Almost Ready to Lay

Well, we have our flock reduced to 10 now. After finding out that Chicken Little was a little fella...we found a great place for him to live with his two brooder-mates, Maggie and Jasman. They didn't come from the same hatch but grew up together so I really thought that it was best to not separate them. A really nice lady from the South Tucson took them in and is giving them a great life. Thank you so much Julie.

I am getting ready to do yet another modification to the hen house. I am going to take another Little Tykes playhouse (cottage, if you will) cut out the south wall and attach it to the other Log Cabin. Then, I will reconfigure the inside of the house with a couple more nesting boxes and some new and improved roosts for the girls. Want them to be cozy and safe and certainly protected from the elements.

We have added a new bunny, Lovehearts, to our small farm outside. He is a nice addition to our family so far and hopefully teaching the boys a little more about how much care and love animals NEED. Although I am seemingly the primary caregiver to Lovehearts the rest of the family is pitching in. I will post progress to the add on as I get going.

Acceptance...

Life is good on Ranch de la Richter! I have introduced 4 new hens that are 2 months old now to the rest of the flock. The eat, sleep and roost together. As you can see in this picture Ms. Claus, the Araucana, is teaching little Sunny how to dust herself properly and completely obliterate my mulch. The older Aunties are doing so well with the little ones. Aside from a little henpecking at night when they goto roost they are doing great. I think the only problem, which really might not be a big issue, is that the older hens want to eat all of the 'baby food'. I think they are just pigs with wings. Anyway, I am really pleased with the way things are going here. Maxie, our 2 year old Shih Tzu, thinks that perhaps she is some kind of herding dog or a chicken for that matter. Wherever they might end up Maxie is always somewhere in the mix. I don't know if it is the free chicken poop snacks that they leave laying around or if she really enjoys playing the part of a chicken. At any rate it is really cute.

New Family Members/ Coop Ad On

Where do I start. We have been very busy with our little urban farm. Our class project hatched 17 chicks and we kept 6 of them for ourselves. 2 Roosters (the two dark chicks above) from our 6 went to a nice new home today in Rio Rico, Arizona and I am looking forward to keeping up with their lives. So now I am left with 4 new hens. They are beautiful and developing their own little personalities. We also have had a very broody Buff Orpington who was sitting on a baseball. Wow- did that baseball get some big love from her. I think she sat on that thing for a week before I started to feel bad about denying her maternal/hormonal needs so I got a half dozen fertilized eggs from a farmer around the corner and slid them under her. Talk about content and dedication. We ended up with 3 more chicks from her hatch a couple of weeks ago and they are beautiful. Last week we also took in a pretty little chick from another class hatch. Life is good in the chicken department.

To make room for our new family members and to make it easier for Vanessa while we are gone this summer I put an addition on the coop. About 8x12' and used all materials that I essentially went dumpster diving for, alley hunting and freecycling. All but the shade cloth that was so necessary to buy at ACE. Don't want to come out to fried chicken this summer- it will be brutal heat for them but this area was built under a Palo Verde tree (about 30-40' tall) and provides ample shade but you can never be too careful. The shade cloth will also act as a line of defense for any predators. Knock on wood, we have been doing very well with the exception of an occasional annoying pack rat. Snap trap loaded with peanut butter seems to handle that problem pretty well.

Off to bed. Still love being a chicken lady and taking a bunch of crap from my dear friend Brooke in Cape Coral, Florida. Seems like she is awfully hungry for chicken wings on a frequent basis.

HoooRay! An incubator batch with Emmett's Kinder class

Donor Roo- Pekin Bantam, Egg donors...Araucana and Leghorn. What do we get? 16 beautiful, fuzzy, fat and healthy little chicks! We have found 8 of them great homes and I am going to take my chances with the other 8. Any Roo's will need a good home- perhaps not in a stew pot. This is just like having a baby. I am going to introduce them to the outside for a bit this weekend.

This is really working!!

Life as a micro farmer is really working beautifully for our little family. Gardens are thriving, only because Mother Nature and El Nino are in our favor for moisture right now. Our hens are really doing well and seem to be a happy little netork not to mention really hard workers. Our newest hen, Martha, who I swapped a bag of feed for is a great little layer. She is an Amerucana who was being pecked on her back by her henmates and all of her feathes have about grown back. She is still trying to figure the human element out but coming around nicely. She actually ate some yogurt from a spoon in my hand yesterday and I was elated. Silly, hugh? Just want her to feel safe around me and not to think I have a butchers knife behind my back.

