Back to Basic Living

Friday, Bernie finished the greenhouse. Yay! Saturday we filled in around the ground we leveled and added gravel to the floor of it.

As the sun heated it Saturday, the windows were streaked with moisture.

And the auto vent at the top opens and closes beautifully, depending on the temperature. There’s another vent on the opposite side that can be manually opened and closed.

And the white thing on the lower left that I thought was some kind of fan?

It’s actually another vent. The louvers can be manually opened and closed to allow air flow.

There is no question these vents are needed. I suspect that as the weather warms, the double doors will be open most of the time. Even with the temperature in the 40s Saturday morning, it was balmy enough in the greenhouse to force us out of our coats.

I immediately began moving in the potted plants I over-wintered in my garden shed. I’m not sure many made it through the frigid weather of this last winter. But I did see new growth on my butter fly plant.

Today I’ll be filling peat pots and planting vegetable seeds and hoping for the best. I can’t wait to play in the dirt.

Diesel and Dolly spent the majority of the day romping around the yard, chasing each other, and eating chicken poop. The fun ended when Diesel decided to give into temptation and chase chickens. One bad apple spoils the whole bunch. They were both sent inside to reconsider the whole chasing chickens thing.

I tried letting the two broody mamas out in the coop with their babies for a while yesterday. It didn’t last long. Broody1 started clucking for her chicks to come eat and Broody2’s chicks responded by running over to see what Broody1 had found. That set Broody2 into a jealous rage and resulted in another brawl. I got them separated and back into their pens, but not before combs and wattles were bleeding. *sigh* I have another plan to get these two out with their chicks, but it’s going to take some patience and time. Neither of which I have much of right now. But I’m tired of cleaning messy pens every day, so I’m willing to work on it.

Today we’ll be adding chicken wire to every plant in the yard, and around the garden area. The chickens do a great job at turning the soil, but they have no regard for the plants in it. My bulbs are starting to pop out of the ground, and the chickens just love the green leaves. Free ranging them has been a wonderful experience and I just love having them run around my feet when I’m out in the yard, but it certainly comes with a price. Maybe the chicken wire will slow them down. It’s more likely I’ll be battling chickens for my plants all year.

My niece confessed to me that she does not read every word of my riveting, completely enthralling blog posts. But she does look at the pictures. Can you imagine? In all fairness, she is a city girl with absolutely no interest in any activity that does not take place in an environmentally controlled setting, let alone activities that involve exposure to insects, dirt, or animal poop. She is like her Aunt Penny in so many ways, but she did not inherit my love of gardening and other outside activities. She is over 30 now, so there is little hope she will ever appreciate these things at this age, but I am determined to at least cultivate her interest in what I am doing. So now a little quiz for my Non-Reading-I-Only-Look-at-the-Pictures-in-Your-Blog niece - which potted plant has new growth? Read through this blog and call me with your answer. I may have other questions for you as well. I am, after all, your favorite Aunt. And I am interesting, dammit!

Bee Free,
Penny

We had quite a bit of excitement here on the homestead yesterday. As you know from my last post, we have two broody moms with five chicks between them. Well, yesterday afternoon I got to thinking that the nest boxes are up about two feet from the ground. It’s not unusual for mama hens to begin taking their babies out of the next within the first three or four days of their lives. I wasn’t concerned about the chicks getting out of the nest, I was concerned that once they did, they would not be able to get back into the nest. So I decided to move both broody moms and their chicks onto the floor of the coop, underneath the nest boxes. And move them, I did.

I sat with the broods for a while and everything went along just fine. Broody1 just sat in a corner with her two little little chicks cheeping happily beneath her. Broody2 brought her three chicks out into the middle of the coop and started teaching them to peck and eat. A couple of hens wandered in and checked out the chicks, and then moved on to the nest boxes. Everything was going better than I had hoped for. I went inside and over the next couple of hours I went back out to the coop about every 15 minutes to check on the situation. So far, so good.

