Eight Inches and Counting………

 

That big winter storm hit Central and Eastern New Mexico late last night and it’s expected to hang around dumping more snow, wind and blizzard-like conditions on our area until Friday morning. Already we’ve got 8” of snow now, but the weather reports say we could get up to a foot of snow by tomorrow.

It’s funny. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland and California, when it snowed I couldn’t wait to get outside and play in it. I still can’t. I do love snow.

(And yes, quite often I wear my jammies to go outside. The animals don’t care and neither do my neighbors. My family and I live in our comfie jammies while we’re at home. Don’t you?)

But after the 4th or 5th snow, my kids seem rather unimpressed with snow and it’s all I can do to push them outside to play in all it’s fluffy whiteness. My twinling sons, especially, just stand inside at the windows and doors and wave at me.

Jenna still likes to play in the snow, but she finds the whole ordeal of getting bundled up in warm winter clothes unbearable and can’t wait to tear all those cumbersome thick layers off the second she steps inside.

Me, on the other hand, I like to dress in layers. The more the better, so I can stay outside as long as possible, and if I get too warm I can peel off layers  until I’m comfortable.

Another aspect I like of being outside in the cold, is that going back inside is made all the more sweeter. I love to come back inside the warm house and make a cup of hot tea or cocoa, pull on my flannel jammies and sit in front of the fireplace or crawl into bed and get all comfie.

How about you? Do you enjoy the snow? Do you like to be play in the white stuff or just be outside taking a walk in a winter wonderland?

(The little grove of trees behind our house)

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Working Man?

Did anyone notice the fun song on my playlist “Hey Ho Away We Go”?

This section relates to those lyrics: Some of y’all have asked if Ranchman John has found a new job yet. Well…………Yes and No. He’s been on several interviews, taken a few Entry Tests, and all results have been positive. Everyone wants to hire him, but they don’t have anything ‘right now’. sigh.

( Project 365 )

He’s been unemployed for 3 weeks now and it can get very discouraging. We’re hanging in there, though. We’re living off some of our savings and through my blog I’ve made a little money, too. I’ve sold some of my photos and I’ve received payments from a few companies that advertise on my blog. So, it’s pretty awesome that my blog has become more than just a place to journal my thoughts and adventures and to share photos of our ranch. But it would be really great if Ranchman John could get hired soon. Positive thoughts and prayers are always welcome.

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A couple blogger friends brought it to my attention that I’ve not posted about my chickens for a while. And I realized that was true. I’ve not felt much like posting about them because not long after I posted about Annie, the Ameracauna hen, being sick and weak from a late molting, she finally succumbed and took her last breath. She will be missed.

( Project 365 )

And with all the snow we’ve been getting, the chickens don’t want to come outside and play. The other day I tried to take photos of them while they were outside, but our snow was starting to melt and their coop was a big, mucky, sloshy, muddy mess. I kept slipping around and was afraid I might fall so I gave up on the photo session.

But today I did manage to take some photos, albeit inside the chicken house. I tried shoveling the snow away several times to clear an area for them to come outside. I even spread some chicken scratch on the ground, but within 15-20 minutes the snow was falling so heavy that the area was completely covered again. And the chickens were too smart to fall for the chicken scratch bribery and refused to step foot outside.

They insisted on being fed inside.

I did manage to take some photos of Sid Vicious for all you adoring Sid fans.

 

He doesn’t take after his moniker at all. When it snows or is windy or cold outside that handsome fella stays inside. He’s kind of a wimp actually. When his ladies go outside into the bad weather, he just stands at the door and peeks out every so often to check on them.

I also took some photos of Sid’s kids.

They are 18 weeks old now, and it’s obvious now that we have two roosters and one hen. The roosters have such handsome feathering and take after their Dad.

The hen is a beautiful ebony color with blue/green iridescent feathering and a few gold accents.

She will be staying here on Laughing Orca Ranch, but at least one of the roosters will have to go to a new coop. Anyone want a handsome Polish/Ameracauna roo to add some flash to your flock?

