Something Happened on the Way to the Chicken Coop

A funny thing happened on the way to the chicken coop…I lost my voice.  Not physically…I just didn’t have any thing to say for a few weeks, well okay, months.  Or, I just didn’t think I had anything to say that any one would want to read.  But, then, friends and family asked me where I went.  They enjoyed reading my blogs…little vignettes of my life and my crazy menagerie of critters.  So I started thinking and realized that "I" enjoy reading my little stories and reflecting on the moments of my day. If others enjoy reading about it too, that makes me happy.

So, welcome back to life in my ever-changing city garden.

My chickens are in a slump these days…you’d think they’d be thriving and that egg production would be incredible, but not so.  As soon as I integrated Anna with her Supremes (Sydney, Melinda and Jenny), she laid an egg and then promptly molted.  Not an easy-going, a few feathers here, a few feather there…but full-on dropped most of them so she looks like she’s going through chemo.  Not a good look for a chicken let a lone a glorious Polish chicken!  And if that wasn’t bad enough, she hasn’t laid one egg in two weeks.  Recently, she has taken to attacking me whenever I enter the coop.  She literally flies feet first at my legs and then pecks me.  The first time she did this, I wasn’t expecting it and was wearing shorts and flip-flops.  Since then, I’m wearing jeans and my barn shoes for protection.  The little bitch!

The Supremes are now 5 months old….so any day they should start laying.  I put the “fake” eggs in the nest boxes in the hope that they would “get” what they are for.  But, so far, I don’t think any of them have ventured into the nest boxes even for a look-see.  Meanwhile, the Silver Wyandotte girls are happily enjoying stalking the smaller Anna and the Supremes through the wire fencing that separates them.  They are still laying…a little less predictably now that the daylight is waning.  But, I’m hoping the 40-watt bulb installed in their coop set to go on at 6:30 a.m. and off at 9:30 p.m. will help to pick up production. 

I recently finished reading a wonderful book, City Farm, by Novella Carpenter.  Novella is a true urban farmer living in Oakland, California.  She describes in detail, not only how to raise and care for chickens (ducks, turkeys, pigs, bees and goats), but also how to humanely kill and process one.  Anna better watch her back…