Friday, December 11, 2009

Elvis Has Left the Building...Again

This time, we had to make Elvis leave the building by moving her to our "hen hospital" in the shed. Yesterday Elvis had blood around her comb. I don't know if it was caused by an accident, the cold or the other chickens. I was able to get some anti-biotic ointment on it and hoped things would better in the morning. When I went outside today, she was worse and there were drops of blood all over the coop. I knew we had to separate her if we were to have any chance of saving her and keeping the other chickens from pecking at her. So we set up our old dog cage in the shed and moved her out of the coop. I have read all the chicken books and I haven't seen any mention of comb injury or what to do about it.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

One of these eggs is not like the others








The hens have been keeping busy since the premier of the First Egg. We are generally getting about one egg per day. I imagine this conversation between the girls...."no, today is your turn, I made one yesterday". These are eggs #2 through #6 and as you can see, the 6th egg was a DOOZY! And yes, it had a double yoke. We had a very nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon the saturday before Thanksgiving.

The girls just don't like their nest boxes. We have moved them around and yet they still they lay on the floor. So I guess we will try to rework the boxes to something they might like better (no roof?). While away for Thanksgiving, my great-nephew took care of the chickens. They layed another three eggs plus another soft one. That's three soft-shelled eggs so far and 12 good eggs in a little over two weeks. I hope that means that another hen is laying now and not an issue with their diet. I have added more oyster shells but may have to add more vitamin D too. We also added a light to the coop to increase their daylight hours to 14 as winter draws near. We have the light come on at 6am and off at 8am, then on again at 6pm and off for the night at 8pm.