Look'n Better!

Henny Penny is looking better today! She looks bright and alert. She ate a lot of her feed and all her lettuce. The feed was a combination of raiser and corn and it was filled up to the top.

Today the other hens were coming up to the cage and visiting. Or maybe they were just trying to get to the feed? But she does look better. Hope she recovers!

I dumped out the four hens that were sitting in the nest boxes for most of the day. It was like they were in a daze. Once they were out and about they clucked happily over the corn and went and did chickens stuff like scratching around for edibles. I guess I will have to get them out of the nests earlier every day.

[4 eggs today]

Smiles

~:>

June Lightning 6/3/09 - Placer County, California

Here is Hen/Roo staking claim to the top of the rock pile this afternoon and perhaps celebrating survival of all the lightning we had last night. We did get dumped on by the clouds (13 inches an hour) but they moved over us so fast that there are no puddles left. 

I gave the hens some corn to help with the celebration. They were happy to work over the corn to show their appreciation. I see that Wyandotte sitting over by the fence... I will have to check later to see if she left an egg in the pen. [no egg] And I have to remember to bring in any left over corn because more storm cells are supposed to show up tonight and tomorrow. [no corn left either] We do need the rain, but I could do without the lightning.

The lightning didn't seem to upset the hens

because they laid 10 eggs today!

They must feel safe in their coop.

Happy chickens!

After the lightning started we unplugged the computers and then turned off the lights so we could enjoy the light show. Wow! It probably wouldn't seem like much if we lived in the mid-west but we had over 1400 lightning strikes in an hour in one weather cell that moved over us. Constant booming and light flaring lighting up the trees.

If you can stand to sit through the commercial before the lightning video part starts this news video gives a good idea of the non-stop lightning. It was pretty amazing. But much louder where we are and more rain.

The lightning rattled the windows and shook the house. Lightning is not that unusual up here, but I never experienced so many lightning strikes in such a short time. Spectacular!

My video clip is only 6 seconds long because the lightning strike was so close that the bang came at the same time as everything lit up. I was so startled that I backed up into Kristine and she grabbed hold of me because she thought I was going to fall and I tensed up and my finger pushed the button and turned off the recording. Phooey!

There were lots of lightning flashes during the dark part of my video, but the camera could only get the very brightest flashes. I do have other videos but they are rather boring to watch since there is a lot of black screen in between the biggest flashes.

This was the brightest and loudest that I caught. My poor little camera did the best it could. Sorry the video is so short. Later if you want you can click on the video button and drag it slowly and you can see the big bolt of lightning.

I know it's black! Go ahead and click on it!

The noise you hear is the rain and then the thunder.

Damp BBQ

Look what's happening in the chicken pen. Two of the hens decided to lay their eggs out in the wet straw. They were not locked up today. So, why? Don't know. Seems strange to me. 

Kristine and Tom took off for the movies to see Wolverine and I stayed home to watch the place and keep the fire going. All was quiet and not much happening around here except that I decided to barbecue chicken for dinner and then decided to add corn on the cob and asparagus to the list.

The house and deck are surrounded by trees which left me out in the rain, which is OK since it didn't really start raining until I was finished with the BBQ. (That is the point of the roof up there.) The honey and molasses I put in the BBQ sauce I made for the chicken blackened nicely. That was not my plan, but it tasted great. 

I took the husks off the corn, saved them, buttered and salted the corn, put the husks back around the corn, put them in foil, added some water, sealed them up and put them on the BBQ for about 15-20 minutes on the top rack on low.

Sorry if this post is a little off. I have another migraine. Yesterday too. Gee, and I thought they were going away. Hopefully, this will be a light one like yesterday. They really are getting lighter... not as bad as they were, so I do think they are going to stop. Now would be good.

Smiles

:)