Tag Archives: chickens

New Camera (or is it a Phone?)

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I was able to trade in my camera phone for a new one and actually lower our Verizon bill! So I did it. Trying it out at chores time tonight:

Close-up of a vibrant pink flower with radial lines and a light yellow center, surrounded by green leaves.

Hollyhock.

Close-up view of a flower's stamen with pink and yellow petals.

Hollyhock close-up

Close-up of a vibrant sunflower in full bloom, showcasing its large yellow petals and central brown disc.

Sunflower.

Close-up of a vibrant sunflower with thick yellow petals and a dark brown center.
Close-up of a pincushion flower, featuring small white stamens against a blurred green background.

Pincushion flower, one of my newest dye plants.

Close-up of a chicken with distinctive feathers and red comb.

Chicken portraits.

Close-up view of a rooster's head, highlighting its red comb and wattles, with a detailed focus on its eye and feathers.
Close-up of a Jacob sheep with brown and white fleece standing in a field of tall grass.

Sheep named Roca.

Selfie with a two-horn Jacob lamb.

Selfie with Sparky.

Wide view of a grassy field with sheep grazing and a blue sky above.

Very wide angle view from the barn to the southwest.

A wooden owl box mounted on a pole in a grassy field, surrounded by trees and a fence.

Telescopic view taken from the same location as the wide angle photo. This is the owl box at the south end of the pasture. In the wide angle photo it is about center along the treeline to the left of that telephone pole. I’m impressed!

Cutest Grandkids Ever

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The Texas family has gone home. I need to get back to my regular work. But I also want to share some of these Cute Grandkid photos. After all, this blog is really mostly a scrapbook for myself as well as being partly about my business of weaving and raising sheep. When there are so many photos and I get behind then it’s harder to start. Too many photos. This one or that one? Delete? Edit? Share?

I made the hard decision and chose some of my favorites from one of the first days the kids were here. Kirby had gone on an overnight trip with the other grandma and I went with Katie and 17-month-old Kasen to San Francisco for an informal brunch following Katie’s friend’s wedding the previous day. We stayed about as long as Kasen could last and then took him to the beach.

 

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DSC_1358                  I love the expressions on this kid’s face.

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Later that day…

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IMG_7575             The hay feeders are a little high for Kirby to reach without the hay falling all over her.

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IMG_7584                 Kirby told me she was making a nest for the other chickens.

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Chickens Grow Quickly

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I brought these chicks home February 21.

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By last week they had outgrown their dog crate and needed to get out into the chicken house. I left them in the crate in the chicken house for a few days, hoping that would help the big chickens accept them. I checked on them the first night out of the crate and saw them roosting on top of it. IMG_8770

I took the dog crate out today because they are now roosting on the perches. Here are their two-month-old portraits.IMG_8862

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I need to find some names. So far this is White Chicken.

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Black Chicken.

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Brown Chicken.

They are actually fairly tame since I’ve been handling them since the first day. Brown Chicken was very interested in my phone and kept pecking at it.

Free Range Chickens

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The other day when I was feeding the chickens one of them walked out the door of the chicken house. I decided to leave the door open and let them all out. My chickens have lived in a chicken house for years because a neighbor complained about them tearing up her garden. Now I realize that this was many years ago which meant it was a completely different batch of chickens. (And that batch of chickens gave new meaning to the term free range–they had a lot of traveling to do to get to that neighbor’s place when I have a perfectly good barnyard full of bugs here.) Those chickens also used to roost on my feeders, making a big mess that I was not sorry to get rid of.  So that batch of chickens set the chicken-housing standard here….with one exception that I’ll get to later.

When Goldie (the tamest of the current batch and the only one with a name) walked out the door I had a revelation. If I could get them to go to the sheep part of the barn and eat bugs and maggots they would definitely earn a soft spot in my heart and I wouldn’t have to spend as much on chicken food.

Guess which one is Goldie?

Somebody was not happy about this. Rusty was already having a tough morning with the hot air balloons overhead. Now the chickens were in the wrong place and he didn’t know what to do. Read Rusty’s blog for his opinion about this.

I wasn’t sure if the chickens had found their way under the gate into the barn. Yesterday I made sure to entice them that way with a few bits of grain. I did the same today and watched as they scratched into old hay and manure. I watched closely and was satisfied to see them go for the wiggly maggots under the straw. Good chickens.

I think that Rusty might be happier about the whole thing tonight. When I closed the door on the chicken house one chicken was missing. I saw her on the other side of a fence and she didn’t know how to get back.

Feeling better about the whole thing now, Rusty?

I was just rereading this for errors and realized that I hadn’t yet explained the one exception to the chicken-house chickens. We used to have 2 banties who were loose in the barn. There is one left. This is an OLD chicken. She was around during the years when my daughter had her horses and cows here and she left for college in 2006. Every year she starts laying in the hay and I put her eggs in a rubber tub so that I can move her if I have to move the hay.

Don’t get excited about babies. There is no rooster.