INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Faraday40]

A lady who grew up in Poland recently told me that she never saw white eggs before coming to America. Eggs were brown, stored on the counter like bananas, & people had to bring their own egg baskets to the market. She thought that people in the US somehow scrubbed or bleached the eggs to make them white.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

I'm not a picture person, but am proud to share my baby girl graduating college this evening. weddings a month away!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I've been teaching incubation classes in the local preschools & a few elementary classes for a few years now. That's always my 1st lesson. I write: chicken, rooster, hen, chick, embryo, egg, pullet, & cockerel. Their task is to work with a partner to describe what these words mean. This is done before any chickens come out so we can use the right vocabulary during the classes. It's also nice because the kids can go home & teach their parents. We also work on anatomy. I love it when I get a drawing & the chickens in it have combs, wattles, & 8 toes (not 6). Then as the parents come in to peek at the chicks, I hear comments like "Wow! I always thought chicks were yellow."

Hope for the future! This makes me so happy! Oh, all those cartoons with the 6-toed chickens seriously bug me. Where in the world did someone get the idea that they only have 6 toes? Then again, some cartoon humans only have 8 fingers, so...

yes - will definately be flooding the page with lots of duckling & chick pictures in the next few days .

Yay!! Can't wait!

The reactions I get are a lot of what keeps me into poultry. People will stand by the fence and debate what a turkey is (most of the time coming up with "big ugly chicken"), or they think that all the birds are one species (especially turkeys, guineas, pheasant, quail and chickens--no one seems to mistake ducks for anything else)... or that roosters are a different species, or that only birds with giant five-point combs are roosters, or that any bird with a five-point comb is a rooster, or that breeds are different species, or that only white chickens are actual chickens, or that chickens only lay white eggs, or that brown eggs are dirty and green eggs are rotten. All kinds of weird stuff.

Yes! It's so alarming how many misconceptions are out there! How do you look at a turkey and a chicken and think they're anywhere similar enough to be the same species? And then there's the eggs. People are always surprised when I mention some of my chickens lay blue or green eggs. It's just odd to people. Actually, sometimes any color other than white is odd. Just wait until they see Marans eggs!

A lady who grew up in Poland recently told me that she never saw white eggs before coming to America. Eggs were brown, stored on the counter like bananas, & people had to bring their own egg baskets to the market. She thought that people in the US somehow scrubbed or bleached the eggs to make them white.

Yeah, in most of the world, brown eggs are preferred. I guess here in America, we're all obsessed with how clean the white eggs look, so they've become the common color. That, of course, leaves the door open for sneaky advertisements convincing people that brown eggs are 'all natural' or 'healthier' or just generally better. You never see white eggs labeled free-range in stores! We're also one of very few if not the only country that washes and refrigerates our eggs for the store. Thing is, if the birds were kept in better conditions, they wouldn't need to wash the eggs, and if the eggs weren't washed, they wouldn't need to be kept refrigerated. Funny how that works... But I digress. Y'all probably know that anyway. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about these birds, but I think there are just as many about anything, even common pet animals like dogs and cats. It just stands out to us when people say silly things about chickens because we actually know better when most people don't!

I'm not a picture person, but am proud to share my baby girl graduating college this evening. weddings a month away!

e Big congrats to her!!

 

[Faraday40]

Expensive chicken treats & Mother's Day gifts...

I wanted a nice hanging basket of flowers. I borrowed an empty basket from Dad's & bought some colorful pansies. After filling & assembling the basket, I realized my old plant hook was missing. I temporally hung my basket on a tree branch. Yesterday after installing a new hook on the house, I went back to retrieve my basket. Along the way, I must have gotten distracted & set the basket down. Last night when I went out back to lock up the chickens, I noticed the remains of my beautiful basket. I guess the hens got a fancy Mother's day gift.



Meanwhile DD baked me a cake. She forgot to spray the pan, so she removed it in clumps & tried filling in the cracks with frosting. Why worry about sticky crumbs in the frosting when one can simply add sprinkles to hide them! Lots & lots of sprinkles! It was a mess & then I had to clean up the kitchen, but it was made with love.




So Happy Mother's Day to all those who can understand the joy and laugh with me at the pics above.

 

[Faraday40]

In other news, my daughter had her big dance recital this weekend. Unlike her baking skills, she practiced all year & did a fantastic job in all 4 of her routines.






I did the above pics at home before the show. Below pics were taken during the recital.

 

[iamfivewire]

Does anyone know of any updates or info for a 2016 chickenfest ?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Expensive chicken treats & Mother's Day gifts...

I wanted a nice hanging basket of flowers. I borrowed an empty basket from Dad's & bought some colorful pansies. After filling & assembling the basket, I realized my old plant hook was missing. I temporally hung my basket on a tree branch. Yesterday after installing a new hook on the house, I went back to retrieve my basket. Along the way, I must have gotten distracted & set the basket down. Last night when I went out back to lock up the chickens, I noticed the remains of my beautiful basket. I guess the hens got a fancy Mother's day gift.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7401192/
[COLOR=B42000] [/COLOR]

Meanwhile DD baked me a cake. She forgot to spray the pan, so she removed it in clumps & tried filling in the cracks with frosting. Why worry about sticky crumbs in the frosting when one can simply add sprinkles to hide them! Lots & lots of sprinkles! It was a mess & then I had to clean up the kitchen, but it was made with love.



So Happy Mother's Day to all those who can understand the joy and laugh with me at the pics above.

Oh, goodness, happy belated mother's day! At least the cake (and maybe even the flowers ) tasted good, right? (I'm sorry, I'm laughing my butt off over here! )

Does anyone know of any updates or info for a 2016 chickenfest ?

I asked a few pages back and was told there hadn't been enough feedback to have one. :/ Personally, I'd be just as happy with a simple potluck get-together like the last one as I would be with a big get together with demonstrations and catered food! I just thought it was fun meeting a few of the people from the thread.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Does anyone know of any updates or info for a 2016 chickenfest ?

I would love to just do a potluck and swap. Things are so busy for me right now, I just don't have the free time to plan something. After DD's wedding is over, I will try to get something going. Just need enough input from folks to say yes, they want to do it. It may be a mid summer or early fall event at this point.

 

[Indyshent]

After a lot of downsizing, I have four roosters (one's got a new home lined up, another's lame), 23 hens (including the two that ran back home after being rehomed), 4 pullets, one MW tom, three BBW poults, a handful of teenie weenie chicks, two bitty guineas, two golden pheasants, three Coturnix quail, and one lone Khaki drake-ling. I'll probably work my way down more on the hens. It's less than 50 birds... gosh, can't believe I ever had more than that.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Quote: I think it would be great to have a potluck this fall. I know you were trying to get something together up north but if that fall through maybe we could do something at the camp grounds again. I know my children loved it.