Backyard Chicken Workshop

More and more my husband and I have been discussing giving back to society.  As we have more time on our hands than money, it has become important for us to give back in a way that is less financial and more hands-on and spiritual.  

We have contemplated various outlets and organization but never felt the right fit.  The timing wasn't right. Our expertise wasn't there. Or we just plain didn't have a connection to the cause.  We both needed to feel it and we weren't.

So many times I have heard that "timing is everything" or "everything happens for a reason".  While I truly believe both statements, never have they both been so clear.

Today the stars aligned though various friends and connections and we will hopefully begin offering a quarterly workshop on How to Raise Backyard Hens, bringing awareness to the community.

We are both cautiously optimistic about our new found "pet" project and hope to share the wealth of knowlege we have gained over the last year of raising and caring for our Ladies.

Details will follow as soon as they are worked out.

Our Buff Orpington, Fran, eyeing up her first egg!

Breakfast on the Patio

After a lovely rain the ladies took their yogurt breakfast on the patio.  Love their little yogurt coated beaks.  Who knew this would be such a treat.
Staring:  Fran, Felicia and Marie.  Additional appearances by Lois (yellow tag) and Delores (Blue tag)

Natura's Chicken Coop with a View - Other Animals (Google Affiliate Ad)

Here Comes The Sun

Since bringing home those adorable baby chicks back in April I can say (without question) that I have learned something new everyday.  And, with the exception of Lois, our youngest chicken, the ladies are all now large, lovely egg producing hens.

For the last two months we have been averaging four eggs a day and, any day, now Lois will bring that number up to five.  It has been a thrill each day collecting our bounty.

Now I have learned yet another new chicken fact.  Chickens take issue with winter, specifically the lack of daylight.  The ladies are finicky about their sunshine quantity and hold back the eggs as mother nature holds back on her daylight hours.  Just when we were getting a steady production, mother nature shuts us down.

As far as I'm concerned, the ladies and I have come too far to let this little snafu get in our way and after a bit of "Googling" and a bit of foraging in the storage shed. we had our solution.  A "Faux" sunrise  was installed the the coop late last week, an outdoor light set on a timer.   "Voila"!  A new sunrise to hopefully keep the ladies in check.

Will they get it?  Will it work?  Or have I just installed a crazy chicken interrogation lamp?

Day one:  There were five seriously confused and tired looking chickens.  Having them in bathrobes and curlers would only have made the image more perfect.  Better yet, it was as if I had awakened the teenager on his first day of school.  I swear they were squinting and bumping into each other and asking who set the alarm sooooo darn early?    And when does the interrogation begin?

That night the lamp gets moved to simulate something closer to sun-rise and less "Old detective movie".


Day two:  The ladies appear less confused and go about their regular morning routine.  The food and water is now lit up and its breakfast as usual.  Only two eggs today...

The ladies before the dawn

Day three:  It worked!  Back to 4 eggs a day.  And the ladies seem to be happy to be back to work.

On a side note: if there is no rooster present, one of the hens will take on the "rooster" roll call and attempt to Cock-a-doodle-doo at sunrise.  Fran, our "faux rooster", thankfully has not adopted the new sunrise as her call to arms and still does her crowing at the actual sun rise.

Fran, our Buff Orpinton 

And Then There Were Five

Last week we lost our beautiful Bard Rock.

While the only details I am willing to give are that the untimely event was thankfully, fast and hopefully, painless to lovely Betty, I am still trying to come to terms with and make sense of her sudden death.

For the "farmers" out there and the non-chicken people, the sight of me in my backyard in total distraught over a dead chicken probably seems ridiculous.  But, there I was, standing in my backyard holding my lifeless Bard Rock and crying like a baby.  Her death seemed senseless.  Her death seemed mysterious.  Her death seemed useless.  And I was speechless.

Last week we lost our beautiful Bard Rock chicken.  While the death still seems mysterious, senseless and unwanted, I am have come to terms with its usefulness.

It feels quite odd for me to describe a death as useful but in a way the loss of the Bard Rock has helped the flock.  While I thought of her as the one holding the flock together, her willingness to share time separately between the thee Buffs and the two Dominiques was keeping them apart.  In the week plus since her passing our two young Dominiques have really come into their own.  Both once shy and only willing to hang with the Bard are now out and about with the other hens.  Both has lost their irrational fear.  Both have grown up a lot in a very short time.

We miss Bard Rock Betty but the loss has allowed for growth and removed a sub-set of hens.  The flock is a complete and single set.

The Drought

Today a valuable and scary lesson learned:  Chickens need water.
Of course I already knew this, this wildly important tid bit essential to all life forms. I did not, however, expect my  chickens to give me a clue to their survival.

The chicken's food and water supply is checked daily...until this morning. Last night the supply was fine. Water. Check. Food. Check. This morning an unusually early appointment had me out the door and on the road. A rushed coop/run check from my kitchen window and I was gone.  Admittedly and ashamedly I only did a head count.

Tonight the ladies were their usual "happy to free range" selves as I set them free from their run, though I found something odd. Two of my ladies had seriously discolored Combs.  An unusual sight but something to Google later.

Time for the supply check.  Food, check.  Water...the water container is empty. Bone dry empty!  As I walk with the container over to the faucet I have a convoy of feathered friends in tow.  Barely do I get the faucet going and the water container filled and all the ladies are having a good LONG drink. 

Not long after their bellying up to the water cooler the Comb coloring has returned to normal. There is a sign I never want to see again. There will always be time made fore the ladies.

On a roll! The ladies have started cranking out those eggs

As of yesterday we had reached the 11th egg mark.  We came so close to hitting our first dozen in just one week!

It is official, all three Buff Orpingtons are laying.

The photo above is Marie, our first layer and below are the first of Marie's eggs.

The Egg!

After 23 weeks of patience, care and lots of laughs and antics, our Buff Orpington, Marie, has produced her first and our first EGG!  We could not be any more proud.

Over the weekend Miss Marie was exuding some strange behaviors.  We have come to expect the unexpected as "New Ranchers" while raising chickens but Marie's actions were disconcerting.

All weekend she was noisier than usual.  Angrier than usual.  All weekend was her "Winter of Discontent". Poor chicken.  Something was happening to Miss Marie and she didn't seem to understand, nor did we. Several times we found her wandering aimlessly in the tool shed, pecking and squawking.  She was looking for something she couldn't seem to put her beak on.

This morning, like most mornings I was behind schedule.  While I wanted to take a moment to say Good Morning to the Ladies, my short visit to the coop would only upset the girls.  They would want to free range and I wouldn't be able to give them the time.  They were all in the run, nestled in and content and something seemed strange.  Marie wasn't pacing or clucking.  She, too, was content.

Hours later when I arrived home from work, the ladies were set free to range about the yard.  As they peck about for bugs in the yard I peek in the nesting boxes where I had, weeks earlier, stashed two plastic "Easter Eggs" as encouragement and reference.  There they were.  One brown plastic egg.  One white plastic egg. AND...One brown egg.  ONE BROWN EGG!!!!

WE HAVE AN EGG!!!!