Chicken yard update.

I wanted to share with everyone some of our chickens. We currently have 19 chickens, 17 hens and 2 roosters. The youngest rooster is looking for a new home?

Above is our "runt" Cream Legbar at 20 weeks old, she is a bit smaller than her sister below. These beautiful birds lay blue or green eggs. Not confirmed their eggs yet. We also have 2 Easter Eggers that lay blue or green eggs, so hard to confirm until we see them on the nest.

Above and below the bigger Cream Legabar same age 20 weeks. Her neck feathers are brilliantly golden in the right light.

One of our 2 Black Stars at 20 weeks. The combs are slow growing and will be red when she is ready to lay eggs. The green sheen on her back and golden tones on her breast makes her an interesting bird.

 Above is one of our two Red Stars. At 20 weeks we think at least one of them is laying eggs.

Above is Frenchy, she is 18 months and is a Cinnamon Queen. Best layer hands down in our chicken pen. She is second in command with the hens.

Above is one of our 4- 9 weeks old bantam chicks, we raised from eggs provided by a friend and a raised by our broody hen Lightbulb. She is my favorite, love the colors!

Our 9 week old cockerel, he's looking for a new home. Any takers? We think he's been attempting the crow the past 2 days.

 Here is our bantam rooster. He's fast and usually does not know what to do with our full size hens. He does have the 2 Easter Eggers as favorites.

This is Ding-a-ling she's a 18 month old Welsummer, we have tow of them. They are nice birds, the eggs are a bit small and don't lay as many eggs as some of our other birds.

 Above is our other Welsummer, she has small spurs like a rooster. She doesn't have a name.

Above is Lightning, she's a bantam we got her where she was about 8 weeks old. Her name came from the fact she was our first bantam and she's lightning fast.

Picked up 3 bantams chicks today.

Yes a friend of Meg's raises bantams and she had some chicks she wanted to get rid of. We picked up a little golden hen, a feisty litte white cockeral and a nearly grown all black frizzle. I'll have photos of them on another post. The frizzle was getting beat up and she needs to recover for better photos.

Anyway her are some of the bantams that might be the parents of our bantam chicks.

Our pullets!

The beginning of March I picked up 6 new chicks for expanding our chicken flock. I bought 2 Cream Legbars, 2 Red Stars and 2 Black Stars. Below is what they now look like at 4 weeks of age.

 Cream Legbar, note the crest.

 Red Star

 Black Star, note the legs are blackish.

Cream Legbar, these are supposed to lay blue green eggs.

Wandering peacock invades the chicken coop!

March already? Where does time go? And day light savings time just started.

Today I got home and found Meg lounging in the back yard. She tells me there is a peacock in the other side of the yard. I went around the corner to find this guy in the chicken coop. This fan on this peacock is 8-9 foot wide, can you believe that?

A little background on peacocks around here. For the past 5-6 years they have been kept across the gully at our back neighbors. They are loud to the point of being a nuisance from March until July, during their mating season. They call all night long and really loud. Guess who loves to have the windows open at night?

Never have I gotten a photo opportunity like this tonight. Great lighting and the peacock acted as if he lived here. The hens acted like he was not in their coop, no reaction what so ever to him.

 The span of that fan is like 8-9 foot, he's a big one!

My favorite shot in the entire series!

 Now this is a close up. I took this by setting the camera lens on the fence wire to steady the camera, he was 4-5 foot away.

The chickens just ignored him, see they could care less. I wonder if we still had a rooster what he'd have done? Flash the rooster died this winter.

Peas Planted early, but at the best time!

Hey everyone we planted Sugar Snap peas today! Here in central North Carolina it gets very hot by May and unless you plant your peas early the heat slows them down and wilts them. So we plant them early. Meg planted these thick as she always does.  This way makes a great crop so you can loose a few to birds or slugs, you still get a good crop. We used 1/2 pound peas for 4 10 foot rows. BTW you can order peas online or by catalog as the stores don't have them until mid March... Ours came from Johnny's Select Seeds.

Also we covered them with a light covering of straw and then a protective fabric called remay. That will keep the birds out of them as they get started.

This shows you how thick we plant our peas!

A word about our chickens, we have 6 hens. On January 29th they laid 6 eggs, today February 01 they laid 6 eggs AGAIN!

Baby chicks!

Hey everyone! Wanted to talk about chickens. Let me inform you if you ever decide to get chickens do not get 'straight run' chicks, unless you intend on eating the roosters. Straight run means about half of them might be roosters. Each rooster needs at least 10 hens to keep him happy and not damage the hens by mating too often.