Oh. And Mrs. Cotton has gone broody yet again.

I swear, that’s all that little hen ever thinks about is hatching out babies.

It’s too cold for me to let her have any eggs to hatch out right now. Plus I’m only getting about 4-6 eggs a day and we are using them all. She’ll have to wait until Spring. Poor thing.

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Dobbie is enjoying the snow very much, even though it must be quite a struggle having to leap out of it’s depths.

She can only exert herself for short amounts of time and be out in the cold, before she is asking to go back inside again.

But it’s fun to see her run and play in the snow, when I’m pretty sure that for the first two years of her life in a Puppy Mill she had never even seen snow at all.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. Anyone want to take a gander at how many inches of snow we’ll wake up to here tomorrow morning?

This is a great time of year to get cozy with a good book, so I’ll pick a winner, on Saturday, from the correct answers and send you this funny book, “Shoveling Smoke”.

     

Chick Fix

 

The first chicks to be born on Laughing Orca Ranch are now a week old. I figured y’all would appreciate an update.

I think I had forgotten how fast chicks grow. This trio already has their wing feathers and are active and keeping their flustered Mama, Mrs. C very busy indeed!

 

I love to sit and watch them together and find it so endearing how the chicks react to their Mama when she chirps and clucks to them.

I also think it’s fascinating how our first batch of chicks ordered through New Mexico’s Privett’s Hatchery arrived without their Mama, and did just fine without one.

 

I must admit that it’s much easier to raise chicks when a Mama hen does all the work of keeping them warm and protected while showing them how to eat and drink.

All I have to do is check for pasty butt, refill water and food containers, and handle them several times a day so they grow up tame and friendly.

 

I upgraded their chicken condo from a small hamster cage up to a large rabbit cage and they all seem to enjoy the extra space.

 

They spend their day and night in the chicken house which is such a nice difference this time around. I keep remembering how we had to keep our first batch of chicks in the garage for 3 long months, from October through December) while we built their chicken house. Every weekend Ranchman John and I persistently hammered, screwed, and froze our hands and faces while the bitter wind and snow whipped us senseless. Finally on Christmas Day we were able to move our garage chickens into their new permanent home. So I especially appreciate that our newest chicks can live happily in the chicken house with their Mama hen.

I want to bring them outside during the day for brief field trips, but it’s been very windy and cool the past couple days (temps in the mid 40’s during the day), so I’m going to wait a little longer for a warmer day to introduce the chickies to the great big world.

(Our Welsummer pullet)

I’m planning on using the temporary quarantine chicken pen when they go outside just to be on the safe side.

(Sid Vicious, our Golden-laced, bearded Polish Playboy Roo…….”Who me? The Father? No way, man. It was just one night! I take no responsibility”)

Mrs. Cotton is very protective of her babies, but there are 3 very active chicks and only one of her. I’d feel awful if the little biddies were hurt by any of my adult chickens.

(One of our Silver-laced Wyandotte hens. We think that she, or one of our Barred Rocks, is the ‘birth mom’ of one of the chicks)   

So far, the other chickens are very curious, but give Mrs. C and her chicks a wide berth. I find it fascinating that Mr. Cotton seems to be the most interested in the chicks. He spends most of his day perched in the chicken house or laying beside the chick condo keeping an eye on the little biddies and Mrs. Cotton. I’ve read that the Silkie chicken breed tend to be very maternal, but I wonder if that also carries over to the Silkie roosters, too?

For now we’re just enjoying these little peepers. Since my hens have seriously slowed down on their egg laying (only 1-2 eggs a day), having these chicks to enjoy each time I enter the coop, makes up for the lack of eggs.

I hope you enjoyed your Chick Fix today! 

From the Tower of,

An Experiment in Broodiness

 

I knew that eventually I would want to breed some of my hens to hatch out some chicks. That was one of the reasons I decided to keep my two roosters. My plan (and I use that loosely) was to breed my Japanese Silkie and Polish chickens for selling as some folks around here like to show them at poultry shows and the local fairs.

