Chicken Therapy

 

I don’t know if it’s just the time of year, but I’m feeling kind of down in the dumps and in a funk. I’ve been beating myself up and doing quite a bit of deep thinking. There’s a lot of stuff on my mind right now. Nothing I can really talk about, at least not right now.

My thoughts are too jumbled up to make any sense of anything. If I wrote it all out I think it would just seem disjointed and confusing. And quite honestly I’m just too sensitive and raw right now to deal with any potential critical comments or judgmental attitudes by going public. So, at least for now, I’ll just have to keep my thoughts to myself, although I did confide in my dear husband who, after 23 years together, seems to always get me and understand what I’m going through, because he understands where I’ve been.

What did help get my mind off of things, was some time spent with my animals. I scratched my goats, enjoyed some llama kisses, and hugged my horse. And everyone received treats.

 

They were all very sweet, but it was my chickens that seemed to be the best at lifting my spirits that day.

Just sitting among them listening to their comforting clucking while they peck for insects and grain helped get my mind off of my troubles for a while. I’m always surprised with how much personality and character chickens have when they are just considered livestock, or dumb birds.

They make me smile when some of them hop into my lap to cuddle and coo while I stroke their neck feathers.

(Wowza. Those are some blindingly white knees!)

 

They make me laugh when they get a wild hair and take off waddling and flip-flop flying across the yard and they make me giggle when they beg for a treat or some attention.

Phyllis Diller, my Golden Laced Polish Hen never fails to make me smile with her frou frou mannerisms.

“Hello Dahling!”

“Yoohooo!”

“Oh my! I think I see a feather out of place!”

“Make way for the Queen!”

Faith, the Ameracauna is doing really well and is very friendly. She walks normally now and if you didn’t look at her foot, you’d never know she had to learn how to walk on two broken toes when she was just a 2 day old chick.

We have reason to believe that one of our Summer Chicks is a rooster.

This Blue Wyandotte is growing the hackle tail feathers like roosters have, and he’s bigger than most of the other chickens and has very thick legs.

He’s always watching me, too.

It’s really creepy.

I must say, he makes me a little nervous and reminds me of Sid Vicious. Sid, for those who don’t remember, was our Bad Boy Polish Rooster that buried a spur in my arm last year when he attacked me from behind while I was petting one of the hens.

I’ll have to keep an eye on this fellow, in case he goes the bad boy route, too.

One of our Speckled Sussex Summer Chicks has a favorite napping place during the day.

Napping on the top of a 42” tall sharp metal t-post doesn’t sounds very comfy. But she seems to like it.

If I were her I think I’d be much more comfy being held and cuddled in Jen’s arms. Just sayin’

The 5 Silver-Laced Cochins have become the coop snobs and prove that cliques don’t just occur in high school, but also in chicken coops. These girls are always together and exclude any other chicken that tries to join them.

 

 

Well, soon their little snobby group will be disbanded because we listed our chickens for sale this weekend and have a couple groups of people coming by this week to possibly purchase some of our 18 week old Summer Chicks, so their new owners can enjoy some fresh farm raised eggs for their holiday baking.

It’s a good thing, too. Because the coop is feeling a little too crowded now and feeding 38 chickens is getting quite expensive. We’re hoping to sell 10-15 chickens, but will keep our favorites and enough hens to be sure we have plenty of eggs for our family and perhaps a few dozen to sell each week.

Between baking, cooking and feeding the dogs(they always get one egg on their kibble every night), we go through 2-3 dozen eggs per week for our family of 5. And that may seem like a lot, but not when you consider it takes a dozen eggs for me just to make green chile breakfast burritos for my family.

And our older hens, even though we keep a light on in their coop 24/7 all year round, are only giving us 2-3 eggs per day. But sometimes they still surprise us.

Last week we got one tiny yolkless egg and one x-large triple yolk egg.

 

My! What a Big Egg You Laid!

 

Our lovely Ameracauna hen Fertile Myrtle is back to work from her winter laying hiatus.

