Fun With Chicken

I was cracking up while taking these pictures. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "playing with your food", doesn't it?! Just kidding, we'd never eat the girls - just their deeeeelicious eggs!

The hen used in these pictures has not been harmed in any way. Lola is our fabulous stunt chicken and can even do a quite convincing version of "play dead"!

Now that is a very fine hat. Something tells me it won't keep your ears warm this winter though...

When I was editing this picture, I mistook Ella's arm for another chicken leg and it kinda freaked me out for a minute until I took a closer look!!

Practicing Hamlet's soliloquy. Lola playing the part of Yorick, of course.

Ella makes a fantastic Dr Evil. She said any two-bit villain can have a lap cat. She prefers a lap chicken!

Fun Friday

Here's a fun video I shot yesterday afternoon of The Girls under the blueberry bushes. There used to be neat mounds of mulch surrounding each bush (I know because I put them there this past Spring!), but our ladies have discovered the joys of a good dirt bath. Let me just say, I wish I enjoyed taking my baths as much as they enjoy theirs! And while I'm in a confessional sort of mood, I'll also share that this was the fourth and final video I shot of them doing the same thing. Also, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching the chickens doing ordinary (to them) things. It's endlessly entertaining! Like having a Ringling Brothers clown troup living in the backyard but better because there's no awful face paint. *grin*

We got a phone call informing us that Dean's knee surgery has been bumped up by several hours, so it looks like I might be back home and playing Nurse Ratched - oops, I mean Nurse NIGHTINGALE sooner than I thought. Keep us in your thoughts, ok? Men, and Dean in particular, aren't known for being the best patients. Bopping him over the head with something, although tempting, probably isn't the best way to keep him in bed and off his knee. Or IS it...?

Miss Sophie

Here's a quick shot of Sophie in the yard. The other girls have wandered off to see what bugs they can scratch up under the blueberry bushes and magnolia trees. I got a picture so you can see her without the hardware cloth of the coop interfering.

See what I mean about her pitiful tail? She's got 3 feathers on the left and none on the right. *pout* They'll grow back, of course, but in the meantime she looks so sad!

Into The Sunset

We sent the kids with my parents yesterday morning. They went to breakfast at Sugarcakes on The Square (I was sorry to miss that trip!), shoe-shopping, the mall, to Target and Costco. While they were doing the last minute back-to-school errands, Dean and I drove the hour plus that it takes to get to Cedartown. As it turns out, our suspicions about the real sex of Nadine and Bella was correct. They are roosters. Or more correctly, cockerels. They won't be considered roosters until they're 12 months old. We figured out what was going on very quickly when the kids were wondering out loud why "Bella" was trying to get piggyback rides from the other hens!

As heart-breaking as it was, we had to take both the boys - now called Ned and Beau - back to the breeder where we got them. Where we live, it's against zoning to have roosters. Most likely because of the noise they make once mature, although we hadn't heard even an attempt at crowing from either of our fellas. (We figured that it was better to go ahead and return them before we started getting complaining phone calls!)

There were lots of tears from the kids (and more than a few from the adults) and a flurry of last-minute snapshots to put in Ella's memory book. I had called Darren, the breeder, the day before explaining our situation. Our main concern was that the boys get to live a good life rather than being killed and eaten immediately. Darren assured us that he would be able to find someone who'd be glad to have our boys without the threat of execution looming over their fine feathered heads.

Once we got to the feed store that Darren and his wife own and showed them the birds, Darren did a double-take, pronounced them handsome and announced that HE would be keeping the cockerels. *sigh* Sounds like they'll get to stay alive and spend many years getting piggyback rides from the hens in the poulty yard at Darren's farm! It was more than we could've hoped for and helped assuage the guilt we were feeling about having to give them up.

