Thursday, October 13, 2022

Stop & Chat: October 3-13 - Chicken Tending


Snakes have simply become a fact of life for us here. At one point there was a resident carpet python that was a few meters long and hung out in Partner's office. On one hand, the rodent population definitely went down. On the other, the snake could very well turn and eat any baby chicks or peafowl we have running around the property. We've had some chicks we took in become a victim of a phython attack. Yet another thing I need to blog about eventually to get this space caught up. 

I did end up making that pancit. It was a smash hit and I've been encouraged to add the recipe to my personal repertoire of dishes I like to make. The noodles weren't quite the right consistency I associate with my mom and grandma's pancit, so I'll tinker with it a little more to see if I can improve upon it.

Chicken drama is getting extreme. There's a wild hen that has ginger feathers - the only fully grown chicken on the property with that coloration - that we've nicknamed Ginger Hen. She has one baby left from her first broody cycle. She decided to start roosting with the rest of the flock before her little chick could get up to the roosts with her, so for a few nights Partner and I had to go out and capture the chick to return it to momma. The chick has since then figured out how to join its mom all on its own, so we no longer have to spend our evenings running after a surprisingly agile little chicken. :)

Kookie's case of maybe-bumblefoot is... I don't even know. Her and Crumble keep working together to remove her foot bandage whenever we manage to get a secure wrapping on. It doesn't look infected any more, but I'd still prefer it if she could keep a bandage on it and stop trying to reintroduce bad bacteria to her foot.

The