She is nuts

First, I turned around this afternoon and saw Carrie doing this...

Then, I went outside late in the afternoon and saw her doing this...

 The thing she is standing on is just a piece of metal fencing that we barely attached in the chicken run for the birds to perch on.

 And so it soon broke under her weight...

 And she was stuck for a minute

But not too long...

And then she was back up and trying again....

Their first taste of freedom

I decided today was a good day to let the first batch of chicks taste freedom.

I opened the door.

And then waited.

And waited.

And waited.

 And FINALLY we had a brave bird that went into the coop and as he/she stood on the edge, an adult chicken came behind her.

 She jumped out of peer pressure, I'm sure of it.

Not too graceful

Walk it off like a pro

She was out of the coop alone for about twenty minutes before I gave up and went inside the house.   About thirty minutes later I went back outside and found another bird had tasted freedom.

 I figured maybe they would come out if they could come out through the coop so I propped an old ramp up to the door and immediately someone poked out to see the world.

And the rest followed.

All nine are walking around testing their freedom and and adult birds are doing fine with them, except for Silkie Sue who tends to attack every once in awhile.  :/

One step closer to my homestead

The garden is showing some hope and we got more things in the ground this weekend.  My fingers are crossed that things continue to grow and that we will get a lot of fresh produce throughout the summer and fall.

Sunflowers

Dill

Cilantro

Rosemary

Carrots

Lettuce

Green Beans

Onions

Tomato

Broccoli 

Calendula

Garden beans (yellow beans)

Purple potatoes (really!)

Gold potatoes

Rasberry bush

Future site of watermelons and pumpkins

Sweet potatoes

Brussel Sprouts

Squash

Zucchini and Cucumber

The don't stop growing

I needed to clean out the basement brooder where the youngest chicks are and I thought it would be a good time to get some pictures of them and how much they have grown.

They did NOT like being put into one tub together while I cleaned things up.

Ignore the old lady in the background

I

We have a girl!

We have had the guinea for a year now and I have never been able to figure out which of them were girls or which of them are boys.

About a month ago I started finding guinea eggs in the chicken run on the ground or in the chicken coop.  I knew I had at least one girl.

The three small eggs on the right are guinea eggs

A few nights ago there were only two guinea in the guinea coop.


One was with the chickens.  I have no idea why because they seem to instigate fights with the chickens all day when they are free ranging in the yard.

The guinea is sitting next to these two, they aren't happy

I just thought this picture was funny

The next morning there was an egg.

Yesterday this happen again and there was another egg.

So today, I decided if there was an egg, I would know the guinea in the chicken coop was a female and I should mark her somehow.  So before I let it out of the chicken coop today, I caught her and put a pink zip tie around her ankle.  I kept wishing I had someone with me to take pictures of me doing this.





Tonight, one guinea is in the coop with the chickens, and I'm sure it's the girl again.  She wouldn't stand up so I could confirm the pink band was on her ankle.