PBS: The Natural History of the Chicken (DVD)

I got this for Christmas from my husband... man, what a WONDERFUL dvd! SERIOUSLY awesome!

Most people best know the chicken from their dinner plates -- whether as thigh, wing or drumstick. Consumers barely pause a moment to consider the bird's many virtues. Filmmaker Mark Lewis (Cane Toads: An Unnatural History and Rat) expands the frontiers of popular awareness and delightfully reveals that this small, common and seemingly simple animal is as complex and grand as any of Earth's creatures.

Got some chicken poop lip balm for Christmas!

Check it out!

Grandpa says: If ya got dry lips put chicken poop on 'em so ya won't lick 'em.

Can you figure out which one is the double yolk?

Submitted by Jon Boyd. Unreal!
That HAD to hurt!

OMLET coop: Eglu!

I read about these a while back... and my friend Jeremy sent the link to me, so I figured I would share it with y'all. Check it out. Pretty cool chicken coop. Great for the burbs! Check out OMLET!

21 eggs from Barb so far...

She's the only one laying... weird. All the hens are living happily together now. They are all getting along. Phew! Our son found 6 eggs that were hidden by the coop this weekend... that brings us to a total of 21 eggs gathered so far. Go Barb!!!!

Joke of the Day

I found this on a blog... thought it was appropriate!

Chicken escaped! CHICKEN RUN!

So I put Jimmy in with Sookie. Incase you don't remember, Sookie was the ill chicken that we had to quarantine for a while... when we tried to put her back with the flock, her 4 sisters attacked her. So she's been living by herself for a good couple months now. Lonely chicken. Well, I read in a book the other day, that you start with your lowest ranking chicken and slowly put them all together in an open new space. And do it at night. So I did. I started with Jimmy and took her out there a few nights ago and she and Sookie seem to be getting along fine. Well, last night, I got home late and checked on the two, out in the big open fenced in garden, and there was no sign of Jimmy. I looked for a half an hour... finally, I found her. She flew out somehow, over the 8 foot fencing and was sitting in the dark perched on the back deck railing. Anyhoo... here are the two of them. I gotta put another chicken in there tonight. I think I will grab Betty.

Raising Backyard Chickens: newyorker.com

Susan Orlean on raising backyard chickens: newyorker.com

Shared via AddThis

Chicken Dominos and Chicken Drinking

Two images that came my way this week.

One (Tracey, Oakville, Ontario) Chicken Dominos. WEIRD!

Two (Jon, Mansfield, Ohio) His 9 thirsty hens drinking water.

FINALLY! We got eggs!

So yeah! It's celebration time! Barb has laid an egg a day since Thursday the 17th. What a glorious day! That little tart made some yumminess for our breakfast.

Here are some pictures...

first two eggs (overcast sky blue, which will ALWAYS be Barb's egg color)... you can see the size compared to my feet. Little smaller than the average egg. Then what they look like in a carton... then what they looked like fried up... then scrambled with toast and garden tomatoes... and to top it off, Grandma Mary's home made concord grape juice from their harvest next door. YUM!

CHICKEN LICENSE PLATE!

OK, so my friend Tracey, who lives in Toronto, Ontario, CANADA was at a Jay's game and took this picture with her phone. HAHAHA. Now if you guys know me... I have a funny license plate too (picture of my truck with my MMM MEAT plate. But I thought I would share this one... cause, ya know. It's chicken stuff. Still no eggs. But I found out it's because of the breed of chickens I got... they take a little longer... Patience....

NEWS: Police find pipe bomb stuffed inside chicken

Police find pipe bomb stuffed inside chicken

Device was large enough to harm a person if it went off, Conn. cops say

SIMSBURY, Conn. - Authorities in Connecticut are wondering who stuffed a raw roasting chicken with a pipe bomb and left it on a roadside.

Simsbury police Capt. Matthew Catania says a motorist noticed the chicken Monday morning. He says the bomb was large enough to harm a person if it went off.

The road was closed while the Hartford Police Department's bomb squad came and blew up the chicken.

Nobody was injured. No arrests had been made Monday night.

What happens when an egg explodes?

see for yourself...

The Chickenburger

Ok, so less than a minute ago, my friend Tracey sent me a photo of where she is at this moment.

At the oldest drive-in restaurant in Canada! The Chickenburger. Check it out! It's in Nova Scotia, Canada. She took this photo on her phone.

Got BALLs

So.
Dave bought some balls last night at Dicks.
Golf Balls.
I put them in the hen house in the nests.
I also put up a privacy cloth so they can feel more comfortable.
Hopefully this will get them BROODY!

Cross your fingers. We gotta git some eggs!

;)

This is how I feel about Barb the Chicken

I need to buy this sign. It refers to Barb.

No eggs yet. WTF.

So I either have lazy hens (if one's lazy, they're all lazy) or they are not comfy about their nesting areas.

This weekend, I will put golf balls in their nests for them to sit on and block off their nesting dorms to give them more privacy. I can't believe I don't have any yet. So disappointing. My sister-in-law has 10 hens and in 4 weeks, they have pooped out 162 eggs. I have major egg envy.

If these birds aren't going to lay, they are going to be dinner. haha.

So I will leave you with this funny video... interesting how chickens leave their head in one position no matter how they move.

Classical Chicken with Gonzo the Muppet

I have always been a fan of the muppets... this one brought a smile to my face. Watch it here:
BOCK BOCK!

