What Came First?

I was looking through the new Country Living magazine this morning and came across this sculpture by UK artist Kyle Bean.

Sculpture made from egg shells by Kyle Bean

How clever is that?  I just had to share it with all of you chicken lovers out there…

Speaking of chickens mine are doing fine now. No more drama… I still have one Marans rooster, Darcy, and 6 Marans hens and 2 easter eggers, and I get about 3-4 Marans eggs a day.

The easter eggers have not laid an egg for 6 months. They look nice and healthy, but I wonder if they are finished laying? I don’t think they are that old.

Anyway, I need to buy some more hens…just haven’t found the right ones yet.

Abandoned…

I  had the broody hen and her eggs pretty much confined to her coop, and she was looking kind of strange. Her comb looked as if it were turning white. I know that they do get pale, but it looked too pale. In reading again about the health of your broody hens, I noticed the article said that sometimes you have to force the hen to get off the nest, so that she will eat and poop, and that it was imperative for her to do this to stay healthy. So I opened the coop and coaxed her off the nest and she came flying out, swooping down to enjoy a bit of freedom.

I watched her for awhile as she went about her business, and then came back up to the house assuming that she would go back into the coop and resume laying. That was a mistake. Three hours later when I went down to close up the coop for the night she was not on her eggs, and they were cold.

Here again, I live and learn, it’s always the unexpected, it seems. The good thing is that I think there is another hen that may be going broody, but I’m only getting 1-2 eggs a day.

I’ll keep you posted if we are expecting again…And this time I will know to keep a better eye on the hen.

I feel so sorry for her this morning…she is in a tizzy… I feel like it is my fault.

Chicks Are Eight Weeks Old…

I’ve still got 10 chicks… Yay!  Mama takes great care of them, and they are 2 months old today. Here is Mama Hen with some of her boys…

Yes, I think I can tell who are the boys at this point…

And who are the girls…

I think out of the 10, 5 or 6 are roos…

With the freezing temps we’ve been having, I thought it would be a good idea to put the heater back in the coop, but that means I would have to put all the chicks up the plank again and I was not looking forward to that at all…

For 3 nights I took the net and put them all up into the heated part of the coop and raised the plank. The 4th night I went down and  they were all up in the heated coop…Mama taught them all to go up the plank. I just love her!!! And I’m so proud of the chicks!

Chick Photo Shoot # 2

I had a hard time getting a good photo. Mama Emma was all over the coop pecking at this and scratching at that. She left the 2 eggs…

I felt them and they were slightly warm, but not the warmth that emanates from eggs that have just been under a hen.  Emma was showing her chicks how to scratch and peck. A couple of them were drinking water.

They are so tiny, but they all look strong and healthy…

She finally settled down by backing up into the opposite corner from where her nest of eggs was, and the chicks joined her…I’m wondering how long she will be happy contained in this part of the coop, actually she doesn’t seem very happy at all. She is just so very busy with her 10 newly hatched chicks…

The other hens and Mr. Knightly are so very curious about what is going on. I wish I could just let them out, but it is too risky. I’ll have to figure something out in the next day or two.

One Last Photo for the Day…

There are 9 chicks here, but the last count was 10 and 2 eggs. We’ll see what the morning brings…

 

Chick Photo Shoot #1 :)

She has many more under her wings, but these 3 ventured out for a bit…

New Chicks!!!

I know you all are waiting to hear how it turns out for Broody Emma under the porch…

Well the story got pretty exciting last night….

It was dark…the day was done… we, my husband, two daughters and me were in the house reading, knitting and whatever, and we  heard a loud squawk outside. My husband went running out with his flashlight…my daughter following at his heels, and they discovered a possum attacking the chicks that had just newly hatched. Broody Emma had let out a loud squawk and run off into the night…

My husband shot at the possum several times and it ran off, hopefully fatally wounded. And then he went  to get a crow-bar to pry up the boards from the porch. Mama Emma came back and regathered the chicks as best she could, and sat on the eggs. My daughter looked under the porch with the flashlight and thought she saw 2 dead chicks.

After the boards were pried up, we decided to go ahead and move Mama Emma and her chicks and the eggs to the coop that I had just cleaned out earlier that day. We were in such a hurry, but I think there were 5 eggs and 7 chicks. 2 chicks had been killed by the possum. We placed Mama Emma in a box first, and then the eggs and chicks in another box and rushed them down to the coop. We placed the eggs and chicks in a nice cozy old nest in the coop and Emma got right on top of the eggs and chicks when we let her out if her box.

This morning I went down and put a bowl of food for her and some water and chick food for the babies. It was 42 degrees this morning, and I know that Mama Emma could keep her brood warm, but I went ahead a put a light in the coop too.

She won’t get off the chicks yet, I’m not going to bother her after that traumatic experience last night. I’m so curious to know if they all made it… I will post pictures later today with an update.

Here’s what our porch looks like this morning…

How did that possum know? Emma hasn’t been bothered the whole time she has been under the porch. She has never squawked or made a peep.

Now she is quietly sitting on those chicks…I don’t know how they breathe under her, and she is purring like a cat…Did you know hens purr?

