Even though the posts are generally shorter, Wednesdays are generally productive days; this was no exception. With Ron out of order, due to illness and visitors, Sue has begun to tackle the remaining tasks on the RCW on her own. Plus, she’s been stocking up the feed and seed and alfalfa and hay for when she’s going to be gone (starting this Sunday, back next Sunday). Travel always takes way more preparation than you initially realize, but I think it’s important that Sue takes the time to attend this class, and have some time away too. I shouldn’t be the only one who gets to play! Anyway, progress is always a good thing, even though you can’t always recognize that you’re actually making it. Continue reading →

Hey! Thanks for logging on to read what’s happening. Yep, we’ve been off-line for a bit – two posts missed. It worries the folks when we’re not on schedule, but it’s a Good Friday to update from the week.  Are you already anticipating what the egg report is going to look like! Maybe I’ll create a table for the week – that’s a good idea, we’ll see what I come up with.  Otherwise here’s the week’s update. Continue reading →

When ever I travel, I always have a lot of catching up to do – blog wise – when I get home.  I may not be able to cover everything that I missed over the weekend and Monday, in one post today. But I thought I’d give ‘er a go, then maybe Friday we can go over the remainder and talk about the special report from my trip.  So, let’s get going…

Sue was GREAT at taking photos while I was gone.  She and Ron worked more on the RCW (Romny Chicken Wagon) Thursday and they were able to get the door made. Doors are interesting little things. They really are so temperamental. Just get one little corner out of square and things don’t work at all. Sue and I both have trouble with doors. Making them and hanging them. So, I bet Sue was relieved to have Ron around to help out on that. Looks like they did a wonderful job on the door and it fit right into the end wall they were creating. That final end was completed, the door was hung and they were able to prepare for the roof next and some inside work.

Traditional

One of the inside projects is nesting boxes. I guess I should say, “two of the inside projects are” because there are going to be two types. I talked about the “best nesting box” earlier that allows the eggs to roll away to prevent eating and keep them clean. Those nesting boxes arrived on Friday – some assembly required. Sue put them together lickety-split. Prior to their arrival, she was working on – what I consider to be – “traditional” nesting boxes. She wants to have both available to the chickens, in case they

New Fangled

don’t like that new fangled gadget. It is true; chickens can be young and yet traditional, recognizing the old ways as worth while. We call them old souls. 🙂 Hey! Don’t you be laughing! Chickens know what they want, it’s just up to us to try to figure that out.  The reason we’re not sure that they’ll like the new fangled box is that they often prefer to lay where there are already some eggs – that’s why we have fake eggs in some of our boxes; it encourages them to lay in those instead of on the floor or in the walls, etc.  The new fangled boxes don’t give us that option, so we’re not sure how they’ll be received. The layers have just begun laying in the last few days and Sue is finding them on the ground, behind the screen door of the coop. We hope they’ll take advantage of the boxes soon.

Extra Room

Another happening while I was out: Sue called our neighbor Gloria to ask if she would be interested in helping to move the chicken fence. Actually add another fence to the littles side to try and keep them from jumping over. We have two roosters on that side, well actually three at the moment, but one is in the brooder with the banty hens. Two are out, one for the Layers, Long Legs,  and one Banty for Maeve and Imen, Mister Mister.  Mister Mister likes to chase Long Legs around, which is quite funny since Long Legs is twice the size of Mister Mister, but younger. When this nonsense is going on, the hens just run everywhere, and sometimes they would get so excited, they’d fly over the fence.  Sue figured that if they

Gloria working away

had more room to run, there would be less flying.  Since she and Gloria added the additional space, there haven’t been any escapees on that side (Thanks, Gloria!). So, seems to be working.  Once the the RCW is completed and ready for use out in the Pasture, we’ll take the large fence and the laying chickens and give Mister Mister, Maeve, and Imen smaller room. We may let them out during the summer for a few hours each day to keep down the bug population. We’ll see… how that works with the rest of the Banties which will go out in the chicken tractor that’s on the leaf pond right now. They’ll go out there when we’ve had a chance to process the roosters.  We are hoping that the weather cooperates to do that this Saturday.  Whew. That’s a bit of information, there.  I think there is still some I haven’t covered, but we’ll get there next time. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: We can break this down to one word… SNOW! Ok, here’s a few more. We had some snow in the forecast, was 70% starting around 1am, in reality, it didn’t really start down here until almost 7 this morning. It was snowing on me heavily all the way to work and even for most of the morning and off and on through the afternoon in Sierra Vista . Sue tried to get photos of it here, but it doesn’t really show up. I took a very short video at work that kinda shows it. Not that you’ve never seen snow before, but it’s interesting (somewhat) to have it snow here in the desert. I’ll add the video at the bottom since it comes in so huge. Currently it is 41° at 6:18 p.m.  Looks like our overnight low may be down to 28°. Brrrr.

Egg Report: We had some excitement over the weekend… Roma, the goose, started laying eggs. Here’s the report starting from where I left off after Friday:  Saturday we had 1 Duck, 10 chicken eggs, plus one chicken egg that was pecked. Sunday: zero Duck, 15 Chicken eggs. Monday: zero Duck, 10 Chicken eggs, plus one faerie egg. Tuesday: one GOOSE, zero Duck, and 16 Chicken eggs. Today, we simply had 11 Chicken eggs.  The photo above is of the goose eggs, they just don’t fit into the egg cartons! We took the top off of one and are just using the bottom like an egg stand for them. Pretty darn fun.