage inside the chicken pen.  The other chickens don't like the presence of these intruders, so it will be a while before we can let them all freely mingle together.

Here's the role call, with how they looked a month ago when they were born and how they look today:





Uno

 

Smoky



Penny

 

Nugget





Checkers

We still don't know who's a boy and who's a girl, but it was too hard to hold off naming them. We tried to pick either/or type names, except Penny, which probably guarantees we'll have a rooster out of that one.

We're praying hard that they'll all be hens, and in 16 more weeks, we'll be cheerfully showing off their first eggs!!