She has given us many large eggs over the last 3 1/2 years. Many of them were double-yolkers and quite a few more were even triple-yolkers.

A few times she’s even given us two eggs on the same day. She deserves a winter egg-laying vacation, because Fertile Myrtle does everything big when it comes to egg production.

Like this Gigantor egg she laid this weekend.

Jen couldn’t even wrap her hand around this grenade of protein packed goodness.

No words needed.

Gigantor Egg wouldn’t fit in the egg carton with all of it’s diminutive friends, which meant we had only one choice…..

A destiny of sunny-side up, 'drippy' eggs on toast. mmmm!

Factory Farmed eggs look nothing at all like this.

 

And taste nothing at all like these beautiful, bright orange pillows of healthy yumminess.

Thank you to our beautiful, generous, sweet hen, Fertile Myrtle.

Three Years Old!

 

Three years ago yesterday (Oct 21, 2007), our first batch of chicks arrived from Privett’s hatchery in Southern, New Mexico.

This month also marks the third year we’ve lived here on Laughing Orca Ranch in the mountains of Central New Mexico.

As for the chickens, these were our very first chickens and the first animals to grace our little ranch. My parents had chickens when I was kid, so I wasn’t completely a stranger to poultry keeping, but I was still excited to own our own flock and wanted to do make sure we did everything right.

I started off with 13 chickens, going in together with a friend so we could split a larger order and get an interesting and varied selection of chickens:

• 2 Rhode Island Reds (Rita and Rhoda)
• 2 Barred Rocks (Betty and Bertha)
• 3 Ameracauanas (Annie, Fertile Myrtle, Angelina Ballerina)
• 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes (Suzie, Sandy)
• 2 Speckled Sussex (Spotty Dotty, Kipper) 
• 2 Brown Leghorns (Brownie, Beanie)

A year later I decided I wanted to add a few more chickens to our flock and chose some unusual breeds, just to amuse and entertain…..a little ‘Coop Candy, if you will:

• 2 Polish (Phyllis Diller and Sid Vicious)
• 2 Japanese Silkies (Mr. and Mrs. Cotton)

(This lovely lady is Phyllis Diller, our Golden-Laced Polish Hen)

One of the Silkies turned out to be a Rooster, and one of the Polish ended up being a rooster, too, which we decided to name Sid Vicious, after the punk rocker.

(This is our Silky Rooster, Mr. Cotton. He’s a sweet roo)

Before the handsome Sid Vicious decided to live up to his name, he fathered 4 chicks: two roosters and two hens. We gave away the roosters, even though they were very handsome boys. And we kept the two hens. One of the hens grew into a lovely black hen with gold highlights, and we named her Ebony. While the other became a carbon copy of Sid Vicious, and we named her Pat Benatar. I’ve been very pleased about how beautiful Pat’s become because I sometimes miss that gorgeous Sid Vicious and wish he hadn’t of attacked me and became so vicious.

(This is Pat Benatar, Sid’s daughter. Her photo is also in my blog header, too. )

When Pat was a chick, the rest of the eggs in the clutch didn’t hatch, so she was born alone. So, I went out to the feed store and adopted two more chicks to keep her company:

• 1 Black Sex-Link (Liza Minelli)
• 1 Buff Orpington (Matilda)

(Here’s our pretty Buffie Hen, Matilda)

And then last Spring, I attended a Poultry Sale and bought some new pullets to add some more color to our egg harvests:

• 2 Welsumers (Cocoa and Hershey)
• 1 Cuckoo Marans (Snickers)

 

(One of our Welsumer Hens……..What’s up, Chicken Butt?!)

Over the past three years, we’ve lost 8 chickens to sickness, predator attack and re-homing. And we now have 18 chickens in our flock: 17 hens and 1 rooster.

The older hens have slowed down on their egg-laying duties and are just dear pets now. But we still get between 5-8 eggs per day from our flock, which keeps us from having to buy any store-bought eggs for our baking, while also allowing us to enjoy delicious green chile breakfast burritos at least a couple times a week.

