Chickens on the alert

The girls got several shocks this week. First of all Matt left them for some out of state work for a few weeks. For the first few days they were just out of sorts, picking at each other, yeling alot, fighting over the smallest scraps, and taking their sweet old time laying those eggs. They are adjusting now, particularly since they realize they still have everyone else to pamper them. Also there are lots of grubs and really ugly bugs for them to eat these days, and we have been letting them roam alot. But then three guests arrived and they brought another dog with them. The girls freaked out when they saw Charlie for the first time, even though Charlie is old, basically deaf and ignored them. They tried to fly away, but they were in the pen, so that didn't work out too well. They were hysterical for quite some time. Poor Charlie just wandered back with his human to the house. On the other hand, they seem to ignore Boots now, even though she would love to play a bit rough with them if she could. The girls are not such good judges of intent sometimes. Yesterday they seemed upset about something , and put themselves back into the coop early. We never figured out what bothered them. Maybe they are getting smart about the hawks. There is a resident red-shouldered out in the woods.

The girls were glad to see Joan and Mary again, visiting from Canada. They haven't seen them since before they started laying eggs, so they were happy to get a taste of their fresh productions and hold the warm eggs at last. Pauline, who is Charlie's human, also likes the warmth of the newly laid eggs, and their appearance in Jeanne's good cooking.

The coop is gradually moving to expand its activities to include a community garden of sorts. Jeanne and Peg already grow their own veggies here and are constantly expanding the diversity in the gardens. Now Wendy & Matt have built their own large raised bed, and Frank, Jennie, and Keith have built one for their family. We have brought in a huge load of compost to start the new garden plots off, and use raised beds to smother out the knapweed and grass existing there now. This will give the other families a chance to get more sunlight on their veggies. And it is more fun when we can work together growing healthy food. We have added some fruit trees this week also. All of us are on tent worm patrol lately, as they have hatched out again. We are hoping this year is no where near as bad as last, and we expect the girls to help by eating every worm in sight, along with the grasshoppers. Right now they are working on the flies that hatched last week and doing a pretty good job. We finished the big fence around the vegetable garden so we can keep the girls out when things are sprouting, but let them in early in spring and for fall clean up. They have plenty to do running around in the woods and the rest of the yard. They are taking too much time growing back the feathers they lost during Pete's reign. We suspect they are now taking out their own feathers or each other's. They eat the feathers usually. It's not like they are starving. They are very well fed, with extra calcium supplied in the form of oyster shell. We might think they are molting, and maybe some are. But they still lay from 13 to 17 eggs a day. They take regular dust baths, and we don't see parasites on them, so we really don't know what is going on with some of them who remain too bald in spots. They all seem quite healthy. It seems it takes time to recover from roosters. We met some other chickens who had had the same experience recently and they were full of bald spots too.

Submitted by Peggy