We are now getting tons of eggs. With winter we are somewhat over-run. We are currently getting at least 15-20 chicken eggs a day from our 35 hens. That doesn’t count the 5-6 duck eggs per day we get from the 6 ducks. In the fall we started selling the eggs at the local farmers’ market, but that only runs June-October. So for now, I sell what I can but we still have a LOT. So we eat a lot of eggs. The chickens are possibly laying less because it’s wintertime – in the spring their production may even go up. But the eggs are very pretty – we get all sorts of shades of browns, some almost pinks, some white eggs, and varying shades of greens. Here are some cool pictures of the eggs:
A ring of eggs.The various shades of brown, from dark to white.Here are the green eggs – they come in khaki, and light green, and someone even lays khaki with dark spots.Various shades all together.
We were out feeding the chickens tonight, and realized one of our hens has a wound on her back. She is now in our makeshift “hen hospital.”
The hen when we first brought her inside, until we could figure out what to do with her for the night. You can see how she’s missing lots of feathers, even on her head.
She’s one of my Production Red hens from our first batch of chickens, so she’s almost 3 years old. She has historically been one of the roosters’ favorites, so she tends to look a bit beat up, missing feathers from too much male attention. She happens to be molting right now, so with the roosters jumping on her, she developed a sore on her back, and then someone else started pecking at it. Chickens have a habit of pecking at anything that is red, which isn’t good if someone has a wound. I just noticed the sore tonight, and it looked really bad, so I figured we would take her in at least to clean it up. After taking a better look I decided we will keep her in for a few days to let her heal up and rest for a bit.
Here you can see her back – she’s missing a lot of feathers, both from molting and from the rooster attention she gets.Here is a closer view of the sore before I cleaned it. It was pretty deep so I cleaned it with water, then used some hydrogen peroxide and then put on some antibiotic ointment.I put her in an old indoor rabbit cage, in my art room so that the dogs won’t bother her. Our cat Wizard has been visiting her though, but he’s pretty much the same size as she is.Another view of her in the cage.A view from above.
I’ll let her stay in for a few days, at least until she heals up. Then she’ll get to wear a chicken apron if it doesn’t seem to hurt her – sometimes with the molt it hurts them to wear one, or be touched at all. An apron will prevent the roosters from digging their claws into her back. She is a little small for the aprons I have, so I may have to resize one to fit her.
We’ve been really busy this winter with the holidays and other stuff, so I haven’t had a chance to post anything in a while. We’re in the middle of a typical U.P. Snowy winter. We get a lot of lake effect snow from Lake Superior. Here are some pictures of the past several weeks.
The view from our front porch during a blizzard a few weeks ago.Here are our cars during that same blizzard.My husband took this picture of a finch, hanging onto a old evening primrose stalk.We have a metal roof. When we have warm-ups, we get curtains like this hanging down. We were wondering how long these would get – they didn’t get much longer than this before breaking.Our bird feeder next to a snow-curtain. This did not deter the birds from coming to eat.Here are our apple trees covered in snow.
My tiny u.p. farm 