A miracle egg

Or maybe a mutant egg.

That's four again today. Light Hairdo, Skeeter, LBH and... a tiny, tiny chicken? I think it's a weird little extra from Light Hairdo. The color is right. The pimply bumps are interesting. I wonder what's inside – just a yolk?

Chickens will sometimes produce strange things – eggs without shells, double-yolkers. I figure it's one of those. Or a publicity stunt for the band Chicken McJesus.

In other news, the heavy snow has collapsed the lobster pot chicken tractor. Pretty sure I can pop it back into shape after the snow is gone. And C. is planting onion seeds in pots inside.

Clean straw!

...for them to poop on, as Triumph the insult dog would say. Lovely bright yellow straw is an improvement on the brown poopy stuff. The middle gold hen is in every shot, evidently hoping Hollywood is reading the blog.

You can see our homemade gear –  waterer made from a three-gallon bucket with chicken-head holes cut out, and feeder made from a gallon jug.

I finished going through the vacuum bag for my missing bicuspid crown. Dammit. Leaving it on the bookcase was a $1000 mistake. Why didn't I put it in something – a pill bottle, a tiny Ziplock, anything. I left it in a beer-bottle cap, and something carried or knocked it off. We'd hoped C. vacuumed it up, but nooooooo. That's the magnet-on-a-stick in the photo there. I thought the magnet might pick up the little screw in the bottom of the thing. And I know it's kinda grody to think of my tooth in all that dog hair and dirt, but, hey, it could be washed off. Boiled, even. If only it were there. Sigh.

In other exciting news, I made hippie crispies (peanut butter, honey, Rice Crispies, and melted chocolate chips for drizzle). They are OK. Not great. They're a little crumbly without the usual (and bad for you) marshmallows, and taste a little too much like a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich. Quick and easy, though.

Four eggs today.

Expedition to the barn

Earl and I drove over to the barn today to get some straw for the chicken house. There's still lots of snow, now frozen and thawed and frozen enough to hold my weight – most of the time. We climbed up the plow berm and down the plow berm, squeezed through the iced-up gate, and climbed the piles of hay bales into the back of the barn where the loose straw is piled. This is the stuff left from last winter's 4x4x8-foot bale.

Filled four re-re-recycled garbage bags full (those puppies are getting pretty raggedy) and sledded them out and up and down to the car. Good thing the goats were over by the house, moaning for grain, as they like to dance on the bags.

C. will spread the new straw over the poopy old stuff on the chicken house floor, giving everybody a clean, dry surface. Come spring, we'll rake all this "deep bedding" out into the garden, and start over.

Five eggs today. :)

Teeny in the house

C. brought the littlest guinea in – remember Teeny, one of the October keets we raised in the house, the one who ate a long thread and stunted her growth? She's a spunky little thing. She's somehow managed to freeze some of her toe-tips off, despite the heated styrofoam keet house inside the chicken house. So C. bathed her stubby feet in warm water and betadine, which Teeny enjoyed. We dried her off, and C. shot these pics as I was getting ready to take her back out and sneak her onto a perch.

What a funny little bird.

In other news, all three of the kids and the two grandbabies came out to visit today. We had fun, passing the babies around and having conversations with them. And conversations with the kids, too.

Emma said she might remember where the tomato seeds went. I'll look tomorrow in the daylight.

Gung hey fat choy!

A visit to the She Who Seeks blog alerted me to the fact that today is the beginning of the Chinese or Lunar New Year, and it's the Year of the Fire Rooster. Gung hey fat choy!

She mentions that, according to Susan Levitt and Jean Tang in Taoist Astrology, the Year of the Rooster is:

. . . a time of practical endeavors, conscientiousness, hard work, and discipline. Politically conservative police states gain power, and law and order are championed.

That tallies with the bizarre turn American politics has taken this year.

Keep your beaks up, my fellow Americans. Hang in there. Speak out for decency, fairness, honesty, openness. Stand up for your neighbors. We're all in this together, as Red Green reminds us.

Six eggs! Is it spring?

OK, five eggs, because the two at right are probably from LBH, so one must be from yesterday. Unless one is a guinea egg, though they are usually fair-weather layers. Still, this is great! We've had no eggs, then one, then two or three – but this is a serious haul. I'm pleased.

The birds are generally kinda crappy looking, without dust to bathe in, and being confined by snow to the chicken house and yard with all those barbarian guineas. Days are getting longer and it's warmer out so they boobled around the yard and garden fence a bit today. No one has wanted to free range in the dead of winter, though we leave the gate open in the daytime. They're looking forward to getting greens and bugs. Me, too.

From front, Light Hairdo, Sooty Hairdo and their mom, Dovey. Sooty lays
pale blue eggs, and her sister lays pink ones. Dovey's are biggest, and bluest.

The boys. No name, top left, the sooty roo, left, and Graham.

That's Festunio the rooster, on the left. He looks a lot like The Predator. The hen is the middle gold bird.

I've been trying to figure out how many chickens we have. It's not easy. We have the five hens I got from some weirdos (Foggy, LBH and the three gold ones). Dovey and her two hairdos. We traded the mean hen, and two died, and two pullets disappeared (we blame the neighbor cat). So that's eight hens. Six eggs a day is probably as good as we'll do, unless the bathroom pullet recovers and rejoins the flock. Or somebody goes broody and hatches more chicks. And roosters? Graham and his striped boys Festunio, Cecile and the unnamed fellow, plus the sooty roo (formerly Elke, the white chick). Five roosters. That's four too many, but we don't eat them so we'll put up with them unless they start fighting, then will put them on Craig's List and someone else will eat them. Keep the peace, boys!

Dovey's dad was a big Polish rooster, which explains the big birds and silly hairdos, and little Graham has supplied the stripes and fabulous tail feathers. 

So we have 13 chickens. Plus the little bathroom pullet. One of these days I'll have to count the guineas.

Still no tomato seeds.

Where, or where...

Are the freakin' tomato seeds? How are we supposed to order new seeds if we don't know what is left over from last year?

Dang. I've made a lovely text file of our old seed inventory, preparatory to ordering. It's not a spreadsheet – that would be way too anal. But it's very neat, and includes everything newer than 2011. Except for tomatoes. Bloody hell.