Welcome Crafty-Duck
Your Buff is beautiful.... and herbs? It is my THING! Making a new calendula salve as we speak.
Melabella, I will have pics in a couple of days, am away from the farm just now. I have tried and tried to take photos but they are never still long enough to really get good ones like I see posted so often here.
Can't seem to grasp the moment. Glad you lived through that storm without worse damage, can you imagine being the animals outside during such a storm? argh!
This is my list... I have so many different ages and three breeds that I have to keep a good book to keep track of them all.
4 Buff Orpingtons (4 years in the spring)
5 " (2 years old)
2 " (22 weeks, the ones we are waiting on!)
1" (16 weeks)
1 Buff Orp Rooster (age unknown, but at least three years since I got him and an auction)
1 "(6 months)
9 black sex links (two years old)
2 Barred Rocks (one year)
1 Barred Rock Roo (one year, same chick group as the hens)
2 Barred Rocks (22 weeks, the ones we are waiting on!)
1 Partridge Cochin (2 years)
2 Bantam Cochin (6 weeks)
6 Barred Rocks (6 weeks)
I guess that makes 36 birds altogether? LOL, I forget, till I go back to the book and start keeping track. I go through phases when I remember them by age group, as they all have their own hangout places and roosting places. (age dependent mostly)
We have a coop with a fixed completely fenced (overhead) run, but they free range on 3 acres of partly timber, part "yard" (uhem, we never really close the run gate unless we are doing something we want to keep them out of. We have completely fenced in the garden of course, but they get to turn it all over from December through early spring.
We have a "broody" tractor that I am keeping chicks in right now. The tractor sits in the run yard so the big hens are around the babies all the time. To keep "baby food" out for the chicks, but keeping the hens out of it has been the challenge. I am trying to acclimate the babies to the general population, so I have been letting them out and supervising, LOL. The older hens have all been around so many chicks now that they seem quite uninterested unless they get too close to the food. So I finally got smart and left their pen door open just enough for them to get in and out, but not enough for the older hens to squeeze through... but I digress.
What I mean to be saying is that the hens I am waiting on to lay all hang together with a new Buff Orp Roo. He is their age, but hasn't started crowing yet. He keeps a very good watch on them. Before we started confining all chickens to the run (which has a gate open to about an acre of pasture) they slept in the lower branches of a big pecan tree straight above the run. Since "confinement" they sleep on a small roost (5' long 2 rungs, 2' and 4' off the ground) built to the outside of the main coop in the run. I don't know if they simply don't want to go inside or if the older hens won't let them, but they seem content.
We are not nearly as cold as you there in NewYork, we have had a week of night lows in the twenty's, but nothing terrible, and no rain/snow while it was that cold. The nights have moved back into the high thirty's/ low forty's for now. So, no worry about where they decide to sleep. If it gets cold enough, I figure they will go in. I am just hoping they know the nests are in there! LOL
Fun fun!
