Carl and the Hens...Fat Tuesday Edition

When you're in the coop offering the hens fruit and veg tailings, remember Carl likes his greenies too...

Colossal Egg, Fairy Egg

Outdoor life clearly suits Bruce's hens. They strut and scratch happily all over his yard, turning up the soil in his herb garden. Recently, a couple of oddities.

 Last week:

the 91-gram egg

 Complete with double yolk

Look at that giant!

Today, the 11.9-gram fairy egg

 Tiny testament

to our 27-degree F low last night?

Let's crack the little guy open and see what we've got...

 Mostly white,

with the faintest promise of a yolk

Hens in the Hostas

Bruce began letting the hens out of their coop this week to forage in the yard, and I walked over today to check the scene. Most invigorating to see these gorgeous Rhode Island Reds out and about.

Bottoms up as they scratch for bounty 

They're not as eager as you might think to move from coop via the stoop to the growth. In fact, many stay behind. Bruce lifted these girls up.

Carl occasionally gets too close and then there's a sudden flurry of feathers.

But mainly he's on the hunt for chicken poo, garden snack supreme

Brilliant Yolks, Beautiful Omelets

Look at the color of this omelet in process. There's simply no comparison between factory-raised eggs and the ones we get from Bruce's hens. According to the folks at Dragonwood....

What’s this mean for you? If you haven’t had them, true free-range eggs from chickens that roam around eating grass and crickets and worms and seeds are remarkable. For one thing, they have deep orange yolks, much more colorful than the pale yellow things you get in eggs you buy at the grocery store.


They’re so colorful because this varied diet gives them lots and lots of beta carotene, giving free range eggs much more beta carotene that regular USDA factory-farm eggs give you.

Save a few greens for the girls down the street from the accompanying stir-fry...

Rhode Island Reds: A Portrait

Such beautiful healthy girls, unperturbed by my opening their nesting box from the outside, via the egg-collection trap door.

And such individuals

 

Compare and contrast

We all know where this leads...

Scoop in the Coop: Nesting Box Issues

The final part of the video that H2 shot, it shows how a chicken wanting to lay an egg approaches a full nesting box.



My eight Rhode Island Reds have been laying for 7 weeks now.  I'm happy with the number and size of their eggs; I'd also encourage anyone thinking about raising backyard chickens to seriously consider the breed.  They've been a wonder, at times, to behold.  I'm just trying to get a handle on the ba-gawking.

Scoop in the Coop: Behavior Modification

This is the second part of H2's video showing what my chickens go through when they lay an egg. Part of that daily routine involves plenty of loud ba-gawking, something that I'm trying to discourage given how close my neighbors are to the coop.  To make matters worse it goes on for 2-3 hours while all the chickens go through the nesting/laying cycle.  Every day.

Two weeks after starting spraying them with water immediately after they make the noise, I think they've toned it down a bit.



None of the online chicken forums, nor the guidebooks that I've consulted, really address how loud chickens can be. In particular, Damerow's "Guide to Raising Chickens" makes no mention of my breed, Rhode Island Reds, being particularly noisy. The online conversation at places like Backyard Chickens isn't much better. The consensus is that placating neighbors with eggs is the answer. Another unsupported assertion is that the hens are doing a "happy" egg laying dance. Bull. They make the noise when they're alarmed or upset, as well as when they're nowhere near laying an egg.

Summer Solstice on the Roof Farm and Friends Visit the Coop

June 21 summer solstice quick roof walk...

 In the Earthboxes, spring peas in decline,

tomatillos on the rise

Tomatoes are robust--

thank you, Bruce, for the healthy starts!

 

I direct-seeded a few types of beans and the Mystery Greek Squash from Root Simple. Thanks, Erik, for sharing the seeds. Each year we get powdery mildew on squash and cukes and I vow not to plant the following year. And each year I do.

I have this notion that squirrels are attracted to open soil (and some proof of that), so I laid some plastic netting over the direct-seeded SIPs to deter them.

Golden Midget watermelons are up, seeds via Debbie and Little Green Girl. Thanks, garden friends.

A visit the next day from Trish and her boys, who remembered everything we discussed last year about sub-irrigation growing and bees. JT, at left, shared even more about bees that he'd learned in school. He's going to be a natural beekeeper. And Alex chowed down on every single kind of greens we're growing. Excellent palate!

We walked to Bruce's 

and got right into the coop...

...where the kids learned all about the hens

and their living arrangements

Summer's here.