A Real Treat

Chickens love treats.

This right here is cucumber, celery, shredded cheese and mealworms.The mealworms are high in protein and are great to give during the nesting season. Dee-lish! The big bowl is for Barb, Betty, Jimmy and Ronald Reagan. The small dish is for Sookie, who is still living by herself in the HUGE fenced in garden. This weekend, we plan to get Jimmy in there with her so she's not alone.

Sookie: CHICKEN ON VIDEO!

Hey... thought it would be cool for people to see Sookie in live action. Check out the small clip. It's tiny... but I never posted a video before... so let's see how this works.

Thanks!

All the hens at 17 weeks

I took these last night.

In the one photo you can see the three nesting dens.
Empty and soon to be full of eggs soon! Well, I hope. ;)

One picture is of the coop with the 4 hens and the other picture is Sookies blue/gray den and her area.

Sookie (yellow like Ronald Reagan) is in the garden area fenced in outside
Betty is a mix of red and black
Jimmy has a red head
Barb has a black head
Ronald Reagan is yellow

How to Pick Fresh Eggs: Consumer Reports

Just found this article in Consumer Reports on How to Pick Fresh Eggs.

Lonely Chicken?

So this morning, I went out to check on Sookie.

She was just standing in the rain. 

;( This makes me sad.

I felt her crop and it has food in it, but it should be fuller. She's not eating enough. I think she may be stressed out. 

Sooooo, I think I may put Jimmy in there with her. 

She's the smallest of the beasts, besides Sookie. 

I was reading that doing something like this may be the best bet. 

To be continued.

(cute photo)

 

The coop

This is where they live!

I bought the coop online at Green Chicken Coop.

Sookie, our tame chicken

Sookie is pretty tame. I guess she better be, since we nursed her back to health... $250 bucks later! Hopefully she will lay some golden eggs.

All the chickens are due to start laying this weekend. SO EXCITED!

Can't wait for our first organic fresh eggs!

Will Sookie be accepted back into the flock?

Sookie was out sick.

So this is the story.

One day, (about 3 weeks ago) I was out in the yard and found Sookie in the coop, immobile and panting on the grass.

I grabbed our pet taxi and rushed her to the Avain vet (the bird doctor).

There we met with Dr. Mohan. See picture.

The vet weighed her. Asked how old she was (3 months) and said that a bird her age should weigh closer to 3 pounds. Well, Sookie weighed less than a half pound. Yikes!

He did some throat cultures on her.  

Checked her crop and said that it had SOME food in it but she felt VERY ill.

He gave her all kinds of shots and medicine. He gave us shots to give her, drops to give her and a feeding tube with food to mash up and give her. WOW.

$250.00 later, we got home and placed her in a box in the house with a heat lamp and just prayed that she would pull through.

We woke up the next morning and she was laying flat with her head in her water dish. Oh no. Not a good sign. Her feet were paralyzed also. Which is common in sick birds.

My husband thought we should stop her suffering and put her out of her misery. She looked just about dead. TERRIBLE.

But, we figured, we got the meds and stuff... let's go to work and see how she is when we get home.

We got home. She had her head up. SWEET! AND, she took her meds, ate some cucumber bits and looked a tad bit more alive.

So we waited. Went to bed. Got up and she was sitting up a little better. She drank water and ate food... and we pumped food into her stomach the night before, gave her her shots and meds.

As days passed, Sookie began to get better, slowly but everyday was better.

The results came back and she had a bacteria in her throat. Klebsiella.

I called the doctor, asked when she would stand up. And he said, if she's eating and drinking, she will stand soon. Just keep her from the rest of the flock for a couple weeks.

Sooooo, Sookie is all better. I will post a picture of her. She's become very tame and pet-like. However, when we introduced her back to the flock, her sisters, they did NOT accept her. We tried to put her in at night like I have been reading about... but no luck. Barb is a bitch and Ronald Reagan teams up to peck at her.

The pecking order is in full order.

So today, Sookie is hanging out in my fenced in garden. We will see how she does there for now.

Yeah Sookie!

"Henbag" chicken purse

Check this out!

Have you heard about the chicken purse that's causing a ruckus amongst fashionistas? This is it! Just google "hen bag" or "chicken purse" and see for yourself. Blog posts and opinions abound. One thing's for sure: it makes a statement! 

http://www.mypetchicken.com/Chickenwear-Henbag_chicken_purse-P647.aspx

Today is the day I start a blog about my peeps

So yeah, I have 5 laying hens:

Barb

Betty

Jimmy

Sookie

Ronald Reagan

They are 3 months old.

I bought them from Meyer Hatchery:

http://www.meyerhatchery.com/

They are Ameraucana Standard females. I paid $2.70 each.

They were sent to my house via UPS. Unreal, huh?

So I picked this breed for their temperment, egg color and well, they just seem to be an all around good egg laying bird for a hobby farmer like myself.

This is their description:

Colored Egg Layer. These birds are excellent layers and produce eggs that range from olive green to turquise blue. This hardy breed was developed in the U.S. in the 1970's using Araucana birds from South America. Like their eggs, they come in as assortment of colors. They are favored for their eggs, but are large enough to be used for meat. Average mature weight: roosters 5 lbs, hens 4 lbs.

So... let me get this blog thing set up before I start writing a ton of stuff already!

;)

Cheers,

Jamie