Posts Tagged ‘eggs’
Quiet Evening
After dinner last night, I stepped out to spend some time on one of the zero-gravity chairs Cyndie left on the deck. She pulled them out on Sunday to watch the Perseid meteor shower in the wee hours of Monday morning. I opted to sleep and missed that show.
Last night, the air outside was absolutely still. The sky was muted by a white-washed backdrop that held just a few discernible cloud shapes floating in front of it.
The temperature and humidity had eased to a perfectly comfortable warmth for the end of a hot August day. As I lay back in total relaxation, I tried to absorb the moment to the depth of my bones, for use as a reference in six months, when everything outdoors will be completely opposite.
It was so quiet, I could hear the acorns getting dropped to the ground when a bird hopped in the branches of a tall oak tree. The culprit was also adding to the soundscape with an occasional simple one-note, even-pitched tone. That was in stark contrast to the songbird who arrived in a tree behind me to show off a dramatic and richly complex repeating series of staccato chirps, tweets, and climbing trills.
I spotted a dragonfly high above me, near the top of the trees, and followed its aeronautical acrobatics of instant right-angle and logic defying immediate one-hundred-eighty degree turns in what I assumed must have been a feeding frenzy. It kept at it for a surprisingly long time.
The bliss of the moment served as a good remedy for my lake hangover. There might not be a gorgeous lake rippling in our back yard, but we do have plenty of nature in which to submerse ourselves, as an alternative.
Later, back in the house, I caught a glimpse of the doe and two fawns who hang out here regularly enough that we consider them family. They were loitering near the truck before disappearing down the trail toward the chicken coop.
I suggested to Cyndie that she should be extra quiet when she headed down to close the chicken door for the night, and maybe she would be able to mingle with the deer.
Delilah didn’t really know what I was watching out the back window, but she instantly spotted the flash of brown bodies and white tails when they darted out of the trees and crossed the yard to where the trail enters the woods on the other side.
Cyndie didn’t get to do any mingling.
She did find all ten chickens safely roosting in the coop for another day. I took the deer sighting as a sign there wasn’t any immediate threat in the area, implying our animals all enjoyed a quiet evening, too.
Egg production continues to pick up. Yesterday was the first time there were three eggs in a single day. I take that as another sign they are happy and healthy.
It all has me wanting to achieve an unprecedented level of full appreciation for the blessings we are currently enjoying, especially the simple ones like yesterday’s calm and quiet night.
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Our Debuggers
The main reason we wanted to get chickens was as a means of reducing the number of flies that show up when you have horses. Even more so when we heard they eat ticks, as well.
I had no clue how much fun they would also be as social pets. Of course, there is the added benefit of eggs, too. That’s a feature that I have come to value much more highly than I ever imagined I would.
Our flock continues to number twelve birds, which is really rewarding, but tends to make the inevitable threat of future loss more ominous, at the same time.
Lately, we’ve seen the chickens exploring ever greater distances away from the area around the coop and barn, which I am hoping means they are eating more and more bugs.
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Otherwise, they tend to spend the bulk of their time under the thick cover of the trees between the house and the fields. When we walk past, it is common to hear their 24 feet clawing the leaves that cover the ground, as they search for bugs to eat.
My piles of composting manure no longer hold the shape I build up, as the chicken’s busy feet quickly wreak havoc in their search for precious morsels.
It’s a disruption to my sense of order which I gladly tolerate.
Despite all the bugs our chickens can eat, there remain plenty of flies that pester the horses. We put masks over the horses’ eyes, and this summer we are trying wraps on their legs.
Horses will often stomp their feet to knock loose the biting flies and that repeated concussion takes a toll on their feet and hooves.
Cyndie gave them some time on the short arena grass at dusk yesterday, where they can get some reward that helps distract them from the relentless harassment of the flies.
After that, Cyndie made a pass by the chicken coop to check for eggs and was rewarded with TWO eggs at the same time.
Now we know there are two hens laying. The rest won’t be far behind.
They might be our debuggers, but their eggs really are the crowning glory of our wonderful chickens.
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On Schedule
The first egg appeared yesterday!
Right on schedule, per our calculations. Melissa and Sarah were visiting and Cyndie took them down to check the coop, just in case. The fact that they were present to witness the occasion was fitting, in that last year they were all up at the lake together when I reported the appearance of our first egg from that flock.
The Williams girls are our good luck charms.
The chickens were being very social while the ladies played a few rounds of ladder golf on the driveway. Instead of being intimidated by the flying obstacles, the birds took great interest in the colorful orbs.
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Maybe they thought the golf balls looked like eggs.
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Eggs Soon?
Lately, we’ve been wondering how close our chickens are getting to their egg laying stage. One of the signs is when the wattle and comb develop and reach full color. Ours are growing at various rates.
Even among the single Buff Orpington breed, there is a range of maturity.
I checked my blog posts from last year to see when the first egg showed up. It was August 8. This year’s batch were all born a week earlier, so if their growth is similar, the beginning of next month could be the start of the daily egg gathering adventures.
I sure hope the predators around here stay focused on wild game for a good long time.
The other day I noticed these twelve have taken an interest in dismantling my woven stick ramp into the coop.
I’ve patched it up a few times, but they always go back to pulling out sticks. If they keep it up, it’s going to be a BIG step to get in to roost at night.
Maybe they know something I don’t. How big a gap would it take to discourage snakes from wandering up to get inside?
