NY chicken lover!!!!

[Tab's chicken obsession]

Tab--tell dh to treasure this now because he is going to miss this when they are all grown up and gone. Trace Adkins song "You're gonna miss this" hits it right on the mark. BTW--beautiful little girl. Sigh...mine are all grown up and out now. These pics bring back great memories. Oh, I see you dh was a former marine so only tough guys can post pics like this! Wimps wont.

DH found a pic on the internet someplace of a sign someone put out that said. Even the bad and tough answer the phone well a 2 year old hands it to them.
That made me smile because it's so true.

 

[Cass]

that sounds like quite a nice mini coop for the Sumatra's Cass. Good luck convincing them. lol. As you have probably already figured out, they are pretty darn independant and they have more going on in their pretty little heads than we think.

I put 2 of them in the new roosting/living area last night. They are PITIFUL this morning, trying to get back in the run with the other chickens. However they are going to live in the new elevated coop, end of story. Once I get them convinced to live there at night (day time they can do what they wish) I will put the other 8 out with them. I don't want 10 to get eatten because they can't figure out a safe place to sleep, so I have to wait til the 2 figure things out. Of course, that means that *I* will be going down nightly to find them, in the dark, and put them back inside the area I have deemed "safe". But once I am trained, all will be well.

 

[aceschix]

My youngest had to try it on DH too.

Edited to add  that DH is not impressed that I shared this photo. 

Awe...tell Travis he is almost as cute as your daughter!!

Can not wait to see you all at Rockin Stock!!!

 

[ktblue3]

Wow! You mean other people have problems with the stink? I thought maybe I was not cleaning their place enough. Well, that is probably true also. Thanks for mentioning what you all use to help keep the smell down.
K........

 

[Henicillin]

The girls are not laying as consistantly as they were earlier and I have to wonder if the weather has them all wacky.

So it's not just me? Maybe it's a syndrome only affecting pharmacy people named Amy.

They managed eleven today, and there were no hiding spots (Alan tore everything apart in the spot we suspected, and found nothing).

Honestly, if I do the math it's not too, too awful. Out of 22 layers, I have four broodies (although Gladys is pretty much done with the Peeps - she's ignoring them now), at least one wannabrood who may or may not be laying, and five Brahmas and three Faverolles, none of which are known for their spectacular laying rates. It still irks, me, though. Bunch of feed vacuums.

The drakies are looking quite pretty now, as they're nearly feathered in. I may end up rehoming a couple of them, though, as I'm really leery of the 1:1 draken ratio I have. I don't want the ladies to be chased to death by lust-crazed drakes!

 

[pharmchickrnmom]

Ahahaha. that may be true Hen! Out of 8 hens I have one broody (psychotic betty) who is not laying and I suspect a couple of infrequent barred rocks (no name and nellie) so I am only getting 5 eggs a day. Hmmm, and I found the remains of a broken egg in the nest box. Only evidence was some yolk that had dried somewhat on the bottom. I asked my dd if she saw it there when she got eggs earlier and she said no. Either betty broke it, ate it or one of the other girls did it. I know its hard for betty to get to eat because the other girls are mean to her. I think, however, it may be no name. I will have to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I hope the rir are good layers because I have yet another potential customer who wants to buy eggs. So many customers, so few laying hens right now!!!

Hey Cass--let us know how many nights you had to spend in the new coop with your cheeps to show them how safe it is and how cool it is to be there. Hope you can get up and down okay!

Watch that first step...its a doozy!

 

[featherz]

My girls are laying like gangbusters! Maybe they are just bored being on lockdown all day or maybe they were secretly hiding eggs in the bushes. My older layer coop gave me 4/7 today which isn't bad for them (2+ year old hatchery birds), my year old coop gave me 14/17 and my pullet coop gave me 6 teeny eggs out of 9 that are old enough to lay. I have a big bowl full of cute pullet eggs - blue, pink, green, olive and brown. =)

 

[Cass]

Ahahaha. that may be true Hen! Out of 8 hens I have one broody (psychotic betty) who is not laying and I suspect a couple of infrequent barred rocks (no name and nellie) so I am only getting 5 eggs a day. Hmmm, and I found the remains of a broken egg in the nest box. Only evidence was some yolk that had dried somewhat on the bottom. I asked my dd if she saw it there when she got eggs earlier and she said no. Either betty broke it, ate it or one of the other girls did it. I know its hard for betty to get to eat because the other girls are mean to her. I think, however, it may be no name. I will have to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I hope the rir are good layers because I have yet another potential customer who wants to buy eggs. So many customers, so few laying hens right now!!!

Hey Cass--let us know how many nights you had to spend in the new coop with your cheeps to show them how safe it is and how cool it is to be there. Hope you can get up and down okay!

Watch that first step...its a doozy!

I couldn' t stand their pitiful peeping, I put them back in the regular coop. I'm gonna try again later this week,but find a way to keep them up there in the high coop all day so they know that it is "home". ( I was in tears listening to them trying to find someone to cuddle with, once everyone went back into the coop)

 

[Henicillin]

My girls are laying like gangbusters! Maybe they are just bored being on lockdown all day or maybe they were secretly hiding eggs in the bushes. My older layer coop gave me 4/7 today which isn't bad for them (2+ year old hatchery birds), my year old coop gave me 14/17 and my pullet coop gave me 6 teeny eggs out of 9 that are old enough to lay. I have a big bowl full of cute pullet eggs - blue, pink, green, olive and brown. =)

Oh, so that's where all my eggs are going! Now I know!

 

[Lapeerian]

Looks like everyone had a good weekend, lots of chatter today! Travis - cute hat! I have an upcoming 2 year old party to work on, got all the party supplies, now to get all the rest of the plans together.

My weekend was less than stellar. My old pony Bingo died Thursday night. He was laying down when we got home from work in some tall grass in a wet patch of lawn. We helped him get up and I forced him to go to the barn (because he always leans back against a wall to sleep). He got a shot of Banamine and I also picked up a new bottle of Azipen to try another round. Found him in his stall Friday morning.

There was no suitable place to bury him in his favorite spots on our lawn, so picked a nice shady spot in the main pasture for him. I took his leftover bags of grain to my fellow horsewoman down the road today and talked for quite some time. We always get caught up swapping horse stories. But when I explained all of his symptoms leading to his death, she suggested Congestive Heart Failure. Reading over the symptoms online, she is right. He never had any of the edema, but everything else fits. That explains why the Dex did nothing for his breathing problems, because it wasn't a breathing problem. It is relieving to know what he died of and that there was nothing I could have done to cure him, but wish I had known sooner and I would have put him down 2 weeks ago. He stopped eating last week. I miss him terribly, he was my best friend for 20 years. Even hubby misses Bingo yelling for his grain each morning as soon as you walk in the door. I look out on my back lawn and remember him grazing near the deck. I took down the fence and mowed the lawn today.

In the chicky news, the final 3 big kids were moved into the main group this weekend without any issues. We got home late tonight and everyone was in the coop up on the roosts except for the big 3. And 2 of them were outside the fence. Got them in and closed up for the night. That fence is going to drive me crazy.

The gound is so hard and full of rock near the garage, I can only get the step in posts in 2", if that. Then the wire springs back up and pulls the posts out of the ground. Posts are serving no real purpose, as that section is the old fashioned 4' chicken wire which is heavy enough to stand up on its own, until the posts topple over. The chooks are probably getting out either over the 3' wire where it is mashed down from us stepping over, or under the wire because we all know how well chicken wire conforms to changes in topography.