BigBlueHen53: Just BukbukbuKAAWS

[BigBlueHen53]

LIfe notes:

Yesterday I made ten half-pint jars of yogurt. Had not made yogurt in over a year. My spare fridge had been too full of eggs! I'm glad to have yogurt, but sad that I'm virtually out of eggs. Only getting 2 or 3 a day.

And today I made choklit chip cookies, double ! Mostly these are for giveaways, not so much for us'ns. Will make little gift bags along with some fudge for the mail carrier and other deliverers as they come by between now and Christmas, may also share some Christian literature like Steps to Christ.

This was a new recipe, not the Toll House recipe on the back of the chocolate chips bag. I even adapted this recipe a bit, using 2 c brown sugar instead of 1 c brown and 1 c white, but here's the link to the recipe, this will be my go-to from now on:

https://joyfoodsunshine.com/the-most-amazing-chocolate-chip-cookies/

 

[StarOnFire59]

Here's Moon Shadow, at snack time today:

View attachment 4267914

He woke me up crowing at 4:30 this morning. I love the sound of crowing. He just kept on and on - I heard him through the baby monitor. After a bit, the crowing lulled me back to sleep. He was still at it at 5:30 when I woke up again. It's such a ... happy sound. A normal, peaceful, country sound.

It sounds to me like he definitely likes the sound of his own voice.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

It sounds to me like he definitely likes the sound of his own voice.

Or he thought he needed the practice, lol! His baby crow has drveloped into a nice, manly one!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

So today I heard Moon Walker crow, finally. He's the smaller of my two Ameraucana cockerels. DH says he crows in the morning when he opens up the coop, but I don't hear them from in here in the house. But I heard him this afternoon. He has kind of a baby crow still, ee-ee-EEE-ee! Shadow's crow is, well, a CROW. Their personalities have always been very different. Shadow early began to assert himself, even when the OG hens pecked at him, he would dodge, but come right back. Walker would keep to the edges and sometimes just peck at a little corn, BOSS and a bit of dried worm but then run off, apparently fearful of the older hens. I felt bad for him bc he wasn't getting much in the way of goodies. And he was obviously smaller than Shadow, until recently.

He's getting bolder now though, and starting to look more mature. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. So this afternoon during snack time I studied the two of them closely to see if there was any way I could tell them apart. Finally, I spotted it! While Walker's green leg band was on his left leg, Shadow's was on his right! We'd marked them early on to separate them from the Black Australorps I'd gotten at the same time (unintentionally, long story).

So tonight when DH went out to close them up for the night, I went with him. We replaced the leg bands on both cockerels with bigger ones, and I added a blue one to Moon Shadow's, so I'll be able to ID him at a glance.

Incidentally, when we went into the coop, Walker was perched on the roost directly in front of the door. There were birds on both sides of him, but I couldn't say any of them were snuggled up with him. After replacing his band we looked for Shadow. At first we didn't see him anywhere. Then DH said, is he in that cluster there? I looked to my right and saw a whole clutch of black birds, some Aussies, some Ams, pretty much sitting on top of each other. Looked to be at least eight of them. On closer inspection, there was Shadow, at the bottom of the pile! We dug him out and changed his bands, then put him back on the roost, where all his groupies snuggled up with him again.

I'll tell you, it really does my heart good to see the girls love on their flock master like that, and he's just barely six months old. The rooster he replaces was like that, his girls loved him. I'm happy.