Rain finally arrived here in far northern Calif - 1.41" yesterday! Hoping it's an omen for a good wet winter. I was thrilled; the 8 hens were NOT. Grumpy girls glowering out from roosts in their covered run: "Not THIS again!" They're giving ~2 eggs/day mostly, and 2 have quit laying while they...
This is the second year I've water-glassed excess eggs from our 8 young hens. (BYC has lots of how-to info on that, it's very simple.) They've stayed nice & fresh for over 12 months with no refrigeration, stored in wide-mouth gallon jars in our basement/garage. Just need clean UNwashed eggs...
Yup, same here...only one egg out of the 8 girls yesterday, lots of feathers in the coop & run and several hens have bare patches with pinfeathers starting to poke through. (That has to be miserable/itchy/tender?😬)
Shorter days are very noticeable now, production dropped sharply from average 5...
😄 Our barely 2-yr-old granddaughter is fascinated with sheep! Not something they had around their apartment in Burbank before they moved up here to rural Humboldt with us. Our neighbors have sheep (in with their rescue goat herd) and that was the only kind of critter she wanted to visit at our...
SO TRUE! We've lived in McKinleyville, north of Eureka for years now, and our SoCal and out-of-state friends just can't wrap their heads around the vast rural areas north of the Bay Area and maybe Napa-Sonoma wine country! We've started telling them that northern Humboldt is "almost Oregon"...
Hey there, fellow Old Folks -- it's been ages but I'm back. Our peaceful retired world got topsy-turvied when our elder daughter's marriage broke up in early 2024 and she left so-very-urban Burbank with her 2 little kids and moved in with us, waaay up here behind the Redwood Curtain to our rural...
Thank you for this inspiration! As fall & winter are encroaching (the very WET season here), there will indeed be many fewer "wild snacks" for them to scratch & catch. My girls are thanking you in advance for organ meat treats to come soon!
Love it! We have a neighbor down the road who collects donated Christmas trees for his pampered goat herd. He posts on our local Nextdoor social media site that he'll pick up trees to be "recycled" in this very natural manner; we just private-message our address to him & leave the tree at the...
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Thank you, Eggcessive. Likely it's because they are all due for their first molt, then. (Since we're into October now, I'm worried they'll molt just as our cold, rainy weather starts!)
I still can't tell which of my brown-egg girls is laying the shell-less eggs so wouldn't know who to dose...
Thank you for this in-depth and well-illustrated article! I've been going nuts trying to find out why one of my young hens started laying shell-less eggs regularly while all the others (same age) are laying just fine. They are all getting plenty of calcium and D3 in their rations and...
One of my brown egg layers (not sure which one) has been laying a shell-less egg every two to three days over the past ~3 weeks or so. I have 8 hens all just over a year and a half old. Three lay green or blue eggs so I know it's not one of them; often all 3 colors are there along with the...
6 eggs out of 8 girls the 2 previous days, 7 out of 8 yesterday. We've been getting 5 to 7 daily for weeks now, so quite a bounty. (They just reached full "hen-hood" this spring, all very young chickens.)
I recognize which egg belongs to which hen for the most part (easy with the 2 Eggers and...
Hello again, all! I haven't been able to indulge in BYC time for almost 2 months due to my old computer being on its last gasp, and especially with our peaceful retirement life being blown to smithereens by our daughter and her two littles (age 7 months and 3 years) moving in with us...
After so many months of soggy weather, spring has sprung here on the Redwood Coast, so I replaced the old nasty straw bale in the chicken yard with a brand new one. The girls are enthralled -- it needs lots of scratching, pecking and pooping-upon to make it livable.
Hello again, all! Yes, we're having sunny days and chilly nights here on the Redwood Coast, finally not too soggy to get out and garden a bit (mostly battling spring weeds, but the chooks love weed piles.) I haven't had any time to hang out on BYC for over a month, since our daughter and...
Still here, and my 8 pullets from last spring have now all "graduated" to full hen-dom! I've had no time lately to hang out on BYC since our daughter and 2 very small kids moved in with us in March... The 3 year old loves the chickens and is learning how to gently pet them and give treats.
So...
Loved, loved LOVED the Carol Burnett Show! Our family watched it faithfully and still quote some favorite bits from skits like "Went With The Wind" (her "Scarlet" in the velvet curtain fabric gown with the curtain rod still in it: "Ah saw it in the window and Ah just had to have it!"), soap...