DAD BRINGS A SURPRISE!

This month the chickens are finally old enough to lay eggs. So dad handcrafted a nice surprise for the hens.

That's dad on the left, our family friend Helena from Danevang, and my wife Melanie on the right.

Dad made the girls their own nest boxes! As you can see they loved their cozy new nests from the start. If you look carefully, you'll see Phoebe and Hoot already inside. Gwen (held by my wife) always needs a helping hand. She's talked (in chicken) the whole time saying things like "What's going on?"

I spent the weekend adding another area to the chicken run and hen house. Little Mary Marco Marie de la Boca de Gato inspects the new scratching area. She's a pullet and starting to grow the most beautiful iridescent feathers. She's our rescue chicken from a friend.

The new area will give them room to scratch around and dig during the wintertime. On nice weekends, I'll leave the gate open for them to free range SO THAT they can go back into the wonderful NEST BOXES and LAY EGGS. I learned that it's important to cover the area so that the hens can feel secure from hawks. Any alarm note from neighborhood blue jays send them scurrying for cover. And we DO have hawks in our neighborhood!

Fresh eggs! This week someone started laying brown eggs. Hoot lays the blue/green eggs, Gwen (the Australian Austrolorp) along with the Phoebe and Zeebee (the Barred Plymouth Rocks) will lay brown eggs. Mary Marco Marie will probably lay white eggs.

Here are the eggs for this week. Almost a dozen.

The nest boxes are a huge success along with that fresh country hay. Thanks, dad!

That's all for today.

Thanks for stopping by.

David/ :-)