Chickens Dickens

Warning! This post is about chickens! No x-ray stuff AT ALL!! Just Chickens!!!

It rained today and I got some cute pics of the ladies playing outside in the rain/mud. They are officially HENS now. Their hatchday was Aug. 1st 2007. They're not my little pullets anymore (tear), but old lady hens. Imagine being considered old, over the hill, cull-able after only one year of life.

Zela busy hunting worms.

Scratch,scratch, scratch. Peck, peck.



Butter got a little wild in the mud. Your mascara's running sweetie!

"Hmmm, are these good to eat?"

"Yes, mumph, gulp, mmm, tasty!"


Pippa poses for a picture.

"Ahhhh, paparazzi!! Run!"

"No more photos!"

Wet Feathers

I gave my pet chicken Butter a bath!
She loved it!

She took a nap after her bath, wrapped up in her towel, for almost 20 mins.

Dust Bath

It was wet and rainy today, so the girls decided to have a nice, long, relaxing dust bath.

Lavender started to lay again! She layed her first egg, in months, on Memorial Day. Her eggs are the little green ones. It's so nice to have green eggs again!

Knock Knock

I had some visitors to my backdoor today, looking for raisin donations.
Aren't they cute?

This is the flock of five minus Lavender.

She's STILL broody!

Gardening Square

I love, love, love square foot gardening! It's so simple and it makes perfect sense. I'm turning my entire backyard into a square foot garden. So far I have 6 beds with 5 more in progress (I'm not that great at carpentry).

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I have 4 3x3 beds, 2 3x2 potato bed/bins and 1 8x2 trellis bed.

The trellis bed is for tomatos. I have indeterminate varieties. They like to grow crazy all over the place, but with the trellis I (hopefully) can keep them under control.

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I bought my tomato plants from Territorial Seeds. They let you buy single plants at a time (as opposed to other catalogs that make you buy at least three), so you can try a bunch of different varieties without an out of control garden.

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Next year I'll ask to have my plants delivered in early May, instead of late April, because one of the plants arrived frosted and wilted.

As you can see in the picture to the right. The tomato on the far left looks a little dead.

They also had aphids!!! I'm NOT happy about that, because they spread to all my other seedlings. But a quick spray of neem and they're dead green pin heads.

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The picture to the right is a pepper plant post neem spray. The little white dots are the dead aphids. Take that plant suckers!

I hope to build another 2 trellis boxes for my melons. I'm trying a bunch of crazy Asian melons and one from Iraq. I bought the seeds from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds.
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The lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower seedlings that I planted out last week did not appreciate the 5 inches of snow that fell on Saturday. They are dead. Dead. Dead. It's OK, I have about a hundred more. I'm growing the broccoli, lettuce, ect. for my pet chickens. Broccoli is $2.00 a bunch at the grocery store and they can eat a bunch in about....um....60 seconds.
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The chickies are loving the grass and weeds, that I'm pulling up from my garden. I weed for a few minutes every day and feed them the weeds. Then they lay me some delicious, nutritious eggs!
I'm starting to love weeding.
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I'll try to take some pics of my garden soon.

Spring Chicken

Signs of Spring

My Easter Egger bantam hen, Lavender, is broody!

It's cute, but also kind of sad.

I don't have a rooster and I can't have anymore chickens, so she's sitting on 2 golfballs.

She takes very good care of her golfball babies.
She talks to them, tucks them carefully underneath her and warns the other hens to 'stay away!'.
I've explained to her that I have enough golfballs and we don't need anymore, but she won't listen to me.
I also warned her that if they hatch, she had better take good care of them and not let the golfballs roll around and get underfoot.

These are the nice green eggs she layed when she wasn't broody.

More signs of Spring!

American Cancer Society daffodils. I always buy 5 bunches. I keep 2 and give 1 to my grandma,1 to my mom, and 1 to a friend.

I started some seeds last Friday. They sprouted!

Peep Peep

I haven't written about my pet chickens in a long time, so...

This post will be all about them.

They arrived in a box at the post office on Aug. 1st, 2007.

I was expecting them to arrive the next day, but the post office called at 10pm and asked me to 'please pick up your peeping package'.

Sadly, one chick, a bantam barred rock, died from shipping injuries.

This is their first picture. From the right-clockwise: Pippa(Sebright Bantam), Honey(Delaware),Zela(Australorp),Butter(Delaware), and Lavender(EE Bantam).

They were very sleepy after hatching, being popped into a box, and traveling through the postal service.

I love how Pippa used to sleep on her head!

They grew up fast! Here they are at one week old.

Pippa's such a fashion model!

Here they are 2 weeks old.

At three weeks they're starting to look a little ratty. Poor pre-teenagers! Just wait it gets much worse. They lose all their baby fuzz and get their first big girl feathers.

At five weeks, Honey is starting to look like a big girl, but there's a long way to go. She's still a little chick!

At six weeks, they enjoy a juicy tomato and hopping up onto my back!

Here they are a seven weeks. The big girls, Honey, Butter and Zela really start to grow, leaving the bantams, Pippa and Lavender, in the dust.

The big girls are standard size chickens.

Bantams are usually miniature versions of standard size chickens. Like if you have a toy or miniature poodle, there's a standard size too.

However, Pippa is an exception to the bantam rule.

Sebrights are true bantams and there isn't any standard size (large) chicken of her breed.

Sebright bantams were bred by Sir John Sebright in the early 1800's.

They are the only chicken breed named after a man.

(You never know - this could be a winning Jeopordy question some day! File this info away.)

Well, this is a long enough post. More some other day.

Cookin' Cookies

I baked cookies tonight. First, Light-as-Air Sugar cookies and then Old-Fashioned Raisin Sugar cookies.

The Light-as-Air sugar cookies are light, airy,and crunchy. Their crust (do cookies have crusts?) is crispy, but their insides are very soft and tender. They have a subtle almond flavor (from extract) and I used superfine sugar mixed with lemon extract for the topping sugar. So, there's a little tangy bitter-sweet bite when you first taste the cookie.

The Raisin sugar cookie doesn't have any nutmeg or spices in it like other raisin cookies. The recipe calls for vanilla extract, but I always use both almond and vanilla extract. Also, I soaked the raisins in rum. They plumped up beautifully and make for a super soft tender raisin cookie.

And I used my very own eggs from my pet chickens! Fresh eggs, warm cookies, yum!

Double Yolker

This is a Jumbo double yolk egg my chickies layed yesterday.

I don't know exactly who layed it, but I think it was Honey. There were 2 eggs in the nest box in the morning, and Honey was the only girl hopping in and out of the nest box before I left for work. When I came home - there was a giant egg!!

That's a Medium egg underneath the JUMBO egg on the scale.

Yum Yum!

Nestbox Shuffle

This is Honey in the nestbox.

Today was a busy egg laying day!

All three of the big girls, Honey, Butter, and Zela layed today.

It took them all day and they complained (very loudly) about it all day. Well, Zela doesn't complain. She is the only regular daily layer, so she just popped her's out and hopped out of the nestbox without a cluck.

Butter and Honey, however complained all day. One would hop in the nestbox and then the other one would hop in, next to the first girl. Then one would hop out and complain (loudly) about the other girl in the nest box AND THEN THEY WOULD DO IT 50 MILLION MORE TIMES!!!

I was sure my neighbors were going to finally complain.