Just because they are chickens doesn’t mean they aren’t able to make an occasional intelligent decision, don’t you know!
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Slow Start
Despite an early wake up call from the Post Office this morning, informing us we need to come pick up a package containing our new chicks, I’m experiencing a bit of a slow start. Maybe it is because I stayed up later than usual watching games of college basketball in the men’s NCAA March Madness tournament.
Maybe it’s a Foo Fighters hangover after bingeing episodes of Sonic Highways, Dave Grohl’s self-described 2014 love letter to the history of American music.
Whatever it is, I need to shake out of it and hit the ground running after I finish writing this and eating the breakfast Cyndie just served before she heads out on the chick run. She said she was making home-made eggs. We had eight in our stash this morning.
I wonder how many eggs we will be getting per day next year at this time? I’m guessing that will depend on how many chickens we can avoid losing in a massacre like happened to our first flock last June. It’s one of the facts of free-range life around here.
Predators happen. We are choosing to take our chances and have elected not to get a rooster or confine our birds to protected spaces. It may be an inefficient model for having chickens, but the benefits of enjoying our roaming hens everywhere around the property seems to balance the risks for us to have accepted the situation.
I gotta go.
Check out this photo of the way snow is melting in the shadow of the wood fence.
Isn’t nature fascinating?
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Venturing Out
Maybe it was the calmness of the morning, or the fact the temperature didn’t drop significantly overnight, but the chickens wasted little time in venturing out from the confines of the coop for me yesterday morning.
Midway through the day, I stopped back to check for eggs and found two of the hens, almost on top of each other, squished into one nesting box. I decided not to bother them, closing the side door and heading off to another project.
With Delilah leashed to the double swing nearby to supervise, I spent some quality time at the wood shed. First, I needed to re-stack the majority of the last row that had blown over in the recent high-wind event. With that under control, I started into splitting some of the newest wood from the tree cut down last weekend.
I think the fact the wood was now frozen helped the logs to snap in two with relative ease. When Delilah’s interest in watching me work came to its unsurprising end, I dropped her off in the house and headed back to the coop to pick eggs.
The Buff Orpington was still sitting in the nest box, but I invaded her space to grab three eggs she was resting on.
After lunch, I headed out to turn two different piles of compost that are still cooking nicely, despite the arrival of the frozen season.
It seems as though the animals have quickly adjusted to the return of “my” routine of care. Intensified time with Delilah and the horses brings me back to my year sabbatical from the day-job when I managed the ranch full-time while Cyndie was working the Anoka-Hennepin contract.
It’s a very fond memory. It’s satisfying to see how quickly the animals seem to recognize the methodical way I do things, easing into the orderly dance of meal time and clean up with me.
Today, the chores have increased in number, as an overnight snow dusting has added to the previous paltry amount, making it hardly worth a plowing, but a messy nuisance if I don’t.
At least I know Cyndie will be sympathetic. She went to D.C., where they’re getting their own dose of snowfall today.
Happy winter!
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Getting Orange
Things are growing more orange around here. Yesterday at breakfast, Cyndie called me to come look at the difference in color of our eggs, compared to the ones purchased at the grocery store. Looks like the free-range diet of our three chickens is producing deep color in the yolks, seen on the right, below.
We spent the Labor Day holiday doing a lot of work, for a day off. Starting with a couple of hours cleaning out the compost area, using the loader bucket on the diesel tractor. There’s now plenty of room to store a winter’s worth of manure, just in case winter gets around to showing up.
Then we split up and Cyndie used the power trimmer in the labyrinth, while I entered a race against time to get the hayfield mowed before it rained.
Looking back toward the horses, I spotted another splash of orange color erupting from the green of our tree line.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like September.
At the end of a long day’s effort, we put our tools away and headed for the house under the drops of a perfect late-summer rain shower.
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Mutual Support
We have received a lot of support from our neighbors, George and Rachael Walker in the time we have been here. They have provided us with meat and eggs from a share in their CSA farm, cut and baled our hay, George trims our horse’s hooves, and Rachael has provided riding lessons. We welcomed an opportunity to finally offer support to them in return.
Yesterday, we went over to learn the details of feeding their variety of horses so that we can “farm-sit” while they are away for a few days over the weekend. Most of their animals will be set up with enough food for all three days, so it is just horses that will be our primary responsibility. Still, I found the process of feeding some of the other animals equally fascinating.
The pigs eat anything and everything. Rachael found a stash of eggs that had been secreted away in some nook, so she tossed them to the pigs. Mixed in with the pulverized corn that had already been served, it looked like a baking accident had spilled in there. The pigs took to it like… pigs.
I didn’t see the ducks getting fed, but they put on a nice show of their dark colors, strutting their stuff in the yard. It had me wondering how we might ever condition our dog, Delilah to accept the presence of poultry on our property without assuming they were put there for her to eat.
I’d like to have some ducks and chickens as assistants in controlling the fly populations around here.
After animals were all fed, and George finished cutting one of their hay fields, we joined them for dinner at the nearby El Paso Bar & Grill. I ate fried cheese curds, and other ill-advised choices at an unusually late hour, and stayed out way past my bedtime. It was wonderful.
George and Rachael are a joy to be with, and we feel ever more connected to community as we grow more familiar. Being able to offer them some support contributes greatly to that feeling of connection.
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Relative Something 