Buddy and the Fox

Buddy the Rooster has not wanted to get into the chicken coop at night. He has been sleeping on the roof. I dont love this as it leaves him vulnerable to predators. So far ive left him alone about it but when the hens started joining him i began grabbing them and putting them up …

Buddy Goes Outside

We made it 6 days. We did not make it 41 days. On the morning of the sixth day Cashew had come to my bed and barked every hour on the hour since 10 pm the night before. I never hit deep sleep, ever, because every hour on the hour cashew was there barking in …

Acquiring a Rooster in Cherry Spring

Ever since Olive joined the menopausal bunch meaning i had no more laying age buff hens and Sumac turned out to be just Sue, my pipe dream of making Reese’s peanut butter cup chickens come february when their eggs would be large enough to contain a full grown chick, was drifting further away. I still …

9779

I give my chickens ful-o-pep 9779 scratch. I do that because theres ingredients in the scratch that act as a natural dewormer, plentry of vitamins, ingredients to support gut health, enough calcium to keep their shells hard, and their feathers are always a rich, vibrant, and shiny color. They always look really healthy when on …

The Rat Snake/Egg Eating/Surprise “Not the Rooster” Drama

One day i went outside and found an 8 foot snake skin hanging from the top of the pullet pen. I had never seen a snake that long and made a note that there was a rather large snake in the area. Now, rat snakes like to climb up high to shed their skins and …

The Pullets’ First Carton of Eggs

This was the first whole carton of eggs the pullets ever laid. The eggs started out very tiny. I had to decide which of the people i supplied with eggs got the first batch of enchantingly tiny eggs because as the chickens grew, so too would the eggs, and only one carton was ever this …

The Pullets Lay their First Eggs

When the rat snake posted up inside the pullets’ pen i thought, “what in the world are you doing in there? Why not get in the adult chicken pen where they have an occasional egg? Because the pullets were not supposed to start laying until september, so they started 3 weeks early. Turns out, the …

A Raccoon Problem

When it rains it pours. 3 days in a row i’d seen eyes in the dark and while they could have been one of my neighbor’s outdoor cats they looked a bit too high off the ground to belong to a cat and unfortunately i had my money on coon. On the 4th day a …

The Chickens Go Outside

It is exactly what it sounds like. The baby chickens graduated. Fully feathered and able to regulate their own body temperatures….they went outside. Poor Sumac has to stay in the house until he is 18 weeks old because he is meant to go in with the older buff orpington hens who are already on adult …

A Pitiful Amount of Grass

I had to wait for the last frost to plant the grass in the baby chickens’ pen. I didnt want it to freeze after id planted it. I emptied a whole bag of grass seed in there and covered it over with a thin layer of dirt, then watered it daily. Nothing happened. I mean …