Friday, April 10, 2009

Chickens in the Rain

                                 [6 eggs]

Empty loft!!!
Lots of cobwebs!

Today we get to arrange furniture and make a cozy, fun place for Kristine to hang out and read, watch tv, do school work, etc.

The Christmas light strings that run along the bottom of the railing still work! They look kinda cool when we turn them on at night. Better than a night light, well... prettier.

The quilts are being washed and the one on the right is now on a bed. Things are moving along! The white thing on the ceiling beam is a wind up clothes line that we use for delicate things or stuff we just don't want to put in the dryer. We have two of them and the clothes dry very quickly up in the loft because the warm air all collects up here. And we have use these lines (there are two) when the electricity goes up and the weather is bad outside. I want to set up clothes lines in the spa house again. It is called the spa house because it used to have a hot tub in it. But now the hot tub is in Arizona!

It has been raining, but it let up for awhile, so I let the chickens out to run about. Happy chickens!

Our chickens are all Heritage chickens. Kristine chose them especially because they do very well as free range chickens and to help preserve the breeds.

Starting in the front, Light Brahma, Australorp, (left) Wyandotte, (right) Orpington, Dark Brahma, Buff Brahma, (on the right an Australorp and a Light Brahma.)

The hens were eager to get out in the wet leaf litter and scratch out areas into the wet dirt and find yummy somethings to eat. As I said... happy chickens!

All these chickens are camera shy.

As soon as I want to take a photo they all take off in different directions. I'll have to bring some corn with me next time.

Come back! The camera won't hurt you...

Look on the side bar for links to click on to see photos of the hens as chicks and as adults.

And if you are interested in learning more about Heritage livestock or endangered livestock, click here to go to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Kristine used this site, among others, to chose which chickens we would raise. Yesterday, we were talking about eventually getting another rooster/s and having the hens raise some chicks. But that is a few years down the road, unless we have a predator attack. Right now we have enough chickens! Ducks...? Maybe, some ducks? And/or goats? We were talking about how much we would love to have some goats again.

When the girls were in 4-H we had a dairy herd. I loved the goats. They were like big dogs! Sweet girls. Maybe we could get two does. You need at least two because they are herd animals and are seriously not happy if they are alone. I am still deciding if I want to get into the twice a day milking, dealing with raising meat kids (the bucks,) and building goat proof escape fencing. Goats are monkeys when it comes to getting out of pens, and they would have no trouble getting out of the fencing we have now. And they would need predator proof housing too. Chickens are a lot easier to care for. But I do miss the goats... sigh...

Smiles

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Hi! I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for commenting on my blog. I always really appreciate the people that take the time to leave a comment.

If you don't want to do the twice a day milking when it comes to goats you could leave the kids on their mother and only milk her once a day. That is what I will often do and even though we get less milk it does save some time and work.

Love your chickens!