The Chickens Thanksgiving
One morning, Trouble called the chickens together.  "Today is Thanksgiving," he said.  "We must have a turkey!  Betsy, you and Buffy, News, Clara, Martha, and Harriet will make pumpkin pie.  We will all share it.  Sunny, Fanny and Toot will help me get a turkey!  All the other hens will be helpful and watch the time.  Sunny, Fanny, and Toot, come, let's put our hats and boots on and go find a turkey!"

Later, after the roosters left, the hens were working on the pie.  Sunshine, Fuzz and Lulu showed up and helped with the pie.  Then Pinky, Peep and Amelia brought eggs and they broke them into the batter.

Sunshine screamed, "You're not supposed to put the shell in there!"

The Fuzzettes came and looked.  "It looks fine to us!" they yelled.

At that very moment, the roosters were sneaking up on a big turkey.

"It's a good thing that man didn't see it," Toot whispered.

Trouble shot at the turkey and he flew back about 10 feet!  "Did I get it?" he asked.

"Yes!"  yelled Fanny.

They drug it back and Peep, Sunshine, and Extra Fluff cooked it.  When they finished, they all sat around their meal. 

Trouble said, "Now we will give thanks for this wonderful meal."  And they did and they had a wonderful Thanksgiving.                     ~Olivia

Sunny dusting in the late summer heat. 

He almost buries himself in all the work of dusting!

 

 

We haven't posted all summer, so thought we'd better get you all up-to-date.  Fuzz and her chicks moved outside, they're in the small coop with Sunshine and Lulu (who have both been broody at least once this summer--we didn't let them sit on eggs though).  They're all getting along fairly well.  We're pretty sure all 4 of the Silkie chicks are pullets.  Unfortunately, "Fanny" (Americana/Silkie cross) is a rooster, so we've renamed him Abe.

 

Everyone in the big coop is laying eggs (there's 21 hens and 1 rooster), we're getting between 12-18 eggs a day!  They love to be let out to graze and scratch around the yard.  They have a large outdoor enclosure and we let them out into the unfenced yard almost everyday.  Scooter (Sunny) is out in the yard on his own every day and stays in a giant dog kennel on the deck at night.  His feathers are so pretty, no one wants to rehome him, but he can get kind of nasty.  We've found out he's afraid of pinwheels.  LOL

 

 

Girls in the big coop waiting to be let out into the yard.



 

They're all here!

Fuzz and 2 of her 3 chicks (so far) . . . the one on the left is Fanny (Americauna/Silkie cross), the one on the right is Puff (Silkie), the one underneath is Toot (Silkie).  So far the 2 Silkies look to be blue or maybe splash, we'll see.  The other 2 eggs should hatch today!

Okay, 2 have hatched so far, one egg from Harriet (she's an Americauna) and one of Fuzz's eggs . . .

Fanny and Puff.  Yay Fuzz!  Fuzz is acting super happy.

Fuzz's eggs are PEEPING! 

We moved her and her eggs inside and there is a beak sticking out of one! 

At least some of them should hatch tonight! 

Stay tuned . . .

We don't have any chickens IN the house any more!  Here's a picture about a week before they moved out, there's 6 Red Star, 5 Black Australorp, 2 Rhode Island Red, and 1 Buff Orpington (Buffy). 

Here they are in their own outside coop with Sunshine and LuLu.  Their combs and waddles are growing every day.

Lulu's comb and waddles have grown too!  She's 5 1/2 months old and should start laying eggs soon, but not if she's like Sunshine, she started late.  Sunshine and Lulu are the bosses in their coop and adopted all the chicks fairly well, but Lulu still doesn't really like them.

Sunny has his own coop on the deck and roams free most of the day.  He's grown bigger than our other rooster (Trouble) and has beautiful feathers.  He does a little "turkey dance" when he sees the hens.  :-)

Little Miss Fuzz Fuzz is broody and sitting on 5 eggs (4 of her own, 1 of Harriets)!  Last night we candled and can see them moving inside!  They're due to hatch on 5/30.

That should update you on what's been going on the last 2 months! 

We have 28 chickens!!! A few days after the last post dad came home with 6 new chicks!!! they are black Australorps and very cute!! I named one Extra Fluff Because she has extra fluff on her neck.

This is Extra Fluff.

 

Then we went to the place we get chicks to pick up seed and we got three MORE chicks!! (To replace an Australorp that died).

 



This is Buffy. She is a Buff Orpington.

She is very cute and does not like to go out of their box (still in kitchen)

because she peeps VERY loudly,as seen above.

