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Can you have too many chickens? I’m obsessed with the fear that all my chickens are going to disappear now that I’m free-ranging them. I go outside and count them during the day. Repeatedly. I count them on the roost at night.
They go into the chicken house and fly up to their roost like such obedient little chickens. Wow. They just go in there. I love that! Then I go out there and shine a flashlight in their eyes as I count down the roost one by one. They love me.
The ducks are another thing. Sometimes they don’t go in the chicken house on their own and I have to go out and shoo them in there. I won’t even tell you about the time this week that I was shooing them in the chicken house and didn’t see a branch that had fallen during our recent flooding storms and I tripped over it, fell all over my face, and came up bleeding. Let’s just forget about that.
The chickens mostly stay in the yard area near the chicken house, but sometimes they run into the goat yard or up the hill or into the woods. I think they’re thinking about heading for the road. I’m working on being okay with wherever they want to go, kinda like when Ross drives to Charleston (the city, an hour away), which FREAKS ME OUT, JUST SO YOU KNOW.
Were we talking about chickens?
So despite the fact that the downside of free-ranging chickens is that now every day is like Easter and I’m hunting eggs because they don’t lay them where they are supposed to (well-trained on where to roost but not so well-trained with the laying), I’ve managed to collect 15 eggs in the past few days and just in case something happens to the 40 chickens I already have (the big chickens, the big chicks, the little chicks), I’m cranking up the incubator.
Usually I clean off eggs I collect, but because these are for incubating, I don’t want to mess with the protective shells at all. I’ve mostly collected Aracauna eggs because I love the blue and green eggs and none of the chicks we bought are Easter eggers.
I collected 9 blue and green eggs, 2 banty eggs, 2 big white (possibly duck) eggs, and 2 brown eggs.
Man, those banty eggs are little.
I dragged out the incubator, fiddled with the temperature for a few hours, finally got everything right and settled.
And, oh yeah, I hadn’t cleaned out the incubator from last year (Suzanne!) so I had to clean it out and I dumped the leftover year-old dried eggshell bits out in the yard. The chickens rushed over to gobble them up. I stood there watching them eat the eggshells from the very eggs they hatched from.
Okay, that’s just weird, isn’t it? Cannabalistic! Don’t tell anyone. Especially about the part where a year later, I was finally cleaning the incubator. I’ve been busy!
Yeah, so I’m no Martha Stewart. But in 21 days, I’ll have more babies!
Posted by Suzanne McMinn on May 8, 2009
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A second generation already..how cool is that!!
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and I didn’t even notice the eggshells in the incubator from last year…..I’m no Martha, either, she has a housekeeper!
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lol! My favourite saying: “Dull women have immaculate homes.” So true! We’re all too busy to clean and, uh, really, does anyone see it who would care. If they do, they can clean. That’s my philosophy, anyway. It works for me until my in-laws are coming, then all that hot air just seems to go out the window. Thankfully they don’t come to visit very often. (Don’t get the wrong idea, I love to see them.) and maybe they should come more often so I’m forced to clean… It’s a vicious circle of thought. I think I’ll go outside and dig instead. I’m ignoring the dirt all over the floor from wearing my farm boots through the house yesterday. (Why do I have white floors?? If I have a choice next time, they will be brown.)
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I know how you feel about the Charleston driving thing. Try Charlotte, NC. I have one cautious one,
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Iogene Burdette
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I love surprises, but hate waiting for them when one is promised.
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LOL! dull women have immaculant homes……….love it!!
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Just sharing a little advice that I’ve learned over decades of keeping chickens.
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I love fresh eggs, baby chicks, the whole thing…. even the smell of a hen house? I must be crazy!!! LOL
Good luck with the incubator and the soon-to-be baby chicks!
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It’s Rhubarb season in Ontario and I was wondering if you have any great recipes for this seasonal favourite? I am looking for a really good muffin recipe (mine never turns out quite right).
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Cannot wait to see the babies!
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Sadly the injured one died the next day – suffice it to say we now know where the term “hen pecked” comes from. {{sniff}}
We now have 4 Bantams, 2 Sicilian Buttercups, and 10 Ina Reds coming up the ranks to lay eggs – oh and 42 Cornish Rocks for the freezer!
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I don’t know how in the world the chickens did it, but our neighbor (100 yards or so away) had chickens to and they always all came home to the correct hen house every night (very weird).
LOL…dull women have immaculate homes….well ladies and gents….I must be sooooooo exciting…LOL
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THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF US. We eat some of the chickens we raise (my husband does the processing, I’m too much of a wimp to do it), we eat plenty of eggs and sell what we don’t eat, but we’ve definitely hit the “too many chickens” stage.
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~Jenny~
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