Thanks to Michelle and her positive thinking! My little hen has been stashing away some eggs for quite awhile!
13 eggs!!! Hers and some others. I’m glad she’s ok 🙂
Chickens
to be fun…
a little scary looking at times…
downright bizarre…
and so serious in a silly way that makes me laugh!!!
It was all about the chickens this morning. My brother brought a couple silkie cross roosters over that I’m not really sure we needed, but they have really cool markings and are very friendly.
Our other rooster left a little while ago because he did this to my poor hen. She had such pretty feathers!!! Hopefully they grow back before it gets too chilly or else I’ll have to knit her a sweater 🙂
The new boys are handsome and my favorite of the two has some interesting colors. His feathers are half blue, half red.
I love the colors and patterns.
After we got the boys settled in, we went over to the neighbors where there were a couple unwanted roosters. The dad was ok with putting them in the stew pot, but the little girls who raised them from cute little chicks weren’t. I am so used to our banty and banty cross chickens – these guys were HUGE! My brother agreed to take them and I was even happier with our little guys.
My brother also helped me open up the other pens out front so the chickens can go exploring in the jungle. Everyone was roosting in the barn tonight and all seems well with the new arrivals.
Look!!! We have baby chicks.
You may think it is the black one that doesn’t belong, but look closer…
one of them is a baby duck 🙂
The mama is being great to all of her adopted babies. None of these babies are actually ‘hers’. They are all from eggs from other hens. She had her mind set on being broody and I felt bad for her, so I gave her some fertile eggs. She has 5 chicks and 1 duckling.
Baby chicks aren’t as fun to play with as ducklings, but he was still enjoying them.
There’s a bunch of pretty colors – all the way from solid yellow to solid black. I have no idea what they will turn out like, except for the duckling 🙂 All of the chicks are some sort of silkie cross – they are the best mamas.
The whole family had to be moved because we have several camping trips on the calendar and the pen that the chickens are in isn’t chick proof. They can fit through the smallest crack! My brother made these off the ground pens for me when we had the raccoon attack. I have two that are empty and they are the perfect place for a mama chicken and her brood.
Now that all of the babies are hatched and they are in a safe house it is time…
for…
a…
little…
nap.
Have a great 4th of July everyone!
My son woke me up this morning saying that it was time to get up because the rooster was crowing 🙂 I wasn’t sure if he was really telling me the truth because he likes to tell tall tales! I told my husband about it and he said “Oh yeah, he was crowing a bunch yesterday!” So the mystery has been solved – ‘she’ is a ‘he’ 😉 Hopefully he stays nice and mellow. I guess he is just a late bloomer.
Their bellies may be full of babies, but they can still run and throw their heels up on a sunny day.
The ultra serious, Magoo, was feeling pretty good too.
Most of the ewes have big udders now and lambing should start this weekend. The weather looks beautiful all week, which is a big blessing! Pretty soon you will see cute little baby lambs here 😉
Here are some pictures of my other chickens.
This is Fancy Pants, I am guessing that she is some sort of frizzle cross.
This is Henny Penny II, she is one of the mamas and looks exactly like my pet chicken I had growing up. That hen used to let me carry her all of the place.
Here is a picture of the whole group.
Here is a close-up of the one in question from just a couple weeks ago. The comb and waddles have gotten a lot bigger!
Calling all chicken experts…
My chicks hatched last July and are now 7 months old. At what point do roosters start crowing?
I thought that all the ones I had left were hens, but now I’m not sure.
My little black chick, that I thought was a hen, looked like this for a long time.
This is what she/he looks like now.
The comb and waddles are a lot bigger than my other chickens and she/he walks around all puffed up and macho. I haven’t heard any crowing though? I really didn’t want a rooster in my small group, but I really like this chicken. Any opinions?
It seems like ages ago that we took a little trip to Tammy’s farm. We were going to pick up a dog crate and some fleeces. She borrowed the dog crate to transport Kingston in. She is using him to breed her new Border Leicester girls.
He was one of our crossbred lambs from this last year. He is 1/4 Navajo Churro, 1/4 Border Leicester, and 1/2 Blueface. His fleece has a lot of Blueface qualities to it and is beautiful! I just sent it off to be processed and I am so excited to get it back.
I picked up some fleeces to transport along with my fleeces to the fiber processor.
This is one of her Border Leicester fleeces and it is beautiful!
Of course we had to visit all of her critters…
The pigs came running to greet us and find out what goodies we had to offer. They weren’t disappointed with the garden spoils we gave them.
I love this guy – so much character!
This pretty hen disappeared awhile ago and came back with 9 babies. Danica made the mistake to go after the babies and the mama sent the babies to the barn with a loud “squawk” and then very loudly chased Danica down. I was laughing too hard to get any pictures. Danica gave all of the chickens a very wide berth after that!
These three were having a little pow wow.
My son and his friend thought the goats were very funny!
Danica had a lot of fun running around with Tammy’s Aussie puppy.
On our previous visit, I was surprised to see her spotted lambs that were Jacob crosses. Usually you will get black lambs with little splashes of white on them when you breed a Jacob to any other breed. You can imagine my shock when I saw that a few of the lambs also have horns. The polled gene is supposed to be dominant. Very interesting!
On the way home, we found this stunning red tail hawk. He posed for quite awhile 🙂
The boys loved this castle and we all imagined there was a dragon in the tower making the smoke.
My brother made me a wonderful barn for my chickens a couple years ago,
but I haven’t had a good chicken yard. I had regular sized chickens and then switched to bantams this year. The yard was adequate for them, but didn’t give them a lot of room to stretch their wings. Thanks to Craigslist, I have some great poultry pens now and the chickens are the proud owners of one of them. The pens were owned by a big game farm and they recently sold all of their birds. The pens were taken down and sold as panels. Each panel is 6′ high by 20′ long complete with netting for the roof. The chicken yard is 20′ x 20′ and the chickens love flying around!
They also like to come and go as they please.
This chick has found a bug it is about to pounce on.
I love the banty girls – this one reminds me of the banty hen I had growing up. Her name was Henny Penny and she would let me carry her around everywhere. She was a very neat chicken.
This girl is the queen bee and referees everyone – no one is allowed to have too much fun. Party pooper!
One more project I can check off my to do list 🙂
Stories from the Farm 
