Chickens and gardens on a rainy day
Well we finally got rain last night after all day of clouds and thunder. It was great falling asleep to it and wonderful thoughts of fresh rain water for the garden.
So this morning I got up early, fed the chickens and checked on the baby chicks. And stared at the garden wondering where to start first since it was a lot cooler today. I haven't weeded in close to two weeks since the temps have gotten to 95+ and it just wasn't something I wanted to do in this heat. The tomatoes need to be pruned and the cucumbers need more length to trellis since the corn was already harvested for the chickens.
So I went back in and made some coffee and started on breakfast waiting for my two year old to be woken up so she can spend some time running off the pent up energy from being cooped up inside for weeks.
Fast forward a couple of hours and we head outside to do the things. We check the chickens again then I weed the garden and prune the tomatoes and add a few trellis' for the cucumbers while she plays in the mud puddles.
Gave the grass and weeds pulled from the garden to the chickens and my daughter helped collect eggs. She has such a way of expressing no fear when it comes to animals I know I taught her right in that aspect. We checked the baby chicks again and I'm pretty sure that out of the five blue laced red wyandottes I have, we have one rooster! And that's great! More beautiful chickens in our future.
The cucumbers and their trellis, so you guys know what I'm talking about
The cute little bucket I collect eggs in for now till I make one of those egg collecting apron things
Here's my troop of beautiful road island reds
Chickens are such a great bird - more useful to humans than the "almighty" eagle!!!
True!
ain't that the truth!
Love seeing what you're doing! Look at all those chickens! We only have 3 here in the city. We suspect a hawk was praying on the others and built a netting around their pen, maybe you remember it? Wish we could have a rooster here!
I do remember it. I remember telling myself I'm going to have to get use to big chickens cuz our baby chicks at the time weren't going to stay that small!! I'll take a pic of the chicken run tomorrow and write a post about the coop and everything since I know I was hunting like hell for ideas when I was first looking.
Wow.. thats a lot if chicken.. great post
Thank you! Yeah we got 20 straight run, we got a little more than we wanted because we were anticipating a few losses cuz it just happens sometimes. Didn't loose any and ended up with 14 hens and 6 roosters, 4 are being fattened up for the freezer and dinner table.
Wow their eggs are so, round?? Haha. I guess I'm unconventional. I needed "pretty" eggs. Hahah. I love my eclectic bunch of chickens. :) HA
When you do harvest your eggs? Morning? Afternoon? Bedtime? Just curious what other people do.
It was a top view picture, might have made the eggs look more round lol. I gather eggs kinda through the afternoon. Since it was reaching 100 a week after they started laying I didn't want the eggs sitting out in that kind of heat. They might not have gone bad or anything but I didn't want to risk it. I have a few hens that lay late afternoon and a few that lay in the morning right after I feed them.
It's real hot here too so I'm checking the coop all the time! Don't want babies to start developing! That's my biggest fear. Hahah my chickens seem to lay any time they want. Haha but they're still getting in the groove of things, I guess!
I have roosters and so far all of mine have been fertile little eggs. I keep it cool inside so I'm not worried about babies forming once their inside. Mine are still learning how to do things too. I've got one hen who 'announces' laying an egg at random, she's never on a nest when doing it and another hen hadn't just plopped one out. She's silly.
Mine often do the egg song when there's no egg present! Hahaha. I have roosters too.