Chickens are warm!

So says Jeff, who is holding Lady Marmalade here...

...and Coco here. He said they put off so much heat that he could feel it through his work gloves and his polar fleece.

Not surprising, really, when you consider that the ladies are bopping around wearing down comforters (essentially). Good thing, too, because it was COLD the last few days!

I didn't worry about the ladies freezing, but their waterer was another reason. I kept on in the house at all times so I could fill it with slightly warm water and switch it out as needed when the one in their coop froze solid. It was pretty funny to watch them as they went about their chicken business, fluffing up their feathers to keep body-warmed air around them. They would look about twice their normal size, temporarily, until the feathers deflated a bit.

Chicken nipples

That is the best blog post title ever, don't you agree?

On Sunday, Jeff installed what may be the best little gizmo every to grace an urban chicken coop: A chicken nipple waterer. (Are you still giggling? I thought so.)

We bought a set of three chicken nipples from our local urban farm coop a few weeks ago, desperate to escape the unrelenting task of keeping the ladies supplied with fresh, clean, water. No matter what we tried with their regular waterer, they kept kicking hay (from the run) or coffee chaff (from the hen house) into it, pooping in it, knocking it over, destabilizing the bricks it sat on by digging their tunnel to China under it, etcetera, etcetera.

With the nipples, we were able to turn a re-purposed two-liter bottle into a waterer. Totally enclosed, so it can't get dirty or spill. Hanging, so it can't get knocked over. Brilliant. (It's also possible to use multiple nipples to turn a bucket into a waterer.)

One benefit of using the bottle is that it's clear. Apparently, when chickens can see the water, they adapt more quickly to using a new watering device. Before we closed up the coop, I pushed the little metal part to the side so that some water dripped out while Miss Buttons was watching me. A few hours later, when Jeff went out there, she marched right up to the waterer and drank, as if to show him how smart she was.

That was a relief, because when one chicken does something, the others aren't far behind. Chickens are not known as independent thinkers.

Of course I kept spying on the ladies Monday, hoping to catch them drinking. I saw Lady Marmalade and Little Bob (Babette) drinking, and I'm sure Coco must have been, just not when I was looking. Today, Little Bob seemed quite proud to show off her new skills. She is the sweetest chicken!

In other chicken news, the ladies have been having more two-egg days the last week (total, not per lady!!), including two in a row Sunday and Monday. Given their production over the winter, that's pretty good. I wonder if the slowly increasing daylight is already causing them to ramp up their output.

Cluckin' along

It's been a soggy week for the ladies. We've had some torrential rains accompanied by mighty winds, which made their coop a damp, dreary place. (Lady Marmalade looks particularly pathetic with damp feathers.) I spruced things up with some fresh straw, and installed a new, huge feeder that will let us go away for the weekend without needing to have someone chicken sit (we'll still have to do that when we go on vacation for a week or longer).

Jeff also rigged up a wire contraption to turn their waterer into a hanging waterer. We'd previously had the waterer propped up on a stack of paver bricks, under the "landing" to their henhouse. It was the only place we could put the waterer where they couldn't fly up and perch on it. Trouble is, the little gremlins are constantly working on digging a tunnel to China, and their excavation work was often right next to the stack of pavers, making them gradually less level and stable. Hanging the waterer will stop them from knocking it over, and hopefully keep it cleaner, too.

The girls have been averaging 1-2 eggs a day (total), which isn't great, but is fine with us. We'll have more eggs than we can use come spring, so the quasi-hiatus is probably a good balance.