As we were getting ready to leave, we were offered the choice of more chicks or a rather bedraggled chicken in exchange for our boys. We hadn't figured on bringing any more birds home, but on seeing the sweet girl in the pen, we decided to take her. And honestly, we figured that it might help the kids to adjust to the loss of Beau and Ned if they had someone new to baby and love on. Sophie has lived a hard life in her first 14 weeks. She was crammed in a pen with 40 other chickens and is missing most of her tail feathers. (Chickens will squabble and pull out each others' feathers when they are in cramped, overcrowded conditions.)

Darren's wife bought several pullets from the man who had raised them from chicks purchased from Murray McMurray hatchery (he was the one who had crammed them together, not Darren or his wife or MM hatchery) and brought them to the feed store pen to sell. There were 5 in the pen on Friday when someone came in and bought 4. Sophie was the last one left unsold and I imagine it was mostly due to her ragamuffin appearance.

Ironically, she is a Columbian Wyandotte, the kind of hen I moaned about wanting when we got Pearl (thinking she was gonna be a white Leghorn) at the chick giveaway this Easter. Pearl has turned out to be Buff Orpington (wahoo!) so we didn't have a white hen. Now we do!

Sophie will look like this once she has matured and her tail feathers grow back:

But for now, she looks like this:

See the almost complete lack of tail feathers?

And here's a comparison shot so you can see how much bigger Fifi is than Sophie.

Birds, Bricks and Border Gardens

Today's post is definitely chicken picture heavy - sorry about that to those of you who aren't poultry aficionados. We've been asked to send pictures (both of Dean's awesome coop and our feathered girls) to a lady who is writing an article for Atlanta magazine about the nationwide boom in backyard chickens. I don't know if we'll be selected for her article, but it sure would be fun!

Instead of chasing them around the yard, it was much easier to just let them traipse around the flowers by the patio and take pictures as they scratched around. They would much rather hang out in the vegetable garden, but I wasn't interested in following them under the okra (their preferred "chill out" spot) so I could get itchy and bug-bitten, all the while trying to get a couple decent pictures.

Bella and Mimi

Bella

Pearl and Lucy

Mimi and Fifi

Fifi

Nadine (with Dean)

Lola

Lucy

Fifi

Mimi

Lola

There. That should do me for a while!

Lazy Days of Summer

Ha!

Whoever came up with that saying ought to be spanked - and spanked hard. I might want to be lazy, but there's just too much to get done in a day! Aside from making and shipping beads, we're also taking care of several of our neighbor's animals while they are out of town. Plus, I'm getting the girls all packed and ready to go on a week-long vacation to Isle of Palms with my parents. It's my father's annual birthday trip and he and mom love having the girls come along too. (Don't worry about Davis though, he looks forward to having the undivided attention of his parents. We take him out to dinner, to go and see a movie and to the arcade/go-kart track. And somehow he has wheedled a promise out of me to buy him a new video game for his PlayStation, Secret Agent Clank. *sigh* Boys.) My aunt has been in and out of the hospital with some health issues recently and we're getting ready for my cousin and his daughter to come and visit soon. Plus, my cousin, Becca, and her daughter and pug might also be coming to stay for a bit as well.

Our garden is going like gangbusters and it feels like I'm doing all I can just to keep up with the harvest. (Or the weeds, but I don't feel like talking about them right now) I'm not complaining - I love it! We've got armloads of tomatoes and green beans. The yellow squash is surprisingly productive, considering the late start it got. Still no zucchini, but the plants are at least covered in blooms now. The tomatillo husks are starting to fill out nicely, so we'll be having some salsa verde before you know it. We've gotten several bell peppers and quite a few jalepenos, but the poblano pepper plants are just starting to flower. We ate our very first fried okra last night and it was delicious!

