Broody Chickens

These hens are not broody.

The broody hens are in the pen. I took the broody hens out of their nest boxes and shut them in the chicken pen where they have feed and water but no access to nest boxes. They are not happy but at least they are eating and drinking and walking around.

The rest of the hens can get to the nest boxes to lay eggs but can't get to the automatic waterer. So, I filled a pan of water for the outside chickens. I had to sprinkle some scratch near the water pan before the chickens would would come check the pan out. They like the water in the pan ok but they really like the water that flowed out and made puddles in the dirt when I was filling the pan. They love that muddy water. Go figure.

I spent some time wandering around finding more branches and bringing them back to the planter beds. I'm going to fill the dug out beds with wood then fill it with water and let the wood soak before I put on a layer of dirt.

Next step is to get the branch cutters and make smaller branches out of big ones and arrange all this wood neatly. I think I will try walking around on the branches first and see if some of them will just break into smaller pieces.

iPhoto is giving me a headache! It is just short of crashing running very, very slow. I was going through old photos and throwing them in the trash and evidently I threw too much away and iPhoto lost its mind. I did a search (wish I had done that before I deleted photos) and found out that you are not supposed to trash more than 100 photos at a time. Arrgh!

I was able to find the photos I took today but the photo of the chickens only showed up in the large size so you can click on it and it will enlarge. Screamer and Pastey are the Light Brahmas drinking with one of the no name Dark Brahmas.

Kristine will be calling soon, Morgan is due back from the groomers, and I have to quit typing this and go cook dinner.

iPhoto update: I finally got iPhoto working again, but I had to trash the last two days photos. Live and learn.

Peek at the Past

(May 6, 2009)

[4 eggs so far today]

My egg count may be going down because of the broody hens?

~:>

Smiles

Sleepy Sunday

Most of my plans for today didn't happen because I slept most of the day. I did manage to dig out one of the planter beds and get it ready to fill with a layer of old branches. Morgan and the Buffs came to check out what I was doing. This editor is acting goofy again and not letting me type next to the photos.

I thought the egg balancing trick was hard to believe too. This Australorp looks amazed! No, I did not put the egg on the board. The last thing I did before I came back in the house was to clean out the automatic waterer and put some pine branches down around it to help keep the chickens from scratching dirt in it. Poor chickens. Nobody cleans the waterer when I'm sick and I didn't think to tell anyone to do it.

I haven't started reading blogs and answering comments yet. Sorry. Hope to get to that soon.

Kristine just told me that HenRoo was out in the driveway today crowing! This is how HenRoo sounded last year. Kristine says now she sounds like a rooster with laryngitis. I'll try and get a video of HenRoo crowing.

Peek at the Past

(May 2, 2009)

My bears!

[8 eggs today]

~:>

Smiles