My Little Jar

Love my little jar.

A Frozen Egg

The difference in a few days...going from warm and sunny to bottoming out at -7 and 4 inches of snow.  I am not complaining at all.  I love the snow as much as the girls dislike the snow.  I open the doors to the coops and they just stand there and squawk. 

This morning I go out to give the rabbits water and to see if the survived the cold night.  (I made sure they had plenty of food, leaves and timothy in their boxes so they wouldn't get cold) and to check for eggs because I didn't want any of them to freeze... 

...and this is what I find.

So what do you do with it.  I really don't want to eat it...who knows what lurks there...so I peel it to see what a frozen egg looks like.  I let it thaw to see what it looks like and it looks like a regular egg. Duh!

 

Now I am wondering how long it takes an egg to freeze?  Guess it all depends on the variables.

Photo Shoot With Friends

I got a text from Jon asking if the kids could come over and see the chickens.  I love when friends want to play with the girls. 

First things first...egg gathering.  I sorta loaded up the nesting boxes so everyone had a chance to gather eggs.

Does this chair make me look fat?

Special treats

Dory being such a good girl letting Skyler love on her.

She's a natural!

Susie strikinga pose on her best side.

Estelle getting in on the photo shoot.

And then the sun came out!

Looks like she is nesting to me.

And then there was the confrontation.

Up close and personal

And the conversation went on for a good five minutes.

 

Our loner walking  the rails.  Maybe she is channeling her inner hobo.

 

EffieGrace just looking regal!

A seven chicken butt salute.

Sunning On A Saturday

They DO NOT like the cold snow on their feet!

All puffed up to stay warm.

They fly from place to place so they don't have to feel the snow on their feet.

Today was clean up and fill up day.  Once a week I clean the coops and every other day fill up the food and give them clean water.  Today they got a special little treat...some of Pappy's bird suet.

They found the 'park garden' today. 

they even made a dust bowl.

And they re purposed the up side down campfire pit chairs into drinking fountains or bubblers for my WI friends.

I love her little wispy whiskers.

A Little Chicken Dump...ha ha

This is what you can get when you let a Kindergartner carry the egg basket across the backyard.  Oops!

Now when I head to the barn they follow me because they know treats will be next.  We have a routine!  And I was able to get all 12 in one shot.

Two Little Girls trying to sneak in with the some of the Big Girls.

Sunny looking for something extra special...worms.  Sorry Sunny they are deep, deep in the dirt where it is warm.

Looks like someone might need another bath.  Ellis and Alaire will be here in a few weeks so I think I will just wait for them.

I think EffieGrace chased the rest of them out of the food.  Not nice EffieGrace because at Wammyville and NottaLotta we all need to learn to share.

Inez is always by herself and on the move.  All her shots tend to be just a little blurry.

Susie is a stinker too!  She is definitely one sassy girl!

Keeping Track

For the month of February, because I have nothing else to do, I am going to try to keep track of the eggs.  I'm going to start by keeping track of the number the Big Girls lay versus the number of eggs that the Little Girls lay.  And I will be tracking the weather and monitoring the number of eggs they lay in conjunction with that (things like, coldness, sunny or cloudy).  Just for fun.

 

I love the different shades of brown...and the greens and blues are pretty too.  Did you know that a blue egg is blue on the outside of the shell as well as the inside?  I am still waiting on my chocolate colored egg from the Marans.

Snow and Sunshine

Mark and I let the girls out a little earlier this evening just because we could because we had nothing else to do.  Mark took them a little treat tonight of green beans and a half of a tomato.

The tomato was a big hit because it was on the straw.

The green beans not so much because they were in the snow.  The girls don't like snow on their feet at all.  Dory would walk from bare ground spot to bare ground spot to get anywhere.

There was lots of bumping into each other because everyone wanted to walk on the fence instead of the snow.

They love to scratch.  Even better when they find some cracked corn that Mark threw out in the yard.

Crispy doesn't like the snow either...

 

...she flies wherever she wants to go.

 

Now Sunny could care less.  I'm guess by her size that she might just be the warmest bird we have.  She is so fat!

RayJeana could take it or leave it.

EffieGrace standing on one foot waiting for her turn on the chair.

Queen of the coop.

But she did manage to share a little arm space with Ethel.

Ethel got as high as she could go...roosting on the top of the chair.  I still haven't seen any of those chocolate eggs she is supposed to be laying.  Maybe I should feed her a Hershey bar so she can see what she needs to work up to.

Her white legs were starting to turn a little pink.  We decided to put them away so she could sit on them and get warm.

Dixie and her frostbitten comb.

Judy, Judy, Judy

 

 Mark got out the rake and started raking up a pile of leaves so the girls could find the green grass.  They loved it.  Then when I threw in some little bits of feed...they couldn't get enough.

 

Somebody's got some big ole feet!