Say you get 5 chicks 'straight run'  this means 2-3 could be roosters which is way too many for the hens to handle. We didn't eat our roosters as they were treated at pets and had to give away 2 roosters, our two hens were getting brutalized. One of the hens died and now we have just one laying hen. The remaining rooster jumped out of the pen during the day and was likely killed by local dogs.

Yesterday Meg and I picked up some week old pullets(pullets means hens)! Three Welsummers, two Easter Eggers and a Cinnamon Queen. So cute and living in the guest bathroom.

First eggs!!

Many of you might recall we inherited chickens on Thanksgiving. Today I found our first eggs in the nest box! I'm sure Penguin the black chicken laid one of them this morning. The other not sure if it was Penguin or Light bulb.

Oh and our hellebores you saw the H. niger blooming already. Four others have buds on them already!

Ice, the Hawk and Chickens!

Last night we had our first hard freeze. The pond was covered with a light sheet of ice this morning.

As you can see the pond looks terrible and is very low. That pipe shows the height of the pond when full. Oak leaves have nearly covered the surface of the pond. The leaves are nearly done falling and hopefully a good rain will sink the leaves. I can not recall seeing so many leaves on the pond.

 My last post I introduced you to our three roosters. Here are the remainder of the flock, the two hens. Above is Light Bulb, she is apparently a rock mix as you can see feathers on her legs. Below is Penquin we have no clue what type of chicken she is? Both of the hens were bought at a feed store in Wilmington by Meg's daughter and she named them.  As you might have guessed the chickens were not sexed at the time of purchase, three roosters were not intended. Neither has laid any eggs yet and they are around 6 months old.

OK, now to the hawk. This morning I let the chickens out, no problems. Came inside and made coffee and sat on the bed with Meg. Meg saw a Red-tailed Hawk perched on the bottle tree right behind the chicken yard, the chickens were out and clueless about the hawk. I attempted to get a photo, but just turning the lock handle to the back door scared away the hawk. We now have a 6 foot fence around the chickens. It seems the 4 foot fence was not enough for Stripe the rooster who wanted to help me water one of the cold frames on Friday.

And now even with the 6 foot fence two of the roosters jumped it because Chip the rooster was chasing them. Not sure what we need to do to keep them inside and safe.

Red-tailed Hawks diet is rodents and rabbits mostly. I know these hawks can take a full grown chicken. Hoping there are too many other meals out there to keep the hawk busy. We have plenty of hawks around here and two other neighbors have chickens as well.

Camellias still blooming in the garden is 'Moon Festival' above. These huge flowers are just stunning. And below is 'Leslie Ann' with these 2 inch slightly pink flowers, only 4 flowers this year, it's second year in the garden.

Meet our Roosters!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We had a feast and now I'm stuffed.

Last night we had the chickens delivered from Wilmington! This morning we installed the chicken coop and let them loose in the chicken yard.

 Chip our most colorful rooster, also the largest one too.

 Above is Stripe, he let me pet his before I took this photo. The two hens were roosting behind him in the coop.

 Here is the chicken coop that was brought to us from Wilmington. All three of us could do to carry it and set in place.

 Above and below is Rocky, he has lighter feathers on the neck than Stripe.

Paradise Gets Adopted By A Chicken

The last few days we've had a new visitor to the yard, this chicken in the photo below. She has been pecking around in the back yard where we just planted grass seed last week. It has been raining since she arrived and I know she is from out neighbor's 'farm' lot.

Last spring these neighbors cleared out 2.75 acres of forest to make a pasture and since then they have added these animals to their collection, 3 Mules (think they traded 2 horses for the mules), 4-5 goats now with several kids, 6-7 ducks, peacocks, turkeys and lots of chickens and roosters.
Last night I watched this hen go into the old shed we are going to tear down. So once it got dark I checked to see if she was in the shed. Yes she was and offered me this egg below for her rent for the night. This morning I went out in the rain and she was still there, not on the straw I brought in for her last night, behind it.

A little while ago I was outside in the rain sowing some white clover seeds onto the lawn or soon to be lawn. I checked the shed and she was either hiding real good on went back home. You might ask why would you sow white clover seeds onto the lawn? Well this place is a butterfly haven and clover is a host plant for several butterflies like Orange Sulphur, Clouded Sulphur and possibly Eastern Tailed-Blue. Clover is very drought tolerant and does not mind not getting mowed so much and the flowers do attract a lot of butterflies.