[TheForge] OT: chickens

[Saint Phlip]

Ah, chickens. They're a bit of a mystery.

I managed toi keep all 16 guineas through the winter, them lost 3 to
traffic once the weather broke, but as near as I could tell, not a one
laid an egg. OTOH, my 4 hens were providing me with an average of 3
eggs per day, but now that the weather has broken, I'm lucky to get
one egg per day.

No new peeps this year, at least not from the store, but I'm hoping
the vanishing eggs means at least one of them is brooding somewhere.

Although I could wish I could catch her/them , and put her/them in a
nice safe cage. The 4 I have currently I refer to as my legacy
chickens arrived rather mysteriously.

I had a black hen that vanished. I did catch sight of her
occasionally, so I figured she was brooding, but she had never been
very friendly, so there wasn't much I could do about it. One day, as I
was heading across the yard, I heard an almighty ruckus. It seems
there was a peep standing on the back step and demanding his
breakfast. So, I picked him up, and set up a comfortable place for him
to eat and nest. An hour later, there was another one in the back
yard. I grabbed that one, too, and put it with the first one. Then two
more.

At that point, I decided that if my back yard was going to sprout
chickens, maybe I'd better stick around, in case any more appeared. I
put them all up, in a new cage I had set up, and waited, but no joy.
Nor, for that matter, have I ever seen that hen since, so all I can
figure is that something got her, wherever she was nesting, and the
babies got hungry and decided to go find something to eat.

Now, this was a very good thing, as far as I was concerned. These
babies were the last of the blood line of my beloved Cogburn, the
Rooster with an Attitude. I had thought the line was dead when his
last surviving daughter had been gotten by the local raccoons, but the
black hen was his grand daughter. And, we had ordered and received 25
babies from Murray McMurray, all, of which had died within a week.
However, the day after all this, the 25 guineas we had ordered
arrived, We lost a few of them too, but once everybody was stable, I
put everybody in the same cage, and they have thrived.

However, I really do wish I could figure out where everybody is laying
and put them someplace safe.


On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:41 AM,  <Grover.Richardson at gtri.gatech.edu> wrote:

> Now back to chickens:  Tractor Supply Company had chick day and the wife got 6.  Now only 4, but doing well.  Almost time to move them out of the brooder in the living room, to the condo on the deck.  Omelets.
>

-- 
Saint Phlip

So, you think your data is safe?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?hpt=T2

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Priorities:

It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.

.I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary
notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow