Sunday, June 30, 2013

Speckle hits the big time!

Speckle has landed a part in off-off-off-Broadway! The scout came by two days ago and picked her right up. She is now rehearsing and you will see her soon at the Aloha Theatre starring in "Women Behind Bars", as Rosarita, the cellmates' chicken! Speckle is our young, black and white, mild mannered, chicken of yet undetermined sex. Heshe was the free exotic chick thrown in with the 24 meat birds we received from Murray McMurray hatchery 9 weeks ago. And now she will be a starlet! Well, I hope that:

  1. They treat her well in Hollybird.
  2. They bring her home afterward (it was only a loan, and she is lovable).
  3. She doesn't expect too much worship when she gets home, being a star and all - she's gonna get the same food as the rest of the chickens!
We miss her....

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

I love my gel toes!

You may be wondering, "What does that have to do with chickens?" It's more about 'What's behind the feathers!" I believe, and I am not alone, that a woman need not sacrifice glamour to work on her farm. It does take some effort, however. One of my major problems regards my toenails. I get a pedicure every month. The nail polish takes approximately 24 hours to really dry firm. Within that 24-hour period, my dogs usually step on my toes, I cannot put my boots on or the nails become 'textured,' etc. Last week, I was scheduled for a pedicure, but we were also scheduled to butcher some roosters immediately afterwards. I am NOT going to butcher roos in my slippers (Hawaiian for flip-flops)! So I gave in, went the extra mile and got 'gel toes.' Gel toes are getting gel polish on your toenails. This is a UV-light cured treatment that is immediately hard as nails. Costs extra, and I always thought it was extravagant on toes, but... I could put my boots on right away!  And they are beautiful!  See for yourself:

Of course, while we were at it, we added some glittery bling! I am now addicted! Gel toes every month for me! I'll just work extra or sell more eggs, or whatever!  Whee! And, they are dog and chicken-proof. Doesn't get better than that.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

More Dog Food in the Freezer!

One thing about chickens... if you let them lay eggs and breed indiscriminately, you get a lot of roosters. A modest chicken farm doesn't need a lot of roosters. Of the eggs we have incubated, 70% have been roosters. Our friend has chickens on her property, and most of them are.. you guessed it.. roosters! We prefer to eat our young Jumbo Cross Rock Chickens than roosters, but our dogs are not as particular! Dress a rooster and throw it in the pressure cooker, debone it, and it becomes the protein in a big batch of dog food for our 4 big hounds.  The hard part is catching and butchering the roos. Well, we went to our friend's this am, and she had closed up the coop after dinner last night and managed to catch 7 roosters and 3 hens in the coop. We rounded them up, and now have three new hens in with Speckle, and 7 roosters in our freezer.

Dog Food recipe:

3 lbs of ground grass-fed beef, boiled or 1 rooster, stewed or 2 lbs of organ meat, stewed and chopped
1 big bunch of greens, preferably kale or collards, but any will do, chopped and steamed
7 cups cooked brown rice
3 lbs pumpkin or sweet potato, cooked an chopped
1 tblsp cinnamon
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbl basil or oregano or rosemary
Hot water from the cooking for consistency.

Our lab was 120 lbs and bad hips. On this diet, she got to eat a lot, and is now down to a good 80 lbs.  Been on it for 8 years now.  For young dogs, we sometimes mix it with high grade kibble.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Marys got a bad rap!

I was so smart. I had it all figured out. The Marys, or one or two of them at least, were the brown egg breakers in the big pen! I had caught them red (or yellow-yolked) beaked one day - two of them, munching away on an egg in the nest. And there was, usually, a light blue or green egg in where the residue (proof of the crime) was. Thus my theory: the Marys didn't want to lay their eggs with the brown ones, so they just ate them, or broke them and threw them out, and laid their pretty blue ones in their place.Made sense to me. That's why, if you have been following this silly chicken soap opera, I moved all 5 Marys into the new pen (Junior's pen), away from the bulk of the brown egg layers, and where there are lots of nice new nests.

Problem solved.

And today..... in the big pen.... where there are no Marys... pecked open biggest brown egg in the nest! Right under blacktail - one of our little brown egg layers. That would be yolk on MY face. I had to go over and, yes, apologize to the Marys for blaming them and being so irritable at them. But now, I still have a mystery.......

Was it blacktail? She was sitting the wrong way in the box (is there a right way?). Or was it someone else? How do I find out, short of isolating the hens one-by-one?

18 eggs today
1 broken
1 from Dilly's pen
4 from Jr's pen (3 blue from the Mary's and WT's brown)
12 from the big pen

How many hens in the big pen?
2 angels
3 blues
5 reds
blacktail
whitetail
blacky
goldy
5 new ones (Vera's - 2 may be Roos)
Total: 19

I sure have a lot of non-producers! We are going to go get them some fruit tomorrow - papaya - that should cheer them up!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Wild Thing Escapes!