After two hours, however, things changed. Swiftly and dramatically. I opened the front door to walk toward the coop and I immediately knew something was wrong. I could hear baby chicks peeping like crazy, and I could see a huge plume of dust and feathers flying out of the chicken door. I ran to the coop and opened door, and then stood there with my mouth open for a full minute. My two sweet, gentle, lovely little mama hens were in the middle of what looked like a bar room brawl. They were a screeching, screaming, clawing, pecking ball of feathers in the middle of the coop. I could not believe it. I quickly ran in and tried to separate them, and it wasn’t easy. Each time I would get them apart, they would fly back at each other and start fighting all over again. I finally managed to pick one up and as I stood, she had the other in her mouth by the neck. It was awful. I eventually got them apart and put each back in the nests they hatched their broods in. Then I looked around for the biddies. There were two. I grabbed them and put one in each nest box with a mama. I searched all over coop and there was not a sign of another biddy. I began to panic. I ran outside, laid on the ground and looked underneath the coop. The bottom of the coop is covered with chicken wire, but a one day old biddy could very easily fit between the wire. I laid there for a while, desperately searching for a sign of a biddy, but I could see nothing. And I could hear nothing. No peep, chirp, or scurrying. Nothing. I walked all through the woods by the coop searching for them. Nothing. I layed on the ground next to the garden shed and looked underneath it. Nothing.

Bernie was not home during all this. He had gone in to town to run some errands. By the time he returned, I was in the middle of a full blown nervous breakdown. I did my best to explain what had happened, but judging from the confused look on his face, I’m certain I was making no sense at all. I was standing there shaking like a leaf and mumbling something like “It’s hopeless. Hopeless! They’re gone. Gone forever.” when he said “Honey, they couldn’t have just disappeared. Let’s go outside and look together”.

We went into the coop and looked around. Nothing. We went outside and looked under the coop. Nothing. We walked through the woods searching everywhere. Nothing. And just when I began mumbling about the biddies being gone forever again, we heard a cheep. And then another. And it was coming from underneath the coop! I’m going to fore go the details on this. Suffice it to say that 15 minutes and a lot of running around chasing biddies later, we had the three escaped biddies safely tucked in with their mothers.

Two hours later I had built the pen that will house these mamas and babies for the next couple of weeks:

This is actually two pens - separated by more wire between them. Each is about 4′ X 4′. As soon as it was finished, I placed the mamas and their babies in them. And they seem very happy.

Broody1 got the worst damage during the brawl with Broody2. But in Broody1’s defense, she had been sitting on a nest for six weeks and hadn’t been eating for several days. She was very weak. Just look at her poor bruised eye and damaged comb:

Poor little thing. Today is the first day she has accepted food from me and eaten in many days. I’m really hoping she’ll start getting back to her old self soon. It was a little cool today, and she has kept the babies tucked up tightly underneath her.

Broody2 is doing just fine. She eats and drinks and calls the babies out to learn to peck and eat fairly regularly. I had a hard time getting pictures of her babies, but I managed to get this one (there’s one behind her, but you can’t see much of her):

Awwww. That is just adorable. This is one of the two White Faced Black Spanish mixes that hatched. In fact, I’m fairly certain this one is mixed with Bobby Lee, the Phoenix - notice the darker legs. The other is obviously mixed with Duke, a Silver Gray Dorking. She has orange legs and five toes - another trait of the Dorking.

I was not there when the fight between these two mamas started, but I am certain it had something to do with the babies. I have a friend that says mama hens fight like ninjas over their babies. Well, until you see it, you can’t imagine how accurate that description really is. I hope to never see it again.

I’ve written way more about this than I had planned, or probably should have. If you’re still with me at this point, please allow me to offer you some advice. If you plan to have chickens, read everything you can read about raising them and issues that can occur while you’re doing it. Talk to everyone you know that has chickens and ask them what their experiences have been. And then get your chickens and know that you will be able to write your own book when it’s all said and done. No book and no one can prepare you for everything in your future with chickens. Everyone is different. Every flock is different. They will have a lot in common but trust me, those little chickens will throw you a curve ball more than once. And at the end of the day, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Bee Free,

Penny