Afternoon Delight

I wasn't sure if the girls would enjoy spaghetti squash, but the squash was past its freshness. I wasn't about to eat it so I cut it up and put it outside. They were hesitant at first, but by the end of the evening only the outer part of the rind was left. I'd say that was a success!

Spa Day

The Bumble Feet are healing! Tonight, after we gave the girls their pedis, we took extra precautions to save my plants. We clipped the girls' wings! Suckas!! Tomorrow we'll see if they can still fly over the chicken fence. If they can...my yard is forever screwed. If they can't...I can have a normal yard!!

Does the Patriot Act Apply to Chickens?

Fall had hit Texas. That means I have one more opportunity to successfully grow something. I got a wild hair and dug up a pretty nice section of my yard, threw the dirt in the chicken yard and then refilled the area with good soil I got from a nursery. The chickens enjoyed scratching through the freshly dug up dirt. They found lots of bugs. All of this wasn't enough I guess.

After I carefully planted all of my seeds, I put a fence around my new garden and called it a day. It wasn't pretty, but I'm not too concerned about that right now. I planted cucumbers, snow peas, spinach, carrots, broccoli and romaine.

The first few days went by without a snag. Then Pearl strikes! She escaped from the chicken yard and got in my garden. My romaine was eaten and/or dug up and all of the dirt had been kicked all over. Who knows where everything is going to grow now. It should be interesting.

Just when you think your yard is safe the little feathered terrorists strike again!

Home Tweet Home

We have retired the old coop.  It's not really old, and it's still in great shape.  It was just a pain in the rear to clean so I'm giving it to the neighbors.  Our new one is one that Jordan built me and it is MUCH easier to clean!  We had to make a couple of adjustments on it...which has now made it look a little more Beverly Hillbilly-ish, but I like it!  Once everything was set up we removed the old coop from their yard and kept them on lock down for a few days so they would associate the new coop as their new home.  The box that they lay eggs in kept tipping over so we had a couple cracked eggs.  Miss Kitty said, "Forget this!" and started laying her eggs in the compost bin so for a few days we had to go on an Easter Egg hunt...literally.  Now all is well.

The new set up.

Keepers of the Compost

In an effort to be "green" and to not waste good kitchen scraps I have a compost pile.  Brian bought it for me as a Valentine's/Housewarming gift the day I signed all the papers to my house.  Over a year later it should be full of great dirt, right?  Not quite.  Like growing grass, I have not mastered the art of composting either.  It is supposed to be extremely hot to break down all of the material we add...

Peek-a-Boo!

In the middle of August the girls will get in the composter to cool off.  I'd say I'm doing something wrong. haha!  My philosophy is that eventually everything will break down on it's own, hot or not.  In the meantime, the chickens have a great time hunting for bugs, food and lizards (Yes, they eat lizards.  It makes me sad).  They also spread all of the dirt out so that there's maybe a foot of dirt inside the actual bin, the rest is in a heap outside.  Way to go, girls!

We Got Bumble...and I Don't mean Bees!

I SWEAR Jess assured me that chickens were very low maintenance.  Maybe I heard wrong.  So far, I had two roosters, one death, colds, and now Bumble Foot.  The other day (it's been a while because I'm VERY behind on my blogging) I was feeding the girls left-over lettuce and I noticed Miss Kitty had a strange bump on her foot. 

See the bump?

I called Jess and he didn't know what it was so I went online.  Apparently chickens need soft surfaces to walk on, and my apocalyptic backyard isn't quite cutting it.  I say that because I can't even get grass to grow so my yard is half dirt and half mulch with a sprinkling of plants in cages (it's a learning process).  The chickens terrorize anything growing.  Sometimes they don't even eat the plants.  They just pluck all of the leaves off.

Anyway, I found on a chicken forum that it's called Bumble Foot.  It occurs when a chicken gets a cut on their foot (probably from scratching in mulch) and then the wound is compacted by walking on hard surfaces (my clay dirt back yard) and then Staph infection sets in.  The infection itself, which you will see momentarily, looks like a thick cheese.  Yummy, eh?  It gets better.  You have to pull out the "plug" in order to pull out the cheesy pus.  The blogs/forums that I found said you needed to take an exacto knife and cut around the area in order to get all of the infection out.  Then you wrap it with sports wrap.  This sounded like a job for MOM.  She's such a great sport.  Basically, I did all the holding and mom did all the dirty work.
 

After the plug was pulled

Digging for Gold

End of Surgery

Miss Kitty's new shoes!

It was only AFTER we cut poor Kitty's foot open that I read more blogs that said soaking the foot and spraying it with antibacterial stuff would do the trick as well.  Miss Kitty took one for the team.  She was our guinea pig.  I'm sure Jane and Pearl thank her because now THEY HAVE IT TOO!  Evidently it's common and you are supposed to check the chickens' feet often...who knew?  Just so you know, it takes about an hour every couple of days to treat my working girls.  (Insert joke about Prostitutes and infections here...mine just aren't appropriate. ha!)  Their feet are getting better.  I think in about a week we will be BUMBLE FREE!!

Hope you're not having anything cheesy for dinner tonight!

New Mexico Trip

Brian and I made a trip to New Mexico to see Jess, Elizabeth and Simon. (Simon is precious, by the way...unfortunately for him this blog is not about children, haha)  Anyway, they have chickens in their yard.  They are the real deal when it comes to being "free range."  Those guys get to roam all throughout their yard and surrounding land which is backed up to the Gila National Forest.  Needless to say I took a couple pictures.

Phylis

This treasure of eggs was found near the side of the house.  Jess couldn't find one of his ladies at night when it was time to go to bed.  It was because she had made her a hiding spot in the tall grass so she could hoard eggs.  She ended up hatching THIRTEEN babies. I think she must be a glutton for punishment.  Sadly, not all of them made it.  It's a rough world out there!  There are many more critters to watch out for when you're not protected by a fence.  I think only about 4 survived.  We may need to get her into some parenting classes, because that's a pretty high mortality rate.  Maybe call CPS (Chicken Protective Services!)

Cute...and the only one I could catch.

Since I made fun of Brian being attacked by Jessie it's only fair to include that I was attacked by Jess' rooster named Gossamer.  I swear he had his eye on Brian the whole visit.  But one afternoon I was following Brian and Gossamer was lurking in the bushes.  Actually, I think he was looking for bugs and Brian irritated him and then I came through which sent him over the edge...plus I hesitated.  Jess came to my rescue and kicked the chicken.  It took two kicks for Gossamer to get the point.  This was near the end of the trip so I didn't have to live in fear for too much longer.  I didn't yell obscenities like Brian did so often, but I did scream like a girl.

Birthday Chick

What kind of dessert do you make for a chicken fanatic? Chicken cupcakes of course!  My 31st birthday was this past July.  Mom decided to stick with the theme of the house...

Cake and Ice Cream!