Maine

[buckabucka]

Love the owl photo!
I cleaned out my coop too. Not the super-thorough cleaning I do in the summer, but I did replace the shavings on the floor. I gave them some white pine branches to snack on. I wish I had thought to dump the old shavings in the run. Some of them went up where we hope to plant a strawberry bed someday, but some just got dumped over the bank, because the compost was full. Parts of the run are dry, other parts are under water. I dumped leaves in there, but some drainage would be nice. Hoop coop is remaining dry this year, so far.

Oh, and I found out that my new favorite tool that I've been chipping ice with is not a pick-ax, but a mattock.

 

[lazy gardener]

I was able to lift the ice block off the hay bale cold frame today. I debated leaving the glass on it this fall, but the snow storm followed by 2 ice storms decided the matter for me, so the glass was left in place, fortunately, it was fine.

 

[Cknldy]

My favorite ice pick is the tire hole punch thing that comes in a tire repair kit. The greatest thing ever for the frozen waterer trays! Just turn it around and hammer the sides of the container and the ice pops right off. Told dh I was going to redesign them and give em a new name!

 

[GrafixMuse]

Thanks! The Barred Owl was amazing to see and photograph. He didn't pay much attention to the girls as I enticed them into the safety of the coop with sunflower seeds and closed them in early for the night. Now that the bird feeder is gone, I hope the owl doesn't think my flock is food. I know he can probably get through the chicken wire pen if he wanted to but the hardware cloth protected coop is safe.

I took advantage of the warm day today to clean out the coop too. I was happy that the shavings broke down as well as they did but really wanted to get some fresh bedding in there. The pen had some water from yesterday's rain and snow melting, but I covered it with straw and the girls enjoyed digging through it all day.

 

[suzMEchicks]

I really enjoyed that owl picture. So beautiful but so treacherous! I am so glad this weekend is over. Driving into work Saturday morning was one of the worst I've ever had but I made it. Not one drop of sand or salt on the state roads. Its ridiculous. One really good thing happened over the weekend was all the ice dams on my roof melted away.
Odd thing happened yesterday. When I came home from work I went out to check the chickens and collect the eggs. It was about 8 pm by then. Anyway, there were 7 eggs. I only have 6 chickens and there werent any eggs when I checked on them before I went to work. I asked them if they invited a friend over but no one's owned up to it yet! Isnt that odd?

 

[Cknldy]

Read about that happening a couple of times on here. Folks seem to not believe it but I think it could happen. Disbelievers say well, it takes 24 hours for an egg to develop but what if one got backed up alittle and the next started developing? I think it's totally possible that the egg that got backed up could be laid in the morning and the 'on time' would could be laid later the same day. Yep, I'd be asking who the secret friend is too! Lol

 

[Jazor]

Seems we all had the same bright idea to clean the coop while it was warm. Makes sense, get that frozen manure out of there while ya can. Mine have been trying to run out of the coop and dig around in the hay in the barn, so I decided to cut out the middle-man and simply give em a bale of hay to play with. They were happier than I would have thought. I had no sooner cut the jute and tossed one chunk in the corner and set the rest down before they were already taking turns getting on top of the bale and scratching around. Crazy weird buggers.

 

[IZZYBELLA]

Beautiful owl photo!

I faced the same puzzle once, too, suzME... had one more egg than I should have. I'm sure I just missed it from the previous day, but it is funny.

 

[suzMEchicks]

They are funny creatures. This past couple weeks even with light on all the time, i was getting 2 eggs here , 3 or 4 there. Then there's 7 . I dont know. I could've missed one that morning I guess. Anyway I want to ask about other things you guys feed your chickens besides the chicken food and water of course. I had a couple of boxes of cereal that were way out of date . Kashi. They loved that and yesterday my husband gave them a small loaf of zucchini bread which there is no sign of today. He made it, said it didnt come out too good for his liking. I always give them bananas that are getting too brown which they love. The only fruit they havent liked is citrus. What do you think? Would you not give cereal or home baked stuff? Probably should be careful about sugar, salt and grease. I'm off to the Boston area. Thank God for good driving weather. Enjoy this beautiful day everyone!

 

[Jazor]

They are funny creatures. This past couple weeks even with light on all the time, i was getting 2 eggs here , 3 or 4 there. Then there's 7 . I dont know. I could've missed one that morning I guess. Anyway I want to ask about other things you guys feed your chickens besides the chicken food and water of course. I had a couple of boxes of cereal that were way out of date . Kashi. They loved that and yesterday my husband gave them a small loaf of zucchini bread which there is no sign of today. He made it, said it didnt come out too good for his liking. I always give them bananas that are getting too brown which they love. The only fruit they havent liked is citrus. What do you think? Would you not give cereal or home baked stuff? Probably should be careful about sugar, salt and grease. I'm off to the Boston area. Thank God for good driving weather. Enjoy this beautiful day everyone!

Actually you can feed them just about anything really. Naturally you don't want to feed them junk all the time, but they will eat most things--like you said not many birds will eat citrus. They get all of our leftover/excess veggies and I use bacon fat to make them suet that they seem to really like. I make tons of organic feed for them with about a dozen different grains etc. and they seem to like that plenty--I mix in their multi-flock to stretch it.

Lot of people are into sprouting, so I figure I'll give that a go as well. Might be an easy way to keep greens around for them.