In other absolutely fabulous news, Mimi and Fifi have both started laying - WAHOO!! We got the very first egg on Friday before the 4th and then 1 a day on Saturday, Monday and yesterday. (I intended to get a picture of the first egg, but it ended up getting eaten before I could borrow my mom's camera. Oops!) There is a definite difference in our girls' eggs and the ones I buy from the grocers. Right now, the most noticeable difference is in the size. Hee, hee... our little eggs are like brown ping pong balls - so cute! Of course they'll get bigger as the girls grow and mature because all our girls are considered "heavy breeds" that lay large to jumbo eggs. The other difference is that the whites aren't at all watery - they're very firm and stand up in the pan. Plus, the yolks are a pretty marigold orange color instead of the yellow I'm used to seeing. And they are simply scrumptious!

Photo Post

Just thought I'd show some pictures that have been taken recently!

Here's a cute little chipmunk that was curious about the fresh corn we were feeding the chickens. Is it awful to admit that I can't stand chipmunks? Seriously. I don't like squirrels either. Or any other kind of rodent, for that matter. Yuck! But this little guy is cute in a "awww...isn't that adorable? Now, shoo it away!" kind of way.

Here's a shot of two of our littlest chickens. In the photo here are Lola (with the blurry moving head) and Pearl (who has apparently decided that her best side is her backside.).

This is Mimi, one of Dean's favorite chickens. She's one of the prettiest shaped chickens we have, carrying herself very upright and regally. But...I'm not overly crazy about black eyes, you know? They seem a little beady and soul-sucking to me. Yeah - there goes my psychosis again...

This is my favorite chicken, Fifi. She is Queen Boss Almighty, Told-Ya-So, Ruler of All the Lesser Chickens in our flock. Look at that head up there and tell me you don't see "DINOSAUR" staring back at you. I'm telling you, if she were 20 feet tall, we'd all be chicken poop by now!

Alright, well that's all I've got for now. Time to wake up Ella and go for a walk.

Chicken Q & A

In a new twist, this blog entry features pictures that aren't mine!

Why? Because I've had several e-mails about the chickens. The two most common questions are: 1. - Why did you decide to get all different kinds of chickens? and 2. - What will they look like when they're full grown?

Question number 1 - We look on these chickens as really cool pets that, as a bonus, are also prolific egg layers. We specifically chose to get different varieties so that we'd be able to name and tell them apart from one another. Plus, all the chickens turn out to be so beautiful when they mature that we couldn't really pick only one breed. All but one (that'd be Pearl) of the breeds we chose lay brown eggs, which I seem to prefer. I know an egg is an egg is an egg, but I can't help it. Ya like what ya like, you know?

Question number 2 - What will they look like? Beautiful!! Here, let me show you:


Our Mimi is an Australorp, like the hen in the picture. Their feathers are black with shimmering green, blue and purple highlights in the sun. She stands very straight and tall and will meet Gracie at the run door, ready to play. She's really funny how she follows Fifi around the coop and will squawk loudly the entire time I hold Fifi - until she's back in the pen with the door closed.


Fifi is a Barred Rock hen. Besides the beautiful patterning, her feathers are unbelievably soft - like holding a clucking teddy bear! Boy, that's an odd mental image, no? I love sitting with Fifi in the yard, petting her wonderful feathers and feeding her bananas (her favorite food). She really is an awesome chicken!

Lucy will be this gorgeous reddish chestnut color. Rhode Island Reds are Dean's favorite type of chicken and I have to confess, Lucy is our current favorite chick. She was (and still is) the tiniest chick we've got and yet she stands up to all the bigger chicks with absolutely no fear. She used to stand on their backs and peck at their feathers and toes. She got her name, Lucy, short for Lucifer, because we realized she was an ounce of pure, feathered evil for the first week of life! As a matter of fact, we had to temporarily isolate her from the other chicks so they could sleep in peace. She has mellowed, but I can definitely see this girl ruling the roost!


