Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Several weeks ago now, we received two more beautiful black little hens from the same neighbor/new friend who gifted us with Atom and Molly. The new girls have settled in beautifully, and our ladies are currently giving us 12-14 eggs a week.

Our birds are also now officially free-range for most of each weekday (they remain inside for the weekends – too many dogs roaming around when we and our neighbor/friend/landlord are home and outside working on projects). I leave them in their coop-and-run until about noon each day, to give the dog a couple of good off-leash walks/runs while they’re still safely un-chase-able. Then I open the door to freedom.

Here’s Atom, taking the first steps out of the coop, on the first day I let them out:

And here two of the girls have followed him out (that’s Molly on the right, with Leo – short for Leopard-skin Pillbox Hat – on the left, and Shygirl – who is actually no longer quite so shy, but the name has stuck – still in the coop behind the chicken wire):

And here are some very happy birds:

Surprisingly, they tend to stay fairly close to their coop, our house, and our outbuildings. Occasionally they range a bit further afield, but if I look for them, I’m always able to locate them without a problem. And at dusk, they always return on their own to the safety of their coop – all I have to do is close and bolt the door behind them, to guard against predators.

By allowing them to free-range and forage for their own food, they supply themselves with a far better diet than what we could provide – full of fresh green grasses and a wide variety of slugs, bugs and worms – making their eggs that much more nutritious for us (the fresh greens are what gives truly free-range chickens that vivid yellow-orange yolk – so different from supermarket eggs). The various grains and treats I throw to them in the mornings are just icing on the cake.

And fittingly, it was on last Friday’s Spring Equinox that we found ourselves outside hunting for eggs. A side effect of allowing the chickens to roam is that they soon find many suitable places – places other than their nest boxes – to lay their eggs.

Shortly after I let them out that day, I realized that I only saw two of the hens. The third was obviously off laying, though not in either of the nest boxes.

So we went on a hen-hunt, trying to find her nest. After about 20 minutes of unsuccessful searching, I saw Molly walking serenely back to join the others, down a little path next to one of the giant trees that guards our home. So we narrowed our search. A few minutes later, we found the nest – with Molly’s still-warm egg nestled next to two others left from a day or two earlier.

This is the well-concealed nest that we must have walked by about a dozen times while we were looking for her. Can you see it – right in the middle of the photo? (Oops – I should have taken the photo with the eggs still in the nest.)

We’ve left the nest alone, since if we destroy it they’ll just make others, and then we’ll have to find them all over again. As long as they feel like it’s a safe spot, they’ll keep laying there. And I’ll keep checking it – along with their nest boxes – a couple of times a day.

Chicken parade:

The daffodils are up!

And so are the dandelions…

…and these tiny little purple flowers that are everywhere…

…and the snowdrops have already come and gone (this photo is a few weeks old).

The trees are budding…

…and the Indian Plums already have flowers.

And in the garden, we’ve planted pea starts…

…the garlic we planted last fall is thriving…

…last year’s kale in the cold-frame is going crazy…

…and there’s more starts in the greenhouse waiting to be planted (from left: blueberry, onion, and more peas; not pictured: another type of onion starts we planted last weekend, our new rhubarb plant, dormant asparagus roots, and seed potatoes, also all waiting to go into the ground – not to mention our large box full of saved seeds from the last two years and our enormous seed order on the way from Victory Seeds).

Snail sex, I think…

A dog enjoying the sunshine (complete with fresh gooey turkey poo stuck in his fur – he loves to roll in the stuff – it’s the black stuff on his neck on the right side of the photo)…

…and the cat with the biggest eyes ever, enjoying her own patch of sunshine.

UPDATE: there’s a newer post with a picture of the device being used, for anyone who wondered exactly how that worked.

In keeping with the already established aesthetic of our livestock equipment and housing, I built a milking/hoof care stand and stanchion out of old pallets and scrap wood.

Here’s the overview:

With the stanchion open:

Though it looks like a medieval torture device, the blue bucket full of treats keeps goats happy and distracted during milking, hoof trimming, etc.:

Goat’s-eye view:

Teri pointed out that it would be disasterous for a goat’s body to slip off the side while her head was in the stanchion, so I added side rails. One can be flipped out of the way to release the goat (goats don’t like to go in reverse)

Locked closed:

Open:

Old lawnmower wheels make this weighty contraption sort of portable:

It may look slapped together, but typical of my engineering, it’s sturdy enough for a small elephant. I studied various sets of plans, made a few sketches, and adapted what I had in my imagination to the supply of old pallets and scrap we had lying around.

Here’s proof that I didn’t major in drafting (or penmanship, which has continued its downhill progress through almost 30 years of computer use):