Some day this will be delightful fertilizer. That is not this day.
I’m running out of space on this heap, and it needs time to mellow, too. I’d better find another spot to start a new one. This reminds me of a time a friend of mine, who was not a native speaker, asked what a dung hill was. Another friend replied, “It’s a hill of dung.” The asker, suprised, confused, and delighted, said, “There’s a word for everything in English!” She should try German sometime.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but twice in the last couple of weeks it would seem that Boss Chicken has laid two eggs in one day. This is pretty unusual, as it takes a lot for a chicken to lay one egg a day. Two would really tax her system, but there they are in her hutch.
She’s as surprised as I am.
All I can figure is that I miss one of them the night before, but there’s nowhere for an egg to hide. If there’s an egg, I’d see it, and I check for them at night when I close everyone in for bedtime. Very odd. But hey, more eggs!
With nights being above freezing now, Boss Chicken gets to stay outside 24/7. Her rabbit hutch isn’t so well set up to deal with wind, so if it gets too cold or windy, I’ll bring her inside in the winter. I think we’re finally over winter, and so she gets to hang out in nature all the time now.
“You gonna just stand there, or are you gonna give me a treat?”
Still no word on when Garden Guys is going to be back up and running, but I’m as anxious as you are. As soon as I know, you’ll know!
Last week I mentioned that I had a broody chicken. The broodiness was really hard to shake, in spite of my having the Miracle Broody Hen Cure. She’d be in there for a while, seem better, I’d put her back in the coop, and she’d go right back into the nesting bucket. So then I’d put her back in the MBHC, and she’d act all agitated, so I’d put her back into the coop, and you probably can see where this is going. It turns out I was doing it all wrong. Observe the below photo:
Before!
What do you notice about this? That’s right, you can see everything. My mother-in-law, just out of trying to get a moment’s peace, went and covered the cage with a dropcloth. (The chicken can be quite vocal when the mood grabs her, by which I mean I now know what an unholy racket sounds like.) Well, it turns out this cage coverage was the missing link we needed. A day later, the chicken was cured!
After!
We’ll see how long it takes them to get resistant to this new cure, but hopefully this works for a while.
In the meantime, I’ll keep telling you I’m not sure when Garden Guys is back on the air, because I don’t know. But I’ll be sure to make a post about it when I find out anything.
Not that time of the year where Garden Guys starts back up (though I swear it will be soon – the computer issues they’re having are apparently legendary), but that time of the year where someone gets broody. They’re laying more eggs, it makes sense that someone’s gonna want to sit on them until they hatch. Of course, that will be never since we don’t have a rooster, so I put them in the “broody buster,” aka, an old bird cage. It tends to cure them of the urge to hatch the unhatchable. You can read more about it here. So, I’ve got this to deal with while Garden Guys sorts out their computer woes. Of course, it’s mostly sitting around waiting for the voices that tell the chicken to brood to go away, but hey, someone’s gotta do it.
The blurryness of this photo is meant to evoke Bigfoot photos. Bigfoot also likes to sit on eggs.
We’re still in a GG holding pattern. I’m told the end of the month is looking good. I’ve got plenty of material to go, so soon the floodgates will be open. Topics include: chicken mysteries, changes in the flock, winter molting, and chicken depression. How does that sound? Maybe we’ll even find out what the deal with the Garden Guys dead motherboard is.
Meanwhile, I got a call from our town today alerting me to the fact that the town bear is awake and prowling for bird feeders and trash cans. Be careful everyone!
So, it looks like there are still problems at Garden Guys headquarters. I’m told what we’re looking at is a motherboard problem. I’m not actually looking at it, but I can picture what that looks like.
We’ll try again next week. Should it fail, I’ll have some chicken news on deck for you. And not a picture if a chicken on a deck, unless that’s your thing. Everybody’s got a thing, man.
Due to some technical difficulties at Garden Guys HQ, today will NOT be the 2014 season premiere of Garden Guys Green Revolution Radio (featuring Too Many Chickens!). Give us another week or so, and everything will be up and running. Plus, we’re supposed to get another 9 feet of snow on Monday, so you’re not doing any gardening anytime soon anyway. I swear this is happening soon! I swear anyway, but I especially swear about the happening soon part.
Please stand by.
Don’t worry, soon enough you’ll feel like this. (My posts are the chickens, obviously.)
I’ve got a chicken who is molting for the second time, in the middle of winter. I thought this was a little strange, and so I asked over at backyardchickens.com about it. The feedback I got was that certain things could trigger a second molt, like, say, extreme weather. And I thought, “Oh, you mean like TWO POLAR VORTEXES?” So, I think we may have the answer.
Regardless, poor Suzy Creamcheese looks really rough, but is holding out o.k. in the cold. I was tempted to bring her inside, but I think she’s better off with the others, and people said their chickens that had this happen were fine in the cold. She lost her tailfeathers this week, and looks stubby.
Guess what?
And we just got 8 more inches of snow yesterday, with more on the way tomorrow and Monday night. The chickens won’t see bare ground until August at this rate.
But you’ll see new Too Many Chickens! full posts starting again on February 28th, when Garden Guys returns to the internet airwaves.
Got about another foot on Wednesday. Luckily I had finally gotten around to putting the new roof section over the run. Up until now, it was protected by an old tarp that got a little leaky when wet. Now it has a clear roof that should keep them dry while letting light through . . . unless it’s covered in snow.
Look at all that snow protection!
I still need to add one more support beam, but in the meantime, I just used a huge branch that came down in one of our earlier snowstorms.
Use what tools you have available.
Don’t forget, new Garden Guys episodes (featuring Too Many Chickens!) begin February 28th!
