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Sunday, October 7, 2012

The Fowl Epidemic

Haven’t updated on the Noodleville residence of the feathered variety in ages so I thought they’d get their own posting today....

To start out, would anyone like some chickens???? These chickens are FABULOUS chickens. Each has lots of feathers in a wide variety of colors, 2 legs, 2 wings, a beak & 2 eyes. They make quite a bit of racket and the amounts of s---, err I mean High Quality Organic fertilizer they produce is astounding.

Hubby has developed a hobby.. Which is fabulous since he spends 99.9% of his time working and he needs something that he enjoys. He enjoys the chickens and has decided we shouldn’t buy chicks when we can hatch our own. To this end, I thought getting him an incubator as a present would be just fabulous.

Sometimes I don’t fully think through my grand ideas.

Hubby loved his new incubator. First batch we didn’t have an egg turner so turned them daily by hand. They got to the pipping stage and we waited eagerly for a hatching that never happened. The eggs were too dry, despite the water reservoir being full.

Second batch we tried a different route. We bought an egg turner to simplify things & the day we had to turn off the egg turner, we wet a few old rags and placed them in the incubator, in addition to having the water reservoir full.

Success!


This picture just cracks me up..... Little booger looks wind blown..

The first chick hatched almost a full day before the rest, but after that day, they started popping out all over the place.

I know it's the miracle of life & all that sweet stuff, but man they sure do look gross, and just a tad creepy, when they first pop out of the eggs..

And here is the crew all nice and dry .... I think we started with 22-23 eggs in the incubator and 17 hatched. Not a bad hatch rate if I do say so myself..

Hard to be too annoyed by chicken numbers when you're staring at all that cuteness..


Yea… I’m kinda a sucker for new chicks.. Are they not just the cutest lil boogers???!




Hubby has currently has 21 Buff Orpington eggs in the incubator, due to hatch October 21st.

This wouldn’t be a problem if not for this hen!




Meet our extreme broody hen who has gone broody 3 times this year… Each time we thought she was snapped up by a predator, only to come home about a month later with a fluffy brood of mutt chicks.

Here's the chicks that were with the hen in the picture above..


Just this week, about 10 weeks after hatching the brood above, that darn hen came up with 2 new chicks!! There were more in the brood, but a predator got to them before she could bring them up to the house…

Oy..

We processed some of the Jersey Giant crosses from the first broody batch and have decided to give the Jersey Giant hens away. Good layers, but their chicks eat so much, and grow these HUGE skeletons with hardly any meat…  We fed up several Jersey Giant mutt roos that were absolutely worthless… Plus we can’t seem to end the broody cycle with them so I can’t say I’ll be sad to see them go.

I do have a bit of news that I am sad to share… Remember Big Red? The sweetest, most awesome Roo ever, who would share snacks with the kids? He hasn’t come home in 2 weeks now … Of all my chickens, Red & Riccardo were my favorites and it’s sad not having him follow me around during the day..


Riccardo sharing an appple core with my son, Big Red on the left..

Anywho… chickens are reproducing better than bunnies here in Noodleville....It's like a reproduction epidemic. I think there are 28ish out there… Not counting the 21 Buff eggs in the incubator.

I make eggs a lot for breakfast… Sometimes lunch… Maybe even dinner on a regular basis (we had omelets last night). I boil eggs from hidden nest stashes, run them through the food processor & feed them to the chickens & barn cats.. I give eggs away to the neighbors. Jasper gets 3 eggs a day…

Really, I’m quite honestly sick of eggs.

So, anyone want some chickens, just let me know! (Just kidding… sorta.. I may think hard about it, but I wouldn‘t really get rid of hubby‘s chickens, at least not without his consent. He does tolerate my goats afterall....)

Honestly, it’s not as bad as I make it seem… With the predators stealing a few (we caught a possum in the act and he is no longer stealing chickens) and the future culling out of all the Giants and Giant crosses, the numbers will be much more reasonable..

Until then, I’m tired of scrambled, fried & boiled eggs. I don’t need anymore mayonnaise. I don’t want another omelet and my crew isn’t crazy about egg salad..

So how about a good, quick, munchkin friendly quiche recipe??