The PERFECT Decorated Egg

This is just how I found this egg.  After lifting it from the nest box, I felt overwhelmed by it's beauty!  I carefully brought it in and placed in one of my son's pieces of pottery to take pictures to share.  I adjusted NOTHING!  How could a human's decorating possibly compare to this glorious creation of God's hen?

Maybe you could glue some chicken feathers on a brown egg to recreate (would be beautiful--blow out egg, then glue), but could you do what my Candy girl did?  Could you be VERY uncomfortable for hours, and push an egg out of you so hard that it ripped little feathers out of you?  And do this daily?  I think NOT!  I sure wouldn't want to go through THAT!!!  2 child births in 5 years was plenty for me.

Eggs are taken for granted.  But not by their Mama hen/rooster (that's me).

An Egg Per Hen

I was SO excited yesterday when ALL of my 6 girls layed an egg for the first time!  1/2 dozen eggs in a day for the beginner that I am.  Not bad, if you ask me.  Actually, raising my chicks to hens has been so much fun and I've learned so much by spending time with them twice a day.  They love to be misted with a spray bottle in the heat of the day, fluffing and cleaning their feathers (which helps keep them free of lice, mites,etc. and cools them down during hot temperatures).  The hens come running to me when they see me with my spray bottle!  About  6 p.m. is their snack time.  My girls favorites are watermelon rinds and MY leftover corn cobs.  They love most herbs (Not basil though--instead I use this to keep insects away from the nest boxes, from the coop, from the run).  The hens went  nuts when I gave them fresh sweet bay leaves (they grow wild all around here).  They also have laying feed available always and get special grains each evening.

Roosters In the Ex-pig's Pen

This is a funny conversation which I had with a friend yesterday:

My friend has 5 roosters and they keep taking "turns" on all her hens.  They were exhausting them.  So she and her husband caught all of them, except the oldest rooster.  The captured ones were put in the ex-pig's pen (ex-pig attacked her and is now in the freezer!).  Now what is my friend going to do with them?   She said they're going to live a monk's life.

My Buff Orpingtons--Photos and the Submissive Squat

Pictures of my Buff Orpington hens at 24 weeks.  3 of my girls are now laying an egg daily unless we have major thunder storms.  Then I only get 2 eggs.  I have gotten 4 in a day twice now and have 4 out of 6 of "my girls" doing the "submissive squat" when I enter the run.  From what I have learned, a hen can only lay 1 egg every 24 hours.

Naughty Candy pecking at my shoe

My girls love to be hand fed

My girl Annie's "submissive squat"

I had the hardest time finding pictures of the "submissive squat" versus how they just lay down.  To the left is the "submissive squat" that Annie does when I first enter the run.  Notice that she is not in the relaxed position of laying down but seems kind of anxious.  Annie loves to be gently stroked from behind her neck down to her fanny feathers.  The squat is because the hen wants to have her egg fertilized by a rooster so it can develop into a chick.  When no rooster is around, they see me and my husband as their rooster and immediately squat when one of us enters the run.  I am working on a video of this to post soon.  People who have never heard of this think it sounds very weird, which it does.  But it is the way of things in the chicken world.  Not having a "real" rooster has no effect on egg production.  Please check out my link to Fresh Eggs Daily, a website by Lisa Steele.  It's a fantastic resource to almost everything there is to know about raising healthy chickens.  To locate the article about roosters, choose "topics" then "chickens".  Below that, choose "basics" Article 21.  Best I can direct you right now. 

Buff Orpington's have beautiful, soft low feathers on their fannies.  They are very delicate and small, and float on the tiniest breeze.  I'm still working on catching that image.

Click on photos to see closer.

Beautiful fannies

Animal Songs: "Chicken Bop," by StoryBots

The Moron Brothers - "The Rooster Song"

HERBS FOR CHICKENS

I grow fresh herbs around the run--to protect my girls (AKA chickens) from disease, flies/parasites/ etc--and in a separate areas.  They get herbs, fresh grass, marigolds, rose petals, veggies, fruits etc. every late afternoon-early evening, allowing them plenty of time to eat the chicken food/grains.  I also grind up egg shells from uncooked eggs and give it to them as grit (I NEVER use shells from cooked eggs i.e. soft/hard boiled).  My girls have never been sick and no lice etc.  I have never used any chemicals in coop, run, on them or near them.  I put herbs in coop that they don't eat that controls insects--mine don't like basil and they won't touch purple basil (I hate the purple, too, and will never use it to cook with or anything else).  But it is a pretty potted plant (annual) and I will grow again next year just for chicken coop and run.

MY GIRLS (AKA HENS)

First egg

Buff Orpingtons are very friendly

I have wanted hens for decades.  My husband & son gifted me with them on 3/8/16 (they were 3 weeks old--although sexed, 1 out of 7 was a rooster who I gave away where he now reigns over goats).  My men designed our coop & run, then built it from scratch.  My girls are Buff Orpingtons.  On 7/4/16, at just 20 weeks, Annie layed her first egg (she did the "submissive squat" on 6/29 when I walked into the run and then we rushed to open our nest boxes immediately).  Normally, from what I read, it should be 22-24 weeks.  What a wonderful surprise--our 1st egg!  Annie has layed an egg every day since.  Finally, after I had seen 2 other girls doing squat, I had 3 eggs on 7/21 but only 2 a day since.  I know Biddy is laying, but haven't yet figured out the 3rd girl who hasn't layed an egg since 7/21.
Why many of use don't want a rooster--http://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2016/08/why-i-dont-keep-rooster-in-my-backyard.html

Don't Waste Any of Your Corn

It has been a tough season for my new garden so every ear of corn is precious.  I ate fresh corn on the cob almost daily for the first month.  Of course I could have frozen much but I was a little pig!  But I put it to many uses.  Pick it, cook it and eat it--my favorite.  Freeze on cob (easiest) or kernels.
  But DON'T WASTE:
     1. After eating (mine with salt & butter), I give it a quick rinse and give to my girls (aka my  Buff Orpington 22 week old hens).  My girls prefer that over whole ears.
     2. I use the dry, picked off cobs to clean off the chicken poop on my shoes after being in their run.
     3. Then those cobs go into my mulch pile.
     4. And finally into next years garden.
There are creative ideas for those dry cobs, too, such as dolls and pipes and probably much more I haven't even begun to learn about.

Please share any ideas!