We arose early this AM, 6 or so, and ran down to see how the flocks were faring. The big pen was doing okay. All the new hens were milling around, the big ones (current residents) were chasing the new, smaller ones around, but not inflicting much harm, just being bossy.We did a head count, and.... Wild Thing was missing! That's impossible! Nothing gets in the pen; nothings gets out of the pen. We looked in the coop, high and low, in the tree, in the bush, in the compost box, in the corners, on top of the ladder, under the nest boxes...no Wild Thing.  We were flummoxed. Until Pat saw her wandering around outside, trying to get back into her old pen! We had misunderstood her standoffishness. Thinking she was lonely, we moved her to a more social environment. But she was really the top of the pecking order and wanted to stay that way! Even though we had moved 4 bigger chickens into that old pen of hers, we caught her, and just popped her back in her old pen. (Junior's Pen) The chief of the 5 Marys immediately challenged her and they bumped chests for a few minutes - totally hilarious - Wild Thing was smaller but wouldn't give up and puffed herself up as big as she could! The Mary backed down, and Wild Thing is now back in her rightful place. We chicken 'experts' (hear my sarcasm) got that one all wrong! She went right up to the next boxes and laid us an egg. Thank you, WT.

Another day, another drama... Chicken Soap Opera at its best.
Sue

Thieves in the night.

The social structure in our 4, no 5, no 4, well, however many, chicken pens required adjustment. So, as widely recommended, my wife and I tiptoed in after dark to change living quarters of some of the hens. It's very strange; chickens don't see very well at night and don't do much after dusk, so, even though we wake them up and irritate them by picking them up, they really don't raise much of a fuss. Which makes them very easy to move at night.  Easy to catch and easy to put back to bed in a new home. Then, it's our experience that they wake up and figure they are where they are supposed to be.

Our 5 new hens (one of them we now think may be a roo) are smaller, wild types. So we decided to put them in the main pen as a group. Wild Thing was in Junior's pen, but really hanging out by herself - therefore, we moved her with the new group. The other three Marys (Americanas, lay blue eggs) are still breaking brown eggs before they lay theirs in the nest, so I wanted to move them to Junior's pen with the two I had already moved there. And there was a beat-up Angel (white brown egg layer) that was sleeping in a corner by herself that we decided at the last moment needed a change.  We changed 10 chickens, one-by-one, sneaking around the pens in the dark with a flashlight.  Wheee!  And we will get up tomorrow at the crack of dawn to see if they are all getting along!  Fingers crossed!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Sad goodbye to Junior

Our beautiful polish rooster just died today. I don't know why. I went by his cage, where only a few moments before I had seen him doing a very good, roosterly thing, and he was laying flat on his back, spurs up. And he had gone through so much...*sob* We got him about one year ago with three other little polish buttonhead chicks, from our friend, who had purchase a whole bunch of them. We originally got them to keep our new silky baby chick company. The 5 of them were happy for about 9 months, until Junior was found laying on the floor of the cage! The hens were pecking at him, and I thought he was dead! So we went in and grabbed him, and, apparently, Fop (the now bigger silky rooster) had beaten him up and left him to the mercy of the hens. He was still alive, but looked like his neck was broken, i.e., he couldn't hold his head up.  But after a few minutes of love and petting, he held his neck up and seemed okay. So we kept him in the hospital cage for several weeks. When he got his crow back, albeit weaker, we put him in a new pen, and gave him 4 little hens. He was happy! Until today....He will be missed. This is Junior in his new pen:

Junior is one of the little ones below: (his baby picture) Fop is the big one in the middle.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

"Not Grandpa's Chickens"

Why did I name the blog site "notgrandpaschickens?" Several reasons:
  1. If you read this blog, there will be several, if not all, blogs about chickens. We have 58 currently. Love them. Find them amusing. Entertaining. Educational. Frustrating. Expensive. Thus the "chicken" part.
  2. It's pretty difficult to find a blog name that contains the word "chicken" that is available. (try it) Lots of folks either like chickens, fight chickens, cook chickens, sell chickens, or buy chickens. Thus it had to be long and somewhat different.
  3. My grandfather had what I always called "a chicken farm." I later found out he mostly dressed chickens (must have been a Puritan) rather than raising them, but all the same.... Which is much different than what I do. I may dress some, but only my own, and I acquire them either through incubation, buying chicks, inheriting strays or receiving neighbors' unwanted birds. Not at all like Grandpa. Thus, "Not Grandpa's Chickens."