Suddenly, I could go for some soup...

...starring this here buttmunch, King Kong.


They call me Captain Jackhole, or Doofus for short.

Our pretty boy is suddenly quite aggressive. He does a little stompy/dancy number, and if his move-busting doesn't intimidate you sufficiently, next up is the hackle-puffing and charging. He actually came at me with spurs up today. He's dang lucky that he didn't find himself on the receiving end of my boot.

Oy, the machismo. Apparently some ladies find that kind of stuff endearing.


Agnes, King Kong's best girl, clearly appreciates the agro-beefcake type.

Doofus gets to stay, for now. Much more of that funny business though, and his reign of fury will end in similar fashion to Louis the XVI's. Comprendez vous, Monsieur Derriere?

Bien. ;)

Dead Birds Walkin'

The last of our rotten roos have flown the coop today. They took an early morning ride with Bill to the same place that their brothers went, to a very grateful fellow who was glad to have them for his table. I am especially sad to see Mr. Jeffries go, as he was my little honey, but that jolt of testosterone that came at maturity turned him into a great big meanie, who, along with his brothers, all of a sudden simply lived to harass our hennies. Sorry, my boy, this here farm is partial to the women-folk and that sort of shenanigan doesn't fly.

The parting of these boys means that the last of the bantams that we hatched out in the incubator last spring are all gone, and we didn't get an egg from or get to eat a single one of them ourselves. What a bust that little trial turned out to be.

If you'll forgive a little gallows humor in my moment of reflection, let us review the trials, tribulations and eventual fates of the bantam eggs, formerly known as the dirty dozen.

May 2010- 9 out of 12 eggs hatch within 24 hours after having been fawned over and candled daily for three weeks. A few of the babies had early difficulties, trouble pipping, pasted vent, etc., but all pulled through.

July 2010- Near catastrophe as the brooder's heat lamp gets knocked into the brooder and the pine litter very nearly catches fire, filling the garage with smoke and giving us a good scare.

Multiple foiled escape attempts.

August 2010- The big move. All critters are initially traumatized.

October 2010- Our first baby is lost. Eglantine is hit by a car. The terror twins, Scout and Harold are sent to "freezer camp".

November 2010- Molly disappears one day, during the day. We suspect the neighbor's cat after a pile of feathers are found under the rhododendrons.

December 2010- Bird pox hits us just as the remaining five "babies" are reaching sexual maturity. We're down to one hen and four roosters at this point. Sky the rooster and Charlotte, our last bantam hen, die of the pox. The other three boys are isolated from the laying flock until it is clear that they are healthy.

After being cut loose from quarantine, the boys go completely nuts and start pestering/chasing/injuring our hens non-stop. WAY beyond boys will be boys, more like a hostile takeover. A coop coup, if you will.

Back into separate housing the boys go until today, when they went on their final journey.

What a hot mess this whole experience has been. Wasted time, wasted effort and plenty of wasted money.

Here's a look at the ugly financial aspects of this experiment -

Incubator set up - $100
Dozen Fertile eggs - $5
Brooder pen, lights, bedding, etc. - $60
Food for 6 months- ???
Vet bill for Sky (including having him put to sleep)- $70
Grave stone for Eglantine, our first ever critter to die- $30
Horrifying Total =$265+ for jack squat in terms of food for us.

Besides the monetary dings, we've also had the unfortunate experience of having one of our chickens die practically every way imaginable short of the electric chair - car "accident", predator attack, pox, lethal injection and "guillotine" (if ya know what I mean).

We are by no means desensitized to the tragedy, but seriously, if you can't find something funny somewhere in this mess, then you'll just end up kicking yourself to death over the ridiculous waste of time and money that this whole project was. I know I've learned from it, but still. Mostly I've learned about what NOT to do. Don't mix bantams and standard breeds, don't forgo vaccinations, don't bother with roosters unless they are angels because they're more trouble than they're worth, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway, this chapter is now closed and we're down to six hens that I will be guarding with my life from now on.

I knew that the life of a farm girl wasn't an easy one, but some days it can feel like fighting the tide just isn't worth it. Wild animals, strangers and farm supply stores are all benefiting from my grow-your-own approach, alas I am still buying my eggs and meat from other farmers. I'm going to have to buckle down and turn this mess around come Spring, otherwise I'm going to lose my marbles.

A Pox on Our House

This month has been a rough one. It started off with tons of wind and rain and here it is, Christmas Eve, and we have more of the same. No white Christmas here, just a wet one.

