Eggs

Our chickens have slowly been starting back up with their laying. We've got a few mix girls that were born here this past spring. They are both black with hints of blue or green. The one, I swear shines a little purple! She's beautiful. Well they are Ameraucana x brown layers so they have olive eggs. Our first olive eggs! I got a picture of one compared to one of our regular tinted eggs. You can really tell the difference against this one.

Hopefully by spring we will be back in full egg laying mode, right now it takes a few days to lay a dozen, but soon we'll get a dozen or more a day! It's about time, I've been threatening to turn them into stew for months, unfortunately they know I'm all talk..
I got a few pictures of our lovely olive egg layers.. figured I'd make them bigger so you could see the color a little more.

 This little girl is our AmeraucanaX Cuckoo Maran mix. She has some purple, blue, and green in her feathers. It's easier to see in the sun, but she just refused to pose properly for me in the sun..
To the left was her giving me angry looks for chasing her around while great snacks were on the ground. I brought out pancake, banana bread, veggie sticks, and mushrooms. She was not happy I kept disturbing her.

Obviously, since i was trying to take pictures, T-rex had to check me out and make sure I wasn't bothering his hens too much. He cracks me up, but is an excellent rooster. 

Since I had previously written some about our wry neck silkie hen, Maisy, I figured I would show a picture of exactly what i meant by "star gazing" Here she is checking me out when I surprised them. She doesn't do too well with surprises, I should have warned them I was coming. She's really silly and completely independent. Just every once in a while when she gets nervous her neck goes back like this.

Winter Work

Got a little work done these past few days, you know, because it's necessary on a farm, especially with this "snow storm" coming.  Cleaning or filling waters, fixing electric, checking buildings, chopping more wood, and moving over hay. It's not so fun in the snow and ice, but the our sweet animals make it a little less awful. Phantom was being nosey, Beau got his blanket off to roll around, and Remy was watching our every move. So I got a few pictures, while poor Donnie did most of the manual labor.. thank goodness we have him! I couldn't lift some of these things anway.. The extra water trough we have in the sheep pen had frozen completely solid. I couldn't believe it! So Donnie helped me out, flipping it over and cleaning it, clearly it hadn't been touched in quiet a while. Even more amusing, that huge ice block is still there. Has anyone else had this problem? Just large chunks of ice around the property? Our chickens get water in black rubber bowls that empty easily, but they just keep freezing. So now we have about twelve perfect ice circles from the past week out there. Isn't it going to get up above freezing soon?!

A very happy Beau, finally free of a blanket rolling around.

Poor left out Rem, just watching us chop some more wood. He just didn't understand why we wouldn't let him in the field with us. 

An Excellent Birthday

We had a very fun groundhogs day here on the farm. Not at all because of the super bowl, but my quarter century mark! This year, I got the best sort of gift, new silkies : ) Yes, that's right, some chickens for my birthday, but these four are absolutely beautiful and just full of personality. First up, here I am holding Sundance and Cassidy.. We left behind Butch, don't worry though, he has a whole harem of ladies. These are splash silkies, which we have never had before. We'll post more close ups of these two, they are absolutely beautiful, and even more social than some of our other birds. 

So we went to meet our two new silkies at a wonderful local farm. *Small side note, this was after quite a bit of communication back and forth. During this time I had realized I had found another "crazy chicken lady" just like us! She had mentioned her wry neck buff silkie, Maisy. And, during our conversation she had mentioned we could take her and her pal Lily if we wanted to. Well, not wanting to get in over our heads we talked it out quite a bit.. and big surprise, got there with enough crates to bring home all four, you know, just in case. Honestly though, getting there and meeting them, it was hard not to love them! Maisy was obviously nervous, which causes her to "stargaze" ( the perfect name for it) When she does this, her head goes back, I mean all the way against her back. It's weird to watch up she isn't uncomfortable at all and still completely independent. If you haven't realized yet, we are suckers for those "special" pets. So, we obviously brought her home too. Yes, four new silkies to add to our flock. These four will go with Nugget, Smokey, and Boo. We intend to make a nice new silkie container for them with a nice new run next to the garden.