It sounds like everyone had a good holiday! We've experienced a decline in eggs also, but I think I'm the rare person here that doesn't mind that. I still have 3 year-old hens going through their molt and the pullets stopped when the cold and snow hit. One of them just started laying again yesterday. I figured it was probably a combination of the shorter days and molting also.
This weekend was mostly an adventure with the peafowl because the chickens (especially the pullets) were not interested in leaving the dryness of the straw floor of the pen. My adventure started off with Damien letting me pet him!
And because I'm dumb, I pushed my luck and tried to pick him up. He let me get an arm around him, but the minute I tightened up he freaked out and took off. He nailed me right between the eyes with the serious part of his wing and about knocked me out. I'm still waiting for the bruising to show up and make me look like I got in a street fight or something. Those birds are a lot stronger than they look! Anyhow, I suspect he won't let me touch him again for at least a year now. He wouldn't come down off the barn roof until he saw me go back inside the house. No pictures of that catastrophe because that's some embarrassing YouTube level stuff.
Then the peahens surprised me and came out to check out the snow yesterday. It was kinda windy and really cold, so I didn't expect that they would come out (Sparta tried to follow them by flying from one piece of wood sticking out of the snow to the other, but could only go so far). Dalton is very much the top hen between her and Richmond. She's the only one of the two that I've seen displaying her tail when she's not happy with something. I couldn't tell what she was angry with because I didn't want to walk down there and scare her off. I think she and Richmond are growing up to be very pretty peahens.
After that, they both ended up on top of the roof and only Richmond figured out quickly that she could get back down. It took Dalton about 30 minutes to figure out she wasn't going to kill herself by flying off the roof.
Not many good pictures of Richmond this time around. I guess it's a trade off since I usually don't get good ones of Dalton.
This weekend was mostly an adventure with the peafowl because the chickens (especially the pullets) were not interested in leaving the dryness of the straw floor of the pen. My adventure started off with Damien letting me pet him!
And because I'm dumb, I pushed my luck and tried to pick him up. He let me get an arm around him, but the minute I tightened up he freaked out and took off. He nailed me right between the eyes with the serious part of his wing and about knocked me out. I'm still waiting for the bruising to show up and make me look like I got in a street fight or something. Those birds are a lot stronger than they look! Anyhow, I suspect he won't let me touch him again for at least a year now. He wouldn't come down off the barn roof until he saw me go back inside the house. No pictures of that catastrophe because that's some embarrassing YouTube level stuff.
Then the peahens surprised me and came out to check out the snow yesterday. It was kinda windy and really cold, so I didn't expect that they would come out (Sparta tried to follow them by flying from one piece of wood sticking out of the snow to the other, but could only go so far). Dalton is very much the top hen between her and Richmond. She's the only one of the two that I've seen displaying her tail when she's not happy with something. I couldn't tell what she was angry with because I didn't want to walk down there and scare her off. I think she and Richmond are growing up to be very pretty peahens.
After that, they both ended up on top of the roof and only Richmond figured out quickly that she could get back down. It took Dalton about 30 minutes to figure out she wasn't going to kill herself by flying off the roof.
Not many good pictures of Richmond this time around. I guess it's a trade off since I usually don't get good ones of Dalton.
