The White House

The White House

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Naked Chickens and Barking Dogs

Rupert is now trying to impress the ladies who are not the least bit interested in him. He's gotten so annoying he's been banned to Daisy's side of the yard for the rest of his days. I have such a nice barnyard with the sweetest, cleanest, nicest chickens. Why did I chose to upset the balance?

A lady down the road offered me some hens that were already laying. I should have checked them out before agreeing to take them. Without going into too much detail lets just say their living accommodations were quite different than my set-up. As a result it has made them quite aggressive and several have been pecked to nakedness.

This buff has no feathers on it's back or bottom.


The two blacks ones are naked and mean.

There are two of these who are both very mean. The other (no photo?) has even less feathers than this one. They stink like nothing I've ever smelled before. It's all just rather gross and upsetting to my girls.

After sheep, goats, ducks and geese this pen has been cleaned so much the fluff is gone. Now it is hard as a rock and the poo is not soaking in. I do not like a messy pen. It is right on the corner where a zillion and one cars drive by all day plus when I want to show it to someone I don't want it disgusting. I keep it clean and therefore have no smell even with 44 birds. Lori at the Skoog Farm talks about dragging two of her horse arenas and I realized I could do the same thing so a lot of time yesterday was spent hauling wheelbarrow loads of dirt into the pen. (Bad design that I can't get my 4-wheeler in there). I have had such a headache for days now so work was slow. I hope to finish today.

The stinky naked birds got right in there and tried to clean themselves. I still may bathe them, but not until my headache goes away. My girls rolled around as well.


We collected 5 eggs from the ten birds yesterday. Now I'm going to have to try and figure out who is laying and who isn't. I don't want to feed non-producing birds. I'm not even sure how old they are. Look at my carrots. I can't believe how big they are. This is the first year they weren't a flop.

Nick helped me cut some trees to make a ladder roost for the birds. I'll get a photo today. We also went to the lumber yard and got two bags of sawdust for bedding ($1.05 per bag). I'll get a truck load when I have a place to store it ($25.50 per load). They little ones had so much fun playing and running to the top.

We made a stop by Coldstone to use a gift card I received from coaching soccer. What an over-priced place. $15.50 for two small cones and two waffle cones, and I really didn't think the ice cream was all that good. Kind of bland tasting.

Well, I'm taking my headache outside to the chicken pen to work some more. It's further away from Andrew's perpetually barking dog (which is probably what is giving me such a headache!). Nine more days and the puppies can go to new homes. Nine more sleeps; nine more wake-ups to a barking dog. Then silence. :)

4 comments:

Little Black Scrap Cat said...

I'm with you about not feeding non-producing hens. Perhaps when you figure out who's laying you can plan a little chicken pot pie party for "the others"?

Hope your headache (and the barking dog) go away soon.

stace41971 said...

You might want to give the chickens a couple of weeks...sometimes stress will cause them not to lay. Your chicken yard looks so neat though! I let my chickens run loose which they love..but it makes it impossible to pick up all the chicken and duck bombs on my yard. It makes going barefoot interesting :)

Queen-Size funny bone said...

And what happens to the chickens that are not hatching....fried chicken for dinner?

Lori Skoog said...

Gayle...the chicken yard is fabulous! Neat as a pin. You continue to work your butt off!