First Run of Cornish Cross Meat Birds and Super Excited!

[mountain mom]

Good news our missing turkey hen came back after about a week of being gone this is what I saw when I went to do evening chores!!!!


And heres the cat......

Hooray! Glad she made her way back home!

Your cat is hilarious! So funny!

 

[mountain mom]

Well I don't know why it is upside down, but here is a picture of our craziest egg! Dixie (our Dixie Rainbow) laid this monster triple yolker this past summer!
Jessica- I'm so excited for your egg from Sunny!

 

[duluthralphie]

Well I don't know why it is upside down, but here is a picture of our craziest egg! Dixie (our Dixie Rainbow) laid this monster triple yolker this past summer!
Jessica- I'm so excited for your egg from Sunny!

Did "Dixie" get into some of your stash of secret stuff you can only have in CO? That is the weirdest egg I have ever seen....It almost earned the one finger up award, I am still contemplating giving you it for this!


Confucius say: beware of drinking and typing, it can ruin ones reputation.

 

[LindaB220]

Sunny's egg on the right, the silkie egg on the left.

Yes, Ralph is certainly in denial. They aren't babies anymore and the haven't been little since the were 4 days old. Lol!

Linda: I'm so glad you rescued that vodka. I could have never looked at you the same if you hadn't.

I agree that not getting eggs daily really stinks! I have 11 hens for goodness sake. I should get 6 at minimum. I added a light to each of my chicken runs. I don't do the morning light though. I leave the light on until 8:30 pm and then it goes off on a timer. I don't want the lights going on at 4 am. I don't like 4 am. This is why I got rid of my roosters. Unfortunately, 4 of my rescue babies are roosters. Ugh! Anyway, I have a buff orpington that is a major complainer. She complains when she gets up, wants out, lays an egg, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Being that the coop is 20 ft from my bedroom window, I do NOT want them getting up at 4 am. Besides, in the summer they always stayed up until 8 pm before going in. Seems silly to put them to bed and 5 pm.

I know that people say you are supposed to do morning light and not evening but it doesn't really make sense to me and I am not seeing an adverse effect on them. Plus I am now getting at least 6 eggs per day.

Yes, Aimee assures me she wasn't the one that was going to pour it out. AJ, my 21 yo gson has OCD. (and a LOT more mental problems) and saw it on the counter and didn't know what to do with it. Almost empty, he thought, so why not. He doesn't drink and can't see the lure.

I've hit the ground running this morning at 6am. Started packing up all the chicken stuff that I've been storing in my room until I can get the storeroom organized enough to put everything on the shelves. Then I organized all the boxes of presents that I need to wrap today. My room, after today, will go from a hoarding house to a regular room. My daughter was getting a little concerned when I didn't have much walk space. I have a lot of presents.

The storeroom is workable. I can shift a few things around to get to the shelves. And next I'll work on getting the brooding area set up for my babies. They are on day 6 I think. (Eggs). I'm in the process of shifting all the 18 gallon totes that I store feed in out to the area by the coop. That will free up an immense space in the storeroom. And be a lot easier for me to get to when I make my fermented feed.
Folks, this is my year. It's all coming together. I've got the birds for my good egg selling on Ebay and BYC. I'm ordering 15 CX's and 15 Golden Comets from Schletch hatchery in late Jan for meat and a lot of eggs that I'm going to start selling. I'm in an area that will pay good for non GMO and no corn or soy eggs. The meat will be for my freezer, when I can get one. My plans this year are ambitious. I am going to hire a couple of high school boys to unload a bunch of straw bales and bags of soil for my garden. They can place it for me. Laying bags of soil lengthways and having two rows together will make a 3 x 9 bed. cut the top out of the bag and punch holes in the bottom and add fertilizer and start planting. I want 2 or 3 beds. The same with the strawbales. Two side by side x3 bales long will be be a 30" x 9' bed and I want 2 of them. By next year they will be ready to take the strings off and I'll have my handyman build me a 24" high bed. Stir the dirt/soil mixture down and add a lot of compost and I'll have me some of the most beautiful beds around. The soil grow bags can be turned out and a shorter bed built around them with a lot of compost added to them.
We have 4 new subdivisions being built within 5 minutes of me. I'd like to advertise during the summer to get customers for my eggs and cardboard beer flats filled with garden produce and a loaf of my artisan bread. Maybe $15 for eggs, bread and produce. What do you think? Too ambitious?

 

[Morrigan]

Ralphie, Great pictures! Is that chicken nesting on the cat? Maybe the cat's hoping a warm egg will drop into it's mouth.

Mountain Mom, that is one huge egg. I wonder if it was painful for the poor hen to lay.

Linda, good luck getting everything organized.

I continue to have very little on the egg front. One yesterday, but it was a nice big one. I'm sprouting the very last of my wheat, and am now going to make the switch over to sprouted barley with the colder days. I hope my birds like it as much as the wheat. I've also started throwing in a little alfalfa into their yard and they go crazy for that.

 

[JessicaThistle]

Linda: That sounds like an awesome idea!! Take your expenses into account (including your time) very carefully when pricing it. Another good idea is to check into what CSAs in your area charge for a comparable spread. You may be surprised that people will pay more. You don't want to be charging too little that you are paying them (in a sense) to take those goodies off of your hands. Sorry, I'm a business woman and have to always keep these things in mind.

Mountain Mom: Dixies egg is huge but funny looking. I suppose it took so much out of her to create an egg that big that making it smooth and shiny just didn't happen.

 

[mountain mom]

Linda: That sounds like an awesome idea!! Take your expenses into account (including your time) very carefully when pricing it. Another good idea is to check into what CSAs in your area charge for a comparable spread. You may be surprised that people will pay more. You don't want to be charging too little that you are paying them (in a sense) to take those goodies off of your hands. Sorry, I'm a business woman and have to always keep these things in mind.

Mountain Mom: Dixies egg is huge but funny looking. I suppose it took so much out of her to create an egg that big that making it smooth and shiny just didn't happen.

It is funny! I read up on it, and since it took her so long to lay it (around 3 days) it kept getting more layers of calcium. It was sure a surprise when we found that in the nest box!

 

[duluthralphie]

It is funny! I read up on it, and since it took her so long to lay it (around 3 days) it kept getting more layers of calcium. It was sure a surprise when we found that in the nest box!

Aren't chickens amazing?

This poor bird was in labor for 3 days and did not say a peep.....Unlike most humans in labor that....(WORD DELETED for my safety).... when they have a little day and a half of labor....






((((( sitting back and waiting for spears to fly at me)))))

 

[JessicaThistle]

Ralph: I think chickens are amazing! I also think that many women these days are wussies when it comes to having babies.

BUT, I also think that men are wussies when it comes to having a sliver, a sniffle, a head ache, etc.

 

[duluthralphie]

Ralph: I think chickens are amazing! I also think that many women these days are wussies when it comes to having babies.

BUT, I also think that men are wussies when it comes to having a sliver, a sniffle, a head ache, etc.

NOT ME!!

I take all pain and illness without nary a whine of whimper. I am so stoic in the face of these deadly diseases, aches and pains.... WHAT ME COMPLAIN!!!!!!

However, I would like to note men get many illnesses worse than women do.......

BTW I have never had a sniffle, I have major lung congestion and near pneumonia, or deadly head colds..


And on the same vein, today stinks, it is damp and humid here today so my knee is killing me, I have decided it is a tramadol day. If the tramadol does not work, it could be a peppermint schnapps day also...


See how I manage my pain? Just action, no whining. ( please do not ask my wife's opinion on this, she is prejudiced against me.)