Ahhhhhh...Nadine. This gorgeous girl is a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and quite possible the most beautiful kind of chicken I've ever seen in real life. I don't know why they're called "blue laced" when the feathers are gray, but I'm the most excited about watching our fuzzy little chick grow into this beauty. The only thing prettier than a BLR Wyandotte hen is a BLR Wyandotte rooster! (Do a Google image search and see what I mean!) Unfortunately, it's looking like my Nadine might actually be a Ned. *sigh* We're going to wait another week or so, but it looks like the hackles (neck feathers) are growing faster than any of the other chicks. Plus, she's the same age as Bella but easily twice her size. From what I've been reading, both are indications that our chick is most likely a cockerel and not a pullet.

Pearl is a white Leghorn, like this group of hens. To me, these are what pops into my mind when I hear the word chicken. She will be the only white egg layer in our flock and seriously, how cute is that floppy comb? I probably sound the least excited about this chicken, and the truth is - I am - sorry. We got Pearl (along with Lola) at a chick giveaway in Roswell the day before Easter. And while I did want a white chicken, what I really wanted was one of these:

Light Sussex Hen or Columbian Wyandotte/Rock
(They look pretty much the same to me!)

It certainly isn't Pearl's fault that I have poor impulse control. The people at the giveaway told us we got to pick 2, so I picked 2 instead of the 1 (Lola) we had intended to get. Ha! Watch Pearl turn out to be the best chicken of the flock!!

Bella is our Golden Laced Wyandotte. This picture is a litte darker than the Wyandottes we saw in the breeder's pens, but you can get the general idea. They're really pretty with all the outlining around the feathers and are supposed to have the same gentle temperment as the Barred Rocks (like my precious Fifi!) Bella is a funny little chick and I can't wait til more of her gorgeous feathers grow in!

Is Lola a Golden Comet?

Lola is something of a mystery chick and we've been having a lot of fun trying to guess from her chick-y puffball coloring what she really is. So far, we think we've narrowed the possibilities to 2 breeds: Red Star or Golden Comet

Or is she a Red Star?

It really doesn't matter either way. They're both beautiful breeds of chickens that are very similar in color and are supposedly egg-laying machines. And honestly? I just like having more redheads around...even if those heads are feathered!!

Captain Obvious, Reporting For Duty!

As you can probably already tell, I don't have any beads to post for today. I had an absolutely wonderful weekend - recharged my batteries, improved my mood and was very productive - but not productive in the sense that would make money. *sigh*

What did I do? Well, my lovely husband drew out a coop design last week and we spent the past several days getting the frame put together. And when I say "we", I actually mean Dean. He's the brains of any endeavor that involves building things. I can visualize all manner of things, but I can't walk through a drawing of a building in my head like he can. To me, it isn't real until it's 3D.

No, I was definitely more of a Girl Friday. Fetching tools, holding the measuring tape, making endless runs to Home Depot and Lowe's - you get the picture.

Once I get the okay from Dean, I'll post pictures of the future home of The Girls!!


We're still on for a big Boutique update very soon, but I'm not 100% sure I'll be ready by Sunday, March 1st. It might be a little later in the week, I should know for certain this Thursday.

Oh yeah, I'm still working on getting another newsletter program set up. In the meantime, if you'd like to get e-mail notification of new beads when they're posted, send me an e-mail through my website's "contact me" button!

From the Internet

I ran across this yesterday and thought it was really cute. My favorite answers are Dr. Seuss' and Grandpa's. Which one is your favorite?


Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Pat Buchanan
To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.

Louis Farrakhan
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.

The Bible
And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Colonel Sanders
I missed one?

L. A. Police Department
Give us five minutes with the chicken and we'll find out.

Richard M. Nixon
The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road. I don't know any chickens. I have never known any chickens.

Dr. Seuss
Did the chicken cross the road?
Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes! The chicken crossed the road,
but why it crossed, I've not been told!

Ernest Hemingway
To die. In the rain.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Grandpa
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Aristotle
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

Karl Marx
It was an historical inevitability.

Saddam Hussein
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Ronald Reagan
What chicken?

