Clean as a whistle!

I'll tell you what...chickens can strip corn cobs and watermelon rinds like nobody's business. Good times for the chickens...and for the humans that watch them. Who needs the zoo?

Good news about Coco...I broke her of her broodiness! For now, anyway. Two nights in a row, I put a board across the opening of the nest boxes so Coco couldn't spend the night there. It did the trick. She didn't try to go in during the day, and her weird vocalizations and turkey-tail antics stopped. Unfortunately, she hasn't resumed laying eggs yet. We haven't had a usable egg from her for almost two weeks. But all else is well, and I'm sure she'll get back to business in due course.

In the meantime, we amuse ourselves by making "better sharpen the axe" comments in front of her. Funny how she keeps calling our bluff.

P.S. I actually recorded a cute video this evening of all four ladies dustbathing. As soon as I figure out how to post it to YouTube (not hard, I'm sure, but I've just never done it before), I'll post it here!

Sowing the seeds of summer

It was a good day around the "farm." We sowed the last of our warm-weather summer vegetable seeds (although we held off on planting out our tomato starts). I think this weekend was the first time this year that our veggie garden started to feel like it was amounting to something. This unnaturally cold spring has really been getting us down, in terms of our gardening schedule and just generally. However, I realize that we are freakishly lucky that we've only had to deal with depressingly cool weather here. When you factor in tornadoes, massive hailstorms, hurricanes and whatever other craziness has been going on around the country, we really don't have much to complain about. So I am counting my blessings!

Today did turn out lovely, after a chilly start, and we made good use of the mile-high stack of empty Costco lettuce tubs in our basement as cloches for heat loving seeds.

Pole beans.

Bush beans.

Summer squash.

After we took our our weed-infested strawberry bed earlier this spring, I thought we'd have to wait another year before replanting, but I couldn't resist the array of perfect little strawberry starts at a local nursery. What is summer without at least a few garden-fresh strawberries, I ask you? So five Quinault starts made it into my cart, and into a big pot in the garden. They're an everbearing variety, so I should get a smattering of delicious berries throughout the summer.

Pepper starts, too. My indoor-started seeds didn't germinate this year, so I sprung for two pony-packs of small, not-too-hot pepper varieties.

Speaking of seeds, things are progressing on that front, despite the cool weather.

Lettuce.

Spinach.

Peas.

And here's a gratuitous shot of The Biggest Rhubarb Plant Ever (T.B.R.P.E.). I haven't made use of it this year, because I'm trying to find rhubarb recipes that are low-ish in sugar. Not easy. Other than chutneys, which isn't what I had in mind. If I ever go missing, look for me under the rhubarb plant...that thing scares me a little.

One unhappy chicken

I now know that what I experienced when Little Bob went broody was a cakewalk. Two days of gently but firmly pushing her out of the nest box and making sure I collected eggs promptly broke her of her broodiness.

Not so for Coco. That chicken wants on the nest like a dog wants a meaty bone. And she hasn't even been sitting on any eggs (since the first day she went broody)! I pushed her off the nest several times Thursday and Friday, and while she never tried to peck me, she would, for lack of a better term, raise her hackles mightily. She always vacated the henhouse quickly, but as she went about her business in the coop run, she kept making all kinds of pathetic noises and puffing up her feathers so that her tail feathers were spread out, much like a turkey tail.

Thursday evening she dropped a shelless egg in the run, and laid a very softshelled egg in the non-favorite nest box Friday evening before moving over to the favorite box to spend the night. Worried I was stressing her out (stress can cause a hen to pass an egg through too fast, so the shell doesn't have a chance to form), I decided to let her sit on the nest all day Saturday. And she did. All day. Even though there were no eggs.

This morning I did a little research, and decided I needed to take a different approach, or she could be on that nest for a month, possibly getting sick in the process. Plus, it's not fair to the other ladies to have one of the two nest boxes out of commission. What I read seemed to indicate that her soft-shelled eggs were because she was seriously broody, and her egg-laying production was temporarily ceasing.

So I marched outside and booted her off the nest, then closed the door between the run and the henhouse. She was NOT HAPPY. She would eat and drink and scratch normally, but repeatedly hop up to try to get inside the henhouse. And the weird vocalizations and feather-puffing continued.

