Oh, things have gotten strange at Fractured Farms. Did I mention we now have 3 roosters? Yep, the two little Silkies I picked out were boys. I had a 50/50 chance of them being boys and I tend to have rotten luck. Fortunately, Shakey and Buttercup are ok with Forte being the boss and he hasn't tried to go after them. Shakey and Buttercup have little fights but they're hysterical (I never have my phone with me when they duke it out). They'll both fluff up their necks like those gila (sp?) monsters and try to look all fierce. Then they'll jump at each other and occasionally leapfrog over the other one. I figure it's like puppies play fighting. Whatever, it's cute.
Speaking of my boy Forte, he's still quite the ladies' man, although I was wondering about him last night. When I went to close up the coop for the night, he was in the nest box that gets the most use. A rooster in a nest box. Okayyyyy...if I hadn't seen him mount the hens on numerous (numerous!) occasions, I'd start to wonder about Forte being confused about his sexuality. Hey, if anybody would end up with a slightly confused rooster, it'd be me.
The girls are little egg laying machines! We usually get 3-4 eggs a day, which is pretty awesome since there're only four layers. The kids keep finding white feathers in the nest box and Shakey is the only one with white feathers, so they think Shakey is a girl, except I've seen him (her?) crow, or try to. It's pretty funny and pathetic. Maybe I have two confused little chickens. I really think Shakey is a rooster and so does Bud. He's heard all three of the boys going off, one after the other. First Shakey and Buttercup crow, and they're pretty bad (imagine the William Hung of roosters) and then Forte will show them how it's done. I'm trying hard to get that on video too.
Since we're getting a bunch of eggs, I decided to boil up a few for lunches. I'm SO glad my friend Michelle in Texas got me that fresh egg cookbook! I had to look up how to boil eggs. I mean, I know how to boil eggs; I've been cooking since I was 10 and I used to win lots of blue ribbons for cooking at the county fair. Cooking with "real" eggs is different than using the ones from the store. The ones from the store are who knows how old, so they peel easily after they're boiled. "Real" ones don't peel that easily unless you let them sit out for a few days or boil them for 15 minutes and then immediately put them in ice water. Out of a half dozen eggs, I think only one didn't peel decently. That's not bad.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Freeze Warning
Oh, my little chickie babies are NOT going to be happy tonight. The official "killing frost" hits tonight, taking with it what remains of my garden. Pretty soon there won't be fresh tomatoes to munch on, or grass, or weeds...
I'm not sure what I'm gonna do this winter. I'm thinking about starting some tomatoes from seed and trying to keep them going under the grow light in the basement. Or maybe I can till up the ground a bit and plant a bunch of lettuce - they love lettuce and it grows pretty well in the cold.
As the nights get cooler, the kids don't really want to come out of the coop. Now when I open up the door in the morning, they look at me like "yeah, I'm not leaving this cozy coop." When they do come out, everybody fluffs up their feathers and they look like they're wearing feathered puffy coats. I haven't started knitting for them but I'm tempted.
Right now I've got the heat lamp from when they were babies in the coop and it seems to be working pretty well. Some people are really anti-heater in a coop and I can understand why (electrical fires are never fun), but they don't have a coop that's getting near-constant breezes from the river. Lemme tell ya, it gets really really cold. If the heat lamp was good enough when they were babies, it's good enough now. It's securely clamped to one of the perches and away from any bedding. The kids love it, they take turns toasting themselves in front of it, like the cats and dog do with the registers.
FYI, if you get a heat lamp, don't get one with a Teflon coating. Someone wrote in to Mother Earth News in the current issue (Oct-Nov. 2012, I think) and said when they tried one, several chickens died overnight from the fumes. Not good, and I'm really rethinking using nonstick coatings on pans.
I'm not sure what I'm gonna do this winter. I'm thinking about starting some tomatoes from seed and trying to keep them going under the grow light in the basement. Or maybe I can till up the ground a bit and plant a bunch of lettuce - they love lettuce and it grows pretty well in the cold.
As the nights get cooler, the kids don't really want to come out of the coop. Now when I open up the door in the morning, they look at me like "yeah, I'm not leaving this cozy coop." When they do come out, everybody fluffs up their feathers and they look like they're wearing feathered puffy coats. I haven't started knitting for them but I'm tempted.
Right now I've got the heat lamp from when they were babies in the coop and it seems to be working pretty well. Some people are really anti-heater in a coop and I can understand why (electrical fires are never fun), but they don't have a coop that's getting near-constant breezes from the river. Lemme tell ya, it gets really really cold. If the heat lamp was good enough when they were babies, it's good enough now. It's securely clamped to one of the perches and away from any bedding. The kids love it, they take turns toasting themselves in front of it, like the cats and dog do with the registers.
FYI, if you get a heat lamp, don't get one with a Teflon coating. Someone wrote in to Mother Earth News in the current issue (Oct-Nov. 2012, I think) and said when they tried one, several chickens died overnight from the fumes. Not good, and I'm really rethinking using nonstick coatings on pans.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Oh boy, oh boy...
Ok, I know it's been a while since I posted. I um...um...I kinda forgot my Blogger login info. I forgot which email account I used. See, between both jobs and home, I check 5 email accounts a day. The one for the Blogger account was the Gmail one I had to get when I got my smartphone and I only use it for Blogger, so it doesn't get checked a lot. I don't exactly have an IT department, so I had to assemble the archaeology team to dig through my desk until the Post-It with the log in info was unearthed. So sorry 'bout that.
Anyway, big chicken news! Apparently Forte is not the only rooster at Fractured Farms. We had a report of Buttercup the Silkie crowing, and one day when I went to see if Buttercup was going off, I discovered Shake the Silkie crowing. I caught Buttercup crowing the next day.
Oh boy, oh boy.
Everybody still seems to be getting along. Forte is actually teaching the Silkies how to crow! It's so cute. Forte will go off and then a couple minutes later you'll hear one of the Silkies croaking out a fairly decent crow. They don't seem as loud as Forte so maybe they won't make a whole lot of noise. Bud's worried about bothering the neighbors. I don't know why - my mother in law lives next door and loves all the crowing. We planted some hedges between us and another neighbor, which should help block some of the noise. Besides, we have another neighbor who's louder than all three of the boys put together!
The only thing I'm worried about is aggression but I haven't seen any yet. Forte is bigger than Buttercup and Shakey put together and he's established himself as the Big Kahuna of the coop. Maybe the Silkies are ok with him being the big boss. And maybe the Cubs will still win the World Series...
Anyway, big chicken news! Apparently Forte is not the only rooster at Fractured Farms. We had a report of Buttercup the Silkie crowing, and one day when I went to see if Buttercup was going off, I discovered Shake the Silkie crowing. I caught Buttercup crowing the next day.
Oh boy, oh boy.
Everybody still seems to be getting along. Forte is actually teaching the Silkies how to crow! It's so cute. Forte will go off and then a couple minutes later you'll hear one of the Silkies croaking out a fairly decent crow. They don't seem as loud as Forte so maybe they won't make a whole lot of noise. Bud's worried about bothering the neighbors. I don't know why - my mother in law lives next door and loves all the crowing. We planted some hedges between us and another neighbor, which should help block some of the noise. Besides, we have another neighbor who's louder than all three of the boys put together!
The only thing I'm worried about is aggression but I haven't seen any yet. Forte is bigger than Buttercup and Shakey put together and he's established himself as the Big Kahuna of the coop. Maybe the Silkies are ok with him being the big boss. And maybe the Cubs will still win the World Series...
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