After a few weeks of warm weather, it's been a bit of an adjustment to be thrown back to frozen water buckets, cold feet, and extra hungry livestock. Last night the temp dropped into the teens, but the baby chickens and the baby herbs in their salad boxes were toasty warm in the greenhouse with their heat lamp and with a piece of plastic draped over them. I haven't been able to keep the seed trays consistently warm, so my germination rates have been very low. Except for basil and cilantro - I've got lots of each of those. Cilantro is Brandon's nemesis, so he's very excited that it's one of the things I can grow!
The chicks are five weeks old now, and they are crowded in their brooder. I've been promising them that they will get to move to the big chicken coop when they are six weeks old. They are counting the days.
On Sunday, Brandon and I finally butchered the spare roosters. Mom had a spare, I had a spare, and my friend had two to spare. Even though my spare rooster was small, we decided it was time for him to meet the freezer. He had a bad habit of sleeping in the nest box, which meant he was pooping in the nest box and making my eggs dirty. Bad rooster! Finally - we're getting some photogenic eggs around here! I collected fifteen last night.
Such pretty eggs. Good chickens.
I noticed one of the buff Orpington hens walking funny, like a toddler with a dirty diaper, and then she squatted and out popped this weird squishy egg. It had no hard shell! It was like a warm water balloon, only filled with egg. Wendigo thought it was delicious.
Can you see the chicken wire attached to the opening in the greenhouse? With zip ties and some screws and washers, we made the greenhouse chicken proof.
Pst! Get out of here, chickens, it's seed planting time!
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