Captain James T. Kirk
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Fox Mulder
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

Machiavelli
The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

Freud
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates
I have just released Chicken Coop 98, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book — and Explorer is an inextricable part of the operating system.

Einstein
Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?

Full Blown Chicken Mode

I added a Emerald Isle trio to the Boutique this morning. That's it for the St. Paddy's Day beads and I'm back to making beads for the mega March 1st update. I'd like to have at least as much as I had for the Molokai update, if not more.

I'll have more beads available for this coming Monday and I will also be working on installing and learning a new newsletter service. So yes, *sigh*, you'll have to sign up again if you'd like to continue receiving e-mail notices of new beads for purchase. I'm sorry about the hassle, believe me.

I'm afraid that as today's blog title suggests, I am indeed in full blown chicken mode. Nearly all my spare time is spent reading books, magazines and surfing the Internet for any information that can be gleaned on my new obsession. I have been electronically harassing my best friend, flooding her e-mail box with pictures of the chicken breeds (in various stages of development, no less!) I'm planning to raise. To her credit, she has been very understanding and supportive in NOT calling for the people wearing white jackets and carrying "people" nets. Bless you, my friend, bless you! I promise, this too shall pass...

I'm afraid I'll be worthless on any other topic for quite a while, so I apologize in advance for what will undoubtedly seem like endless chicken talk.

Well, chicken and bead talk.

And oh yes - there WILL be chicken beads. Consider this fair warning. *grin*

Got Some Tissues?

'Cause I've got issues!

Nah - there's nothing so bad it's worth crying over. I've only got a couple minor irritations like: -

* Pappashop can't retrieve my mailing list from PHP List either, so it looks like I'll be starting from scratch this week. Anybody use Bravenet?

* There is something truly wrong with my camera. *sigh* No matter what settings I change, it wants to focus on the background rather than the item being photographed. I've gotta get it figured out because there's a slew of new beads to shoot for the March update and I don't exactly have wads of cash laying around to buy a new camera.

* Tilly's piddly cold (that she refused to take medicine for) has turned into bronchitis and an upper respiratory infection. We picked up some antibiotics and now she's on the sofa playing Wii, but my oldest isn't exactly the 'suffer in silence' type - know what I mean?

But there are some good things to report too!

We've got a 3 day holiday with the kids home from school, so even though she's not exactly enjoying the holiday, at least Tilly won't have any school work to make up! And if she's feeling better tomorrow, we're probably going to go to the dollar show and see Madagascar 2 (hey - she'll have been on the 'biotics for 24 hours and won't be contagious), eat popcorn, and generally be lazy.

I'm one step closer to having chickens - wahoo! My husband has finally consented. He's doing the coop requirements and design research (I did all the zoning and city law research last year, so I already know we're good to go on that front.) and wants to have a materials list by this weekend. So, it looks like I'm getting The Girls sooner than I anticipated. I had, of course, intended to wear him down over the next several months but now I no longer need to! What am I gonna get? An Australorp (Mimi), a Barred Rock (Fifi) and a Rhode Island Red (Lola).

You wanna know the funny thing? I was nervous about telling my parents, thinking that they were gonna be all "There goes Jena, with another of her hare-brained ideas...*sigh* Why couldn't we have had a normal daughter?". But guess what?! My dad told me last Friday that he and my mom had decided to get chickens! And that was before I had even told them that I wanted some! Like my friend, Kate, says - this is just the Universe's way of telling me to go for it!!

Eglu

I want one!!

I've always wanted to have my own chickens, but my husband (who grew up cleaning out his grandparent's chicken coop) always puts his foot down. But these plastic Eglus by Omlet USA are so cool (and apparently much easier to clean, honey!!) I'm hoping he'll change his mind. I only want 3 and I have their names already picked out and everything! My girls will be named Fifi, Mimi and Lola. Lola, of course, is the hell-raiser of the bunch. Gotta keep an eye on that one...

And seriously, if the economy keeps heading the way it is, I might need to have my own chickens.