Even for Washington state, these past few weeks of rain have been pretty epic. We've had the trifecta of mudslides, floods and trees coming down left and right to usher in the change of season. The quantity of rain was such that the accumulation of water in our bog grew noticeably every day, to the point where I'd actually classify it as a full-on pond now, waterfowl included.

In addition to the deluge, we also had some ups and downs with our critters this month. Gertie finally, without-a-doubt went into heat and was summarily whisked away to meet again with her fellow, Scout. According to Scout's people, there was a whole lot of lovin' going on over their three day rendezvous, making us optimistic that Gertie is good and knocked up this time. If everything took, Gert's kid(s) should be here around the 8th of May, which means I've got a hell of alot of reading and research to do about goat gestation and birth between now and then.

On a much sadder note, we lost two of our chickens to Bird Pox. Sky the rooster fell ill quite suddenly, and was diagnosed with the pox by our vet. The bulk of Sky's illness and discomfort was not directly related to the pox itself, rather the opportunistic bacteria that overtook him in his weakened state. In the end, we put poor Sky to sleep, as he was having a great deal of difficulty breathing and could no longer eat or drink. The following day, Charlotte, our last bantam hen died in the night. She did not have any outward signs of having had the pox, but before burying her, Bill inspected her and palpated her crop, which he found to be swollen - one of the symptoms of bird pox. We were concerned that our remaining three bantams (Snowflake, Sunny & Mr. Jeffries, all roosters) might also be infected, since they were hatched out at home and never immunized, so we isolated them in an impromptu coop made of baby gates, plywood and cardboard. It was ugly, but it worked. We kept them separate from the hens for three days until it was apparent that they were well (if they ever had been unwell at all) and no longer a danger to our girls.

Losing Sky & Charlotte brought us down to nine chickens, which will be further reduced by three this coming week. The aforementioned roosters have finally come of age and practically overnight became holy terrors. They very nearly killed our hennie, Strawberry, by running her off from her flock and pecking and plucking her incessantly. When a cranky roo threatens your laying hens, it's kind of a no-brainer about who has to go. The boys have since gone back into isolation/death row housing and are none too pleased about it. Little do they know what lies ahead...

We debated their fate. Give them to the guy who took Scout & Harold, give them to someone else, or eat them ourselves? The girls surprised both Bill and I by suddenly seeming to be ok with the idea of us harvesting and eating these roos ourselves. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to eat a critter who I hand raised, but if the rest of the fam can, then I guess that I'll be roasting Snowflake. ;\

Life just keeps getting more strange/complicated/amazing every day.

I can't believe that it's come to this...

My evil roosters' evil ways forced me to buy a couple of these this morning -



That's right it's a hen's saddle (also known as an apron), meant to protect a young lady's feathers from the amorous assaults of a rooster, or in our case, two roosters. The boys tend to grab at the girls' neck and back feathers with their beaks, and sometimes even dig in with their spurs during mating, leaving a poor hennie quite a bit worse for the wear. Two of my girls in particular, Rose & Annabel are looking just pitiful these days. Liv says that they look half-plucked. I wouldn't go that far, but they are missing quite a few feathers, especially in the neck and tail regions. Poor babies! And of course just as soon as the poor girls were plucked, the overnight temperatures start dropping like a rock.

Enter the apron. I'm hoping that these will at least offer my girls a little extra warmth until their feathers grow back. The evil roosters - aka the terror twins, Harold the Terrible and Scout the Destroyer are about to be taken out of the equation, if you know what I mean. ;)

It wasn't easy to break that bit of news to the kids, I assure you, especially so soon after losing Eglantine to the road. However, they seem to have made peace with the idea that the boys need to go in order to save our sweet lassies from being plucked/tormented to death. They have even begun referring to the doomed roos as Chicken Strip and Chicken Burger, and eye them with the most venomous disdain for reducing our once-lovely hennies to the skittish, scraggly messes that they are at the moment.

The boys having been whooping it up for a while now, but come this weekend, the ladies of the coop will be having the last laugh. After deposing our two mean and nasty roosters, the reign of Mr. Jeffries the Gentle shall commence. He is a very mellow boy (at least so far) and has never participated in the frat boy behavior of the evil boys. Let us hope that he will have learned a lesson from his doomed predecessors and be a kind and gentle man o' the house. Or else, buddy, or else...