It is the end of February and the birds here in Oregon think it is spring, flowers are up so maybe it is. The hens are in full production now, laying 5-6 eggs each a week. Since Andrea and Denise do not eat 2-3 eggs a day, they have started selling their eggs to the neighbors and friends again. Even though, in Oregon, February is the month one may start a garden winter storm do occasional happen. Several inches of snow and below freezing temperatures came at the end of the month. The day it snow Denise worked from home. When the temperature warmed up a bit and the snow started to melt, she let the girls out for fun in the yard. They were not quite sure what to do with the snow, they did a lot of pecking and checking to see if it was edible. An hour later, Denise went back out to check on them, and found them where she had left them by the coop where the snow was gone from the ground. It seems that they had no intention of walking in it, eating it was fine, but walking through it was out. The sun soon came out and melted the snow away and the girls were quickly on slug patrol again. About 4:00PM a new storm came in and dumped another inch or more of snow and the girls quickly returned to the coop as the first snow started to fall. Chickens are creatures of habit and are very leery about new things in their environment, so at least for now, snow is a suspicious thing.
Chickens also have a very keen eye and are very observant. So Denise has to be very careful that she doesn’t have anything unusual in her hands or on her body that they have not seen before when she wants to approach and handle them. For instance, Denise reports that if she has gloves on her hands they won’t let her come near them, take the gloves off and they are fine. If she wanted them to get use to gloves, a few sessions of feeding them with gloves on would change their attitude.
The girls have become food obsessed again, which makes everyone very happy. While they were molting and not interested in food (and not laying eggs) they were becoming very independent; not coming when called, refusing to get back in the coop even when food was offered, and running away when Andrea or Denise would try to pick them up. Now that they are laying again and need a lot of food, they are coming when called, racing over each other to get into the coop for food, and in general letting anyone handle them without much resistance. Denise wonders if during the next molt they exhibit the same behavior.
The Hen Herald wishes to apologize, its number one reporter did not do enough research before reporting an earlier story. Earlier we reported that there is summer chicken manure and winter chicken manure (mostly because they greatly reduced the amount of food and water they took in, in a day). Turns out it is non-egg laying chicken manure and egg laying chicken manure. Now that the chickens are laying again, the other wonderful by-product of chickens is once again plentiful. And no wonder, their food and water consumption has tripled.
On a side note, Denise and Andrea’s little dog Zica (zheeza), likes to steal Denise’s glasses from her night stand and guard them all day from the cats and then from Denise and Andrea when they get home from work. She is very gentle with them and the only harm has been to clean them and avoid stepping on them when one walks in the door. Denise is trying to remember to put them out of reach, but does not always remember. Now that Andrea has a camera, a camera trap was set up (you know the kind they hide in the woods to catch photos of wild animals and is triggered by motion) to find out why Zica wants Denise’s glasses so bad and on a daily basis. See the photo they captured.