I’m so glad we have chickens, not only to give us tasty, fresh eggs, but also to enjoy their entertaining antics and behavior. I can’t tell you how many times my chickens have relaxed me and brought me joy just by watching them peck and scratch, waddle around and take dust baths, and cluck and mutter to each other. Just stroking their feathers while they sit on my lap can be very peaceful. I can’t imagine not owning my own chickens.

Yay! For Chickens!

One Plus One = Four

 

Our original flock of chickens are almost 3 years old and we still occasionally get double yolk eggs, especially after a hen has taken a short break from laying.

Our Ameracauna hen, Fertile Myrtle is notorious for giving us huge, torpedo shaped eggs, which are sometimes filled with plump, orange double yolks. When she was a pullet and brand new at laying, she also gave us several triple yolk eggs, too.

(And yes, that it is my hand, and not my daughter’s hand. Wow!)

 

You would be correct if you guessed this size egg doesn’t fit into a typical egg carton. This next photo may give you a better idea of their size.

The two eggs on your left were laid by Fertile Myrtle. And the brown egg in the middle is an average size egg laid by one of our Welsumer hens. The little egg on the far right was laid by our Buff Laced Polish Hen.

Have you ever had a double or triple yolk egg? What is your favorite way to eat eggs?

Sunday Stills ~ Easter

 

This week’s Sunday Stills Challenge is to take photos of things that remind you of Easter or of how you celebrate Easter. All of my photos were taken this week,

Easter means letting my kidlets talk me into wearing goofy bunny goggles. (say that fast, 3 times!)

Easter means dyeing and decorating eggs, gifts from our chickens.

 

Easter means chewing on traditional, sweet marshmallow goodies. (photo ‘Posterized’ using Picnik)

And Easter means watching a procession of our mountain neighbors, walking together down the road, in a pilgrimage, as a sign of remembrance and respect.

Macro Monday ~ Eggs and Cookies

 

These two double yolker eggs were laid by my Welsumer and Cuckoo Marans hens.

 

These delicious cookies were a gift from my blogger friend, Susan over at The Lazy G Ranch. She asked her readers to come up with a name for two of her homemade cookie varieties, and the winners would receive a half dozen of her cookies as a prize! I came up with the name “I Heart You Cookies” and she liked it so much, that’s what these cookies are called. The wooden box was a gift to me for Christmas, from Ranchman John. (Doesn’t the black horse look like Baby Doll and the red horse look like Rosie?)

(Yes, there is one cookie missing. I couldn’t wait to try one before I remembered to take a photo. oops!) I am slightly embarrassed to admit it, but when the cookies arrived, I immediately hid them and never shared any with my family. These cookies were such a special treat after coming home from my long days spent trail riding in the snow and participating in the Trail Clinic last weekend. I knew my kids would just gobble them up and not really appreciate the complexity and gourmet qualities of these special cookies. But I did.

Truly, these ‘I Heart You Cookies’ are the best butter cookies I’ve ever had. And I’m rather picky about my sweets. But that’s the thing. They aren’t too sweet or too rich. They are perfectly balanced and actually melt in your mouth. The sugar sprinkles are a nice touch, too. They give the cookies a fancy look, but the little bit of crunch and sweetness add the perfect accent and texture, too.

You can’t go wrong ordering Susan’s quality made cookies either for yourself or for a gift. Susan is also in the perfecting stages of a chocolate cookie, too. She really liked the name I came up with for them, too: “Cocoa Ponies”, and I’m crossing my fingers that I get to be one of the first to try them out (wink-wink)!

Check out The Lazy G Ranch to get some of your own. She also makes gourmet dog treats, too!

And also visit Macro Mondays to see more close-up views from around the world!

Chocolate Eggs

 

First off, I just want to thank everyone who participated and left comments on my Caption Contest post. They were all good. I chose Nuzzling Muzzles as the winner because she made me laugh the loudest. Her caption was creative, too.