Befuddled

Aren’t these spider lilies beautiful?

Like  their relation the  Surprise Lilies, they just come up out of the ground when you least expect them. What a blessing! Thought I would start this post on a positive note… 🙂

Especially on a day like this when I am overwhelmed and befuddled. I can’t even speak here of all the situations, but two of them happen to be the garden and the chickens and that is what this blog is all about.

October is right around the corner and October last year was when I got my first chickens. 14 Marans chicks and 4 Welsummer hens, 1 cuckoo Marans hen and 1 Barred Rock.

Today I have from the chicks 1 rooster and 4 hens, 1 of the  4 Welsummers, and the 1 cuckoo Marans.  I also have 2 Ameraucanas. I sure have lost a lot of chickens… 😦

I know that the 2 Ameraucanas are laying 5 to 6 eggs a week and occasionally I get a brown egg from the Welsummer and one dark brown one from one of the Marans.  This morning I penned them all up in what  Sleepinghorse terms the naughty room. And the reason for this is to find out if any of them are making nests like Emma did. I want to know who is laying and who is not, and how many eggs I should be getting a day.

Emma is the other dilemma!

I thought it best to move her and her 14 eggs and then I began to think about the fact that the embryos in those eggs are probably pretty well formed by now and wondered if it would be detrimental to move them at this stage. They should be beginning to hatch in about a week. I looked again on line and found many who had moved the eggs and the mama hen abandoned them. I would just hate this. So we decided to take the chance and let them hatch out and then move them. They are right under our bedroom window, so we should be able to easily hear any ruckus that goes on.

While I was writing this, I heard a strange noise outside and I ran to see as I am totally on alert now until the chicks hatch… It was Emma coming out for a quick bite to eat. I ran to the kitchen and got some oats and leftover tuna…

She gobbled this up and then fluffed her feathers…

And while she was stretching and sunning I took a peek at her eggs…

Still 14…

Then there is my pathetic fall garden. Every leaf of every plant that I planted from seed has been eaten up, and I don’t even know what the culprit is. So no fall garden this year, or do I go out and buy some plants?…Like I said, I am befuddled.

I guess I’ll just take one thing at a time…

Beauty Berries and Broody Emma

I never get tired of pulling together all the different plants that are blooming at the moment. What got me inspired this time was the  purple of the Hyacinth Bean blooming in the garden and the Beauty Berry bushes growing in my yard…

And a  little closer shot…

I also grabbed some purple grasses, sage, Lamb’s ear, Autumn Sedum Joy, and of course the beautiful brightly colored zinnias…

Here’s a close-up of the Beauty Berries…

But all things are not so beautiful. When I left for a week I put my starting plants of cabbage and broccoli inside the house, so that my husband would remember to water them. And he did, but this is what they looked like when I got home…

I can’t even imagine what got them inside the house and I don’t see a sign of anything anywhere. The strange thing is that when I went out to the greenhouse  all the cilantro and radishes I planted in there look just the same as this. The kale and bok choy is completely gone…

>>>Sigh<<<

On another note…Broody Emma is really serious this time laying on her 14 eggs…

She’s still under the porch. I would like to leave her there, but I just am not sure. If we move her we will have to take up two boards off the porch. I know a skunk or possum or raccoon could get to her fairly easily, unless we put chicken wire around her like one of you suggested, but where she is, it would be very hard to even put the chicken wire.

I’ll let you know what we decide to do…

Back Home and I Need Some Advice :)

I’m back from the Land of the Ancient Ones and while I was gone, we dealt with another predator, a large white German Shepherd looking dog.  My husband and my sons worked hard that week I was gone, and no one was here during the day, but we never know when one of these predators is going to show up…

This particular day was a really wet rainy day. After the guys had worked hard and had eaten dinner, one of my sons spotted the big white dog down at the chicken coop with a hen in his mouth. He couldn’t get to him fast enough to take care of the situation, but he did scare the dog and he did drop the hen he had in his mouth. It was the Welsummer Sis, yes, the one I painted the portrait of for the giveaway. My husband picked her up and put her in a clean warm place, but she didn’t make it. Then he counted the hens that were left and there were only 7 out of the 9. The other hen that was missing was Emma. My two prettiest hens were gone…

Or so I thought… This morning my daughter knocked on my door and exclaimed, “Mom, I think Emma is under the porch!” We grabbed a flashlight and peeked under the porch and sure enough there was a hen sitting there surrounded by leaves.

She’s not in the above picture, because I took it after she left and went to have a drink with her friends…

That’s Emma drinking out of a ceramic bird bath I have in my front yard. While she was busy drinking I took my flashlight and looked through a knot hole in the porch floor and this is what I found…

14 eggs!  So Emma is broody again. I’ve managed to break her of her broodiness twice, but I’m not doing it again.

So my question to all of you out there is do I just leave this nest under the porch and see what happens? It is pretty protected right under my bedroom window… Our dog used to have her puppies there. 🙂

Or should I transfer the eggs over to our little chick coop that used to be a dog house and hope that she will be happy there?

We have differing opinions in our house. I just want to do what is best and I want Emma to be a happy hen.

What do you think?