There are always new things to learn here. Today was one of those days. A beautiful sunny day, so we decided it was time to try putting Esmeralda back with the flock. We thought we would sneak her in while the rest were out playing in the compost bins and gobbling up the bread and scratch we threw out. They might not have noticed her, except that we put the Vicks on her would first. It had worked when we had a baby chick that was being pecked. They left her alone. It is not clear that it is a good idea with adult birds. It seemed to be going well. A few pecked at her but were turned away. Wendy and Matt and I were there to protect her if need be. Seemed to be going well. she went in and out of the coop with the rest, flew to the compost bin, blended in. We spent a little time getting one of the barred rocks off the pen top. she had flown up there but seemed to have no clue that she couldn't just go through the holes to get back into the pen where the bread was. Wendy literally shoveled her off finally. After Matt and Wendy left, I hung around to watch things. Esmeralda went under the ramp and proceeded to bury herself in the dirt. It looked like she was trying to rub off the Vicks with a dirt bath. However, a few of the other hens came at her in an unfriendly way while she was in the hole she had cleared. I sent one packing a few times, but it persisted. It seemed that she stuck out with the Vicks on and they didn't like it. She seemed to sense it needed to come off too. Since I also had to leave and could not be around this evening, I decided to put her back in the garage. She seemed almost relieved when I picked her up. So perhaps next time we should try it without the Vicks, to see if that turned out to be what bothered them. In every other way she looks and behaves just like the other Araucanas.
The other lesson is that we have to remember to re-set the timer when we have had a power outage. Yesterday the power was out for over two hours, so when I came home tonight at 9 the girls were still up playing because the light had not gone off yet. Always something new here.
20 more eggs today. We need to let the friends know they need to call one of us when they want eggs, and we can telll them if they are available, so Jeanne and I don't have to spend alot of time on the phone contacting the many people who are interested in buying the extras.Then if it is your friend or contact you can deliver them or we can tell them how to find them. We don't want to be bothering people when they don't have a need, but I think we may be missing some friends who want eggs but are waiting for a call or a delivery. I'm not too anxious to get into the delivery business, but am willing to take them places if I am going to be near some of our customers anyway. For example, we work at BACN usually two days a week and can take some there to a few people who are on our list. I know some of the rest of you do the same with eggs you are selling. As long as production stays at this level, and coop members are either out of town or just not needing many eggs right now, we do have quite a few to sell. Let me know if you want me to take the extras to BACN. I think they will buy them from us for $2 a dozen, but I have not asked specifically yet. I wouldn't want to charge them any more than that. What do you think? I can also take some to several events on New Year's Eve day.
For the flock, Peggy
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