But I also really liked Flartus’s comment, too. A year ago I made a post very similar to her soap opera inspired comment ‘All My Chickens’, called ‘As the Coop Turns’, so her caption was just great. I have a little literary prize for Flartus, too. And Nuz Muz, let me know if you’d like a scarf to go with the hat I made you last winter, girlfriend!

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Now onto the post related to the title above…….   

For a while there I thought one of our Welsumer chicks was a rooster. She was bigger than the other Welsumer chick and she was more aggressive. She was also very independent and would rather roost in the apple tree inside the chicken coop, instead of inside the chicken house with all the other chickens.

I’m relieved that my suspicions were wrong, though. Because apparently Wanda, whose name has now been changed to Hershey, is most definitely a hen…..

A hen who lays lovely chocolate eggs. Hershey has given us five chocolate eggs over the past week. You can see her first two below.

The first chocolate wonder was tiny, as you can see. And the second egg was much bigger. I placed them beside our Rhode Island Red’s brown egg and one of our Easter Egger’s blue-green eggs for comparison.

 

I should have realized that Hershey was just older than the other two chicks, including the other Welsumer chick and the Cuckoo Marans chick that I brought home at the end of August, from the Poultry Swap.

Recently, instead of running away when I try to pet her, Hershey squats down and ‘presents herself’ to me, as if I was a rooster. That’s the first sign that a chicken has moved past the pullet stage into an official egg laying hen.

    

The other Welsumer pullet, we’ve decided to name Cocoa, and we can’t wait until she lays her first chocolate egg so we can compare it to Hershey’s eggs.

Our third chocolate egg layer is the Cuckoo Marans pullet, who has been named Snickers (do you get the theme here? Are you hungry yet?), will probably start to lay around the same time as Cocoa, and it will be interesting to compare the egg color and shade of chocolate between the Welsumer and the Cuckoo Marans.

It’s also interesting to compare the differences between the Cuckoo Marans and the Barred Rock, as in the photo above. I used to think the two breeds looked the same, but when placed together, it’s easy to see the differences in their feathering.

Some have asked why eggshell color matters. And it’s true, egg color on the outside doesn’t affect the taste of the egg inside. But to many folks, a brown egg means farm-grown, not store-bought. Case in point, I have one hen, a Brown Leghorn, that lays a single, huge white egg every day. The White Leghorns are the breed of hen that are used in production/factory-farming because they are such reliable egg layers, but sometimes when I have included a couple of my Brown Leghorn’s extra-large, white eggs in a carton for sale, I’ll get a customer that asks me, “Why did you put a store-bought egg in there?”

So, now I keep those big, tasty white eggs for my family and only sell the brown or blue/green eggs to my customers. And that is why I added some new brown egg layers to my flock this year. The darker the eggs, the better.

Got Milk?

 

This is how you know your hens aren’t getting enough calcium.

This 2 year old Rhode Island Red, named Rita, has been going through her first molt. She also has been very popular with our roosters, too. She just started laying eggs again after a rest period of a couple of months. All of my hens have slacked off on egg laying and I’ve been lucky to get a total of 1-3 eggs a day from my 11 laying hens.

(This is Betty, our Barred Rock laying an egg. Listen closely towards the middle of the video and you can hear her straining to push out her egg)

All of my molting hens’  resources are now focused on re-growing feathers.  But a hen requires a lot of calcium to help her form strong eggshells. Obviously Rita isn’t getting enough, as you can see from the egg breaking as it is laid.

So, I have been upping the calcium levels around here, mixing in crushed eggshells and crushed oyster shell in their feed, as well as offering it free-choice in a dish. The hens also receive the milk leftover from my kidlets cereal bowls and sometimes a few spoonfuls of yogurt, too.

Hopefully I’ll be seeing strong-shelled, intact eggs soon. We’re all looking forward to eating lots of breakfast burritos again.