New Year's Blizzard

2014 is coming in with a small blizzard here at Fractured Farm.  Ok, the roads aren't drifting shut but the day is still young.  They're calling for snow most of the day but the chickens are doing better this winter than last year.  Moving the greenhouse so it's parallel to the run may have limited their view of the Mississippi River but it's blocking the wind so there isn't snow in the coop.

The chickens seem to be dealing with the cold and snow better than I am.  There doesn't seem to be the feather pulling of last winter, which just further convinces me that it was Forte the rooster behind it all.  Everybody is much happier since we re-homed him with a chicken farmer who needed another rooster to grow his flock.  When the temps first started dropping, they weren't too happy about being stuck inside most of the time, but since I started throwing their food and some corn on the floor of the coop, they perked up.  Don't worry, I put fresh bedding down frequently.  On the rare occasions lately when it hasn't been below zero, Cheeto and Honey and sometimes a couple of the hens will sit under the coop and soak up the sun.  

Yeah, they're handling it much better than I am.  Bud's had a head cold for a week, and I haven't been able to sleep much because of his snoring.  Since he's sick, he can't do much but get caught up on TVin the living room, which is something he wanted to do this winter, but binge watching "Dexter" isn't my cup of tea.  Serial killers don't help my stress levels, even if they only kill bad guys.  I'm huddled under blankets in the bedroom, trying to warm up by watching the Rose Bowl Parade.  There aren't a lot of heat vents in the office and while Bud can putz on his computer for a while in there, I can't write with numb toes.

How many days until spring?  

Spring at Fractured Farm

I know, it's been ages.  We'll get caught up.

After what seemed like a never ending winter. Spring finally showed up.  Good thing too, because Forte was thisclose to ending up as dinner.  It seems that a certain rooster decided that it was MY fault it was cold and he started attacking my winter coat.  If I put on a sweatshirt, no problem.  If I turned around and put the coat on, he turned into Psycho Rooster.  Now the temps are in the 70s and hopefully he'll forget about the coat.

The chickens are getting more comfortable in the yard and they explore more.  I may have to put up poultry netting.  I'm sure the neighbors are dying laughing, watching me running across the yard, yelling, "GIT BACK IN YOUR OWN DAMN YARD!!!!"  Usually they listen but sometimes Forte gets uppity and won't budge.  Usually I go get Bud and that takes care of it.          

Buttercup is starting to get sassy too.  He's got a lady friend now (one of the Orpies) and he thinks he's all that and a bag of feed.  Either that, or he gets PMS, I'm not sure.  One minute he'll let you pick him up and cuddle, and the next he's fluffing up all his feathers and stretching his neck, trying to look like a little, fuzzy  badass.  He and Fuzzy still get along with Forte so my attitude is, "Whatever."

I wonder how long it's going to take them to figure out how to get down to the dock...

Ninja chicken?

I think we may need to rename Shake the Silkie.

We've been debating a name change ever since Bake died last summer.  It kinda seems silly to have Shake without Bake but nobody could think of a good one.  I want something that reflects his personality, which is sort of butt-head rooster.  Shakey likes to make a move on the hens and does NOT like being picked up and cuddled, unlike Buttercup who loves to snuggle.

The other morning I went out to do the daily chicken chores and I had the big door open into the coop.  Shake and Buttercup had been flapping at each other earlier and Buttercup was standing in the doorway, enjoying a rare 45+ degree January day in the Midwest.  Suddenly Shake ran over and tackled Buttercup!  The two of them tumbled out of the coop and Shake landed in the chicken feed bucket.  Don't worry, they're both fine.  Shake is molting (loosing a few feathers, perfectly normal) and it's showing up the worst on his head.  Right now he just has 2 feathers, one on either side of his head.  I don't want to say he looks devilish, but...

Apparenly I have either a ninja chicken or a budding defensive tackle.  The kids want to rename him after some character in one of their videogames who's a tough guy (I can't keep those games straight) but I'm leaning more towards a football-type name like we did with Forte.  Maybe the Harbowl, I mean Super Bowl, coming up in a couple of weeks will provide inspiration.  You hear that 49ers and Ravens defense?  Who wants to have a weird Silkie rooster named after him?

Oh dear, it has been a while, hasn't it?  I was swamped at both jobs and just now came up for air, but fear not!  The chickens are just fine.

Since my last update, Winter has come in full strength.  I even had to leave work early one day the week before Christmas because a blizzard was raging.  So I got home and looked out the living room window to check on the chickens.  Now, keep in mind there's a BLIZZARD raging.  Guess whose chickens were under the coop, wet and huddled together?  Yep, mine.  I ran outside to try to shoo them into the coop but they wouldn't budge.  Anyone who tells you chickens know what to do on instinct is either lying or doesn't know my chickie babies.  Without another thought, I ran outside and dragged the little buggers inside the coop, one at a time.  Ok, Forte wouldn't let me grab him but I ended up chasing him in there.  That's when I remembered I was STILL IN MY WORK CLOTHES!  All I can say is Shout is great at getting mud off of dress pants. 

The chickens stayed inside for the next week.  I opened the door for them every morning as usual but they refused to come out.  Ok then.  I felt really bad because I never want them to be confined but it was their idea.  Finally, one morning Buttercup actually walked onto the ramp, flapped his little wings and began crowing.  The first chicken to brave the weather wasn't my big, bad rooster, it was my sweet little Silkie rooster who loves to snuggle.  Hooray for Buttercup the Brave!

After that, they finally went outside.  I shoveled out the run so they could walk around and now whenever there's snow in the forecast, I put down an old tarp to cover the ground in the run. I pull it up after the snow ends and they have a dry place to run around.

When the weather got colder, I worried about what treats to feed the babies.  Watermelons are hard to come by this time of year, and tomatoes are about worthless.  So again, I did what any modern homesteader does - I got on Google.  Turns out chickens like raisins.  Oh boy, do my kids like raisins.  Ever see a bunch of little kids with a pinata after it breaks?  That's how they act.  We now call raisins "chicken candy" and they get a couple handfuls every morning. 

Egg production has decreased to 2 eggs a day (down from 3-4) but that's ok.  It's mostly due to them being exposed to less sunlight.  They should pick back up again come spring.  And that's when my babies will be a year old!  Who wants to help plan a first birthday party?

Meanwhile, back in the nest box...

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.

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.

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...