(My Japanese Silkie Hen and Rooster, Mr. & Mrs. Cotton)

 

Also, it’s a sad fact that chickens do die often early, sometimes of unknown causes, and that each year as hens age, they slow down on their production of eggs. My chickens are now 2 years old, I’ve lost two, and since they began molting a couple months ago, their egg production has slowed down by more than 50%. Whereas I used to harvest a dozen eggs per day, I now only harvest 4-6 eggs per day.

So I knew that I wanted to always have a few young chickens added to my flock every year to replace the ones that either died, or that slowed down on egg-laying.

(My new handmade Nest Box that I won from Life on a Southern Farm is very popular with my hens, including this Japanese Silkie, Ameracauna, and Speckled Sussex. Check out the link for Hen Pals on my sidebar to get one, too. Your hens will thank you.)

I don’t ever want to have to buy store-bought eggs again. It’s true what they say about getting addicted to super fresh, farm eggs. As anyone who has had the privilege of eating farm-fresh eggs knows, you can never go back to eating store-bought again.

(This is the clutch of eggs that my broody Japanese Silkie hen has been laying on for almost a week now)

 

My Japanese Silkie Hen, Mrs. Cotton has been broody more times than I can count. She is now almost two years old and seems to believe that every egg laid in the nest box is her responsibility to watch over and keep warm so that she can be a stepmom one day.

 

In the past, I’ve just annoyed her over and over by removing her from the nest and harvesting her eggs until she finally gave up, or her broodiness ran it’s course. So, allowing her to go broody and hatch out some eggs is a new thing for me. I don’t want to bother with using an incubator. I’d rather let my hen do all the work. So I hope this broody experiment works!

(And Mrs. C should be a new Mother in approx. 15 days)

I’ve been doing some research, so I feel sort of prepared, but advice or tips from experienced chicken owners is also very welcome.

There was the issue of the other hens trying to lay their eggs in Mrs. C’s nest box and I was having trouble figuring out which eggs were growing into chicks and which eggs I could harvest. I solved that problem by marking the fertile eggs in Mrs. C’s clutch with an ‘F’. (F=fertile)

I think it’s funny that Mrs. C hasn’t even noticed the letters on her eggs. Maybe I should have drawn little faces or something instead?

I did have to convince Mrs. Cotton to leave the nest while I drew graffiti on her eggs. I told her to go stretch her legs and wings, and go eat and drink.

One of the things on her agenda was a little spa treatment dust bath.

 

She didn’t get much privacy, though.

 

 So, she figured she might as well head back to the henhouse to keep her eggs warm.

 

 

In the end, I decided that I should move her to a more private location and set her up in a temporary nest box. The other hens kept trying to squeeze into the original nest box and I worried that the eggs that Mrs. C is laying on would get trampled on and break, and that the chicks, once hatched, might even be attacked by a jealous hen.

(Stay away from my oval babies!)

    

I didn’t want to disrupt Mrs. C too much, so I brought out a separate, private condo for her instead of removing her from the hen house.

I set everything up for her, cut a nest box from a cardboard box, fluffed up the nest bedding, tucked her eggs inside and then picked her up and placed her within her new condo. She immediately checked out her eggs and crawled in her new cozy nest box to keep them warm. I added a waterer and a food dish a little bit later, so she won’t have to travel far to eat or drink or wait for me to let her out.

She is seriously broody, I tell ya!

 

With a Polish Roo and a Japanese Silky Roo, and a variety of hens (I believe the eggs in the nest box are from Ameracauna -lays green eggs-, and the other eggs could be Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Silver-laced Wyandotte, or Speckled Sussex) it will be very interesting to see what kind of backyard breeder designer chickens might be produced from this crazy experiment.

Anyone want to help me come up with some unique designer breed chicken names?

From the Tower of,