Wild West Chicken Report

OK, Now that I have apparently figured out how to contribute my two cents worth to this blog I have to come up with something to say.... hope you're not waiting for anything profound...

My biggest recent news is that my new chickens have started to lay - FINALLY - one is laying light brown eggs and the other is laying pale green eggs. What fun. For those of you who haven't been in the chicken loop, I inherited a couple of who-knows-how-old hens from the previous management out here at the hatchery and this spring was thinking that I needed to be pro-active about having a few more young hens around when these started kicking the bucket. So I talked Teresa into raising a half dozen chicks for me, but before I could merge them with my flock (Teresa still has custody....), one of my old hens passed on to the big coop in the sky. One hen alone is not a happy camper, so I called up a local farmer I had met and asked if he could spare me a hen. Joe has a really ramshackle place, deep in mud still from the winter floods, but kindly gave me two brown banty hens, and when I dropped off some cookies later as a thank-you, he passed on another black and white hen that had feathered feet and was not doing well in all the mud. So these hens have been here for more than a month now and have calmed down and settled their pecking order - and in the process acquired names - and are finally laying. Atilla-the-hen is the original big barred rock, taking advantage of her greater size to get her way, Velociraptor is #2, Lace (the agorophobic one) and Phyllis (as in Diller - the one with the feathered feet) are the lower ranking hens.

Anyway, with this unplanned new flock and the eventual addition of the chicks Teresa has, I got to thinking I needed a bigger coop, so when an old friend from College days showed up for a weekend visit I put him to work helping out with the expansion. A bit cobbled together but a good coat of paint should improve the looks and of course the chickens have been underfoot checking it all out already. I need to get a couple pieces of plywood cut to size and move the door from the inside wall to the outside wall (this statement makes sense if you're standing there looking at it...), and then we're good to go.

Other news: I'm covering the hatchery chores this weekend for one of my crew who is still recovering from appendicitis, so I had yesterday off. Paul and I went across to Victoria on the ferry and checked out the new display ("Treasures from the British Museum") in the BC Museum - worth going to see - and then walked down to Chinatown to eat ourselves silly on Dim Sum. Managed to avoid the rain somehow - long day, but fun (not to mention tasty).