On paper towel next to her is her tiny potty.

A few chicks came out and had their pictures taken with it.

 

We also got two Rhode Island Reds. They are the same size as Buffy but smaller than the rest.
The Australorps are a little bigger but very nice to them.
The Red Stars are a lot bigger than them and seem to think
 that they are just walking pieces of bedding!

 

This is Pinky (I think). She has really grown a lot.

 I think they are in the ugly stage.

 She had her picture taken with the tiny potty!

 

 

Here they are all together. Isn't it a big size difference?

 

Sunshine, Lulu and Sunny are doing fine and Sunny crowed at 7:30 this morning!

The outside chickens are doing pretty well.  Fuzz is broody again, but is not sitting on anything as usual. Amelia has been pulling out all the cheekpuffs on the other hens, and has been in chicken jail twice (cheekpuffs as we call them, usually called beards, but we like cheekpuff better).

SIX NEW CHICKS!  Saturday we got 6 new Red Star chicks at Tractor Supply on our way home from picking up my new bed!  On the way home I named 1 Pinky Pie Marble Shine and she's spoiled!  She peeps and peeps and peeps and peeps until somebody comes and picks her up (sometimes she's quiet). 

 

The chicks are about a week old and we moved them into the indoor brooder box (in the kitchen) and Sunshine, Lulu and Sunny moved to . . .

 

- - - a large dog kennel on the floor.  The first night, Lulu roosted on top of the water bottle all night!  The second night, they all slept together on the floor.  They seem happier now, Sunshine spends most of her time roosting, Sunny has just been dusting on the floor and Lulu does everything.  We took them outside last week a couple of days when the sun was shining and let them stay in the greenhouse a while.   We are hoping to move them outside as soon as spring arrives!

Fuzz visited today!  Here's Fuzz, Sunshine, Scooter (aka Sunny), and Lulu in the indoor grazing area.  See how big Scooter's getting!!!  And he already started crowing a couple weeks ago!!  Yes, we have a crowing rooster in our kitchen!

We got about 4-5 inches of snow today, but the outside chickens can still come out in their covered area.  We shovel any snow that gets on their ground under the tarp, then sprinkle used shavings around and they love coming outside.  They can run, roost, dust, and eat scratch and veggie scraps outside during the day. 

The hens (and roosters) are all doing great, laying about 6-9 eggs a day, but we've found that isn't quite enough.  We've had such interest in our eggs that we often run out !  We're making plans to get more chicks this spring once it's warm enough to move the kitchen chickens outside.  Dad says no more chickens in the house until these can move out.  With the snow today and no warmth in sight, it might be a while.  In the mean time, we're having fun picking out breeds.  We're looking at Australorps, Wyandottes, and Hamburgs right now, we'll see. 

 

Sunshine and her family grazing -- inside!  It's too cold to go out, but they can graze right in the house where we grow the Chicken Oats for the outside chickens. 

We have been letting them graze once a day and they LOVE it!

 

Miss Fuzz is still broody out in the coop, she won't give up and daddy says "no more chicks until spring", I don't think she heard him.  Everyone else is doing fine, 10 of them were roosting on the upper roost last night!  It was a little tight, but they were nice and warm!  Actually, it's not bad in the coop, we have 2 heat lamps going and their water hasn't frozen at all. 

Fuzz is broody again!  We have very warm weather today, in the 40s, but Sunday should be back to the 20s and everything can get nice and solid again (it's all slushy today and the chickens look like they've been playing in the mud). 

The kitchen chicks are growing!  Here's a closeup of Lulu:

Sunny (aka Scooter) and Lulu are almost 4 weeks old!  They have grown so much and have beautiful feathers!  Cousin Riley got to visit them over Christmas! 

Here's Scooter (he scoots around in the box so fast, Dad renamed him):

 

And here's Lulu:

 

They both have feathered feet, extra toes, some Silkie-like feathers, and are getting Silkie combs (walnut combs).  We added on to their brooder box yesterday, making it 6 inches taller so Sunshine can stretch out tall and the little ones can grow.  I think they like it -- I hope so, it's going to be a while before they can go outside.  They love to eat yogurt, Chicken Oats (we sell them on ebay), and of course chick feed.  They still crawl under mom at night to sleep, she's like a big warm blanket with feathers.

 

 

The outside chickens are laying eggs like crazy!  We have 2 heat lamps going in the chicken coop so the water stays unfrozen and the chickens stay warm. 

Happy New Year!