Egg production is good. We are getting between 5 and 6 eggs per day. With that we have been feeding our family quite nicely and able to supply a dozen of eggs every other week to two rotating customers. One of our hens, Joo Joo, has decided that she is a lap chicken and favors Emmett petting her little neck. She will sit and let him pet her and close her eyes for a quick nap in the safe hands of a very able boy. Harrison, who is three, wants to try and jump over the hens and I know that this will result in sure death. He cannot jump over a crack in the sidewalk let alone a living creature.

I am thinking about expanding the size of my coop by half and need to build a better entry for the human folk to clean it out- oh, and exterminate a pack rat who has decided to eat a hole in the side of the playhouse. Bad rat! More later

Composting Chicks n' boys

We really had not announced any new hens- but we have added 3 Buffs to our home, Big Bertha, Elly and Milly and the new Araucana is Joo Joo and of course we have Ms. Claus. Now that the formal introduction of names has taken place.

We have relocated our compost to an area in our backyard near the coop. The composter is a very easy and basic one. In this case we have 3 bales of alfalfa butted up next to one that makes up a part of a breaker wall to the hens coop back yard covered by an old gate that the dumpster gods have so kindly supplied us. Vanessa turned the rich matter yesterday, which smells like lovely rich, healthy soil and the hens pulled a seat up to the buffet. Have you ever seen a hen fight another for a big ole' juicy bug? Not pretty. If they had jewlery on they would be taking it off getting ready for a fight!
Emmett kept a glove on his right hand in case he saw one to feed Ms. Claus, who is still being slightly hen pecked by Big Bertha.

Here you can see them getting down to the goodness. I think that they are taking a liking to their new environment and coop. We love it that they are like dogs with feathers. All of our hens but Ms. Claus will let you hold them and pet them a little but of course they will all come running and eat out of your hand.

When the Buff's came Big Bertha found it comforting to lay her egg near a rock in the alfalfa that was close to the size of one of her eggs. Elly, I think, was laying a pile of eggs under the Oleander hedge. Now all three Buffs lay next to a baseball in a fluffy nesting box on the ground. Unique. We are getting at a minimum 4 eggs per day from 5 hens right now. I would really like to add two or three more at this point. I have 2 customers right now who I can give at least a half of a dozen to each week and have a 3rd lady who wants eggs, too. A micro business. Now all I need is a name.

Some New Family Members

Welcome to our family Joo Joo (pictured to the left). She is a pretty little Araucana who has quickly made friends with our other little Araucana and sole survivor of the bobcat incident, Ms. Claus. They have actually hit it off quite nicely. Joo Joo doesn't mind being handled and coos when you pet her close to you. I LOVE HER!

We have also added 4 Buff Orpingtons or as Emmett calls them, Puffins. Very cute so of course we are calling them Puffins as well. Unfortunately we lost one the other night to probably the stupid bobcat. We have since spent the weekend reinforcing our coop and researching how to eradicate the bobcat from ever coming on our property again short of using a large shotgun. If something gets into this coop now we have certainly failed in a large way. The roof is super reinforced with an old shed that I took apart and built a nice sturdy roof. We basically sewed all of the chicken wire with a heavy guage wire fastener- closed up any potential holes and so on.

Yesterday Joo Joo spent the ENTIRE day working on 3 nesting boxes...scratching and organizing the alfalfa in them not to mention cackling the entire time. In the end she gave us a pretty little green egg. Today the 'puffins' gave us their first beautiful brown eggs and I am certain that one of them has a double yolk.

I really love keeping chickens and it is quite addicting to say the least. Not only do I have human children, children with fur (my shih tzu's) but now I have kids with feathers. Oh, the pressure! I feel very guilty that the others, Nana, Donna, GoGo and a beautiful unnamed Buff met their demise to that damn bobcat through a coop that had a couple weak spots but I promise to do better by them.

Learning alot here. Learning alot about chickens and myself and I am loving watching the boys learn and be so caring with them. I am loving watching Vanessa find herself in the garden, building a compost bin and hugging chickens. Those things just make me fall in love with her even more and appreciate my boys beyond belief. I am lucky in that regard.

R.I.P. Donna, Nana and Go Go Suzy Q

I am so sad today. I woke up wondering why the chickens were not up yet afterall, it was light. Then I noticed Ms. Claus squaking as usual but different. THEN...I noticed a large Felis Rufus or bobcat in our henhouse, in the henhouse!! It had already killed Donna- who was just warming up to me and eating out of my hand, Nana...she was the leader, strong and in charge but certainly no match for a bobcat and GoGo, my absolute favorite little hen who sat on my lap, ate from the kids' hands and looked at us through the sliding glass door for snacks. My heart hurts so badly this morning. This is not the picture of the exact bobcat but this is what that shit looked like.