When Little Bob looked like she needed to get to a nest box, I opened the door to let her in, and Coco shoved right past. As soon as Bob laid her egg, I had to push Coco back out. Traumatic for both of us. I ended up segregating her with a ventilated cardboard box for the rest of the afternoon so I could leave the henhouse door open for Buttons and Marmalade. When 5 p.m. came and went, I the typical laying window was over, I shut the house up and freed Coco. She had a nice dust bath and weed-eating session with the rest of the flock, but continued to try to get into the henhouse frequently.

To keep her out of the nest boxes tonight, I put a cardboard box in each one that takes up most of the room. I have got to break her of this habit, but I fear it's not going to be easy!

Et tu, Coco?

Darn it, now Coco's gone broody!

I was gone part of the day, then working furiously on a rather fascinating project for work, so I didn't do a mid-day egg-check. I noticed Coco was missing before dinner...and still missing after dinner. I persuaded Jeff to giver her a push so I could do a grab...and she was sitting on all four of today's eggs!

She rallied well, though, immediately rejoining the other ladies in the run. Poor mama-wannabe!

Now you see it...now you don't

What a difference a day makes! I got home from my Saturday microbiology lab in time for lunch yesterday, and was able to enjoy it in the dappled sunshine of my patio, with Gwyneth's new cookbook, fresh from the library.

The ladies got to enjoy a sunny happy hour at their old waterer. They use the chicken nipples just fine, but they get so excited when they have the opportunity to drink out of a puddle or basin (do chickens get nostalgic?). Accordingly, I keep old waterer handy so they can imbibe a bit when I let them out of the coop.

Peas are looking perky. I was busy with microbio homework after lunch, so Jeff planted some seeds for kale and other greens for me. Our Seattle spring is still unseasonably cold, but I figure we can plant out our tomato starts and sow seeds for beans, cukes and squash (under cloches) Memorial Day weekend.

I don't feel so bad that I got a late start sowing tomato seeds indoors, seeing as I have to wait longer to safely plant them outside, anyway. We went to a nursery to buy a few herb plants (thyme, oregano and basil) and some petunias and such for our hanging baskets. Their tomato starts were huge and in BAD need of planting out, but our nighttime temps have not been reliably above the mid-40s yet, so good luck with that.

Ironically, the weather took a turn for the nasty while we were at the nursery, and has been that way all day today. Windy, constant rain, cool. Yuck! The ladies agree...about every other time I peek at them out the living room window, they're laying huddled together under the henhouse. I'm so glad we got our flock going last year...I would hate to be starting with chicks this year in this weather!

Four eggs, no brooding

Hooray, I think little Bob is cured of her fledgling brooding habit!

After the incident last Saturday, she was fine on Sunday...but the four ladies only laid two eggs among them, so I'm assuming the lack of brooding was because Bob was not one of the day's layers. Then Monday, she was back to brooding. I caught her trying to hatch her egg and Miss Buttons egg (Marmalade and Coco had laid their eggs in the other nest box). So I pushed her butt forward enough to grab the eggs from under her. Then, because I felt bad, I petted her for a minute while she softly clucked at me.

Then came Tuesday. One egg. I was convinced that little Bob was staging a mutiny: "OK, ladies, no more laying until she brings my babies back!"

Wednesday and Thursday...two eggs each day. What the heck? Very strange for this time of year.

Then came Friday. Four eggs...and no brooding! Ditto for Saturday! Although they put off all of their laying until the afternoon, maybe because they were distracted by Jeff finishing the path next to the coop (Lady Marmalade had been in the nest box a long time, and when I went out there, I found four eggs...clearly the other ladies had already hurried in there to do their business, and we hadn't noticed. Of course, I carried the eggs inside, said "Well, I know why Marmalade was in there so long...she was all backed up!" and showed him the eggs. I think he really believed me for several seconds...).

Speaking of the path...it's all done, except we need to get some more little groundcover starts to plant between the stones.

Things are coming along in the garden. The peas I planted two weeks ago are coming up strong, and the lettuce and spinach is slowly germinating and pushing through. If we get some decent breaks in the weather today, we plan to plant some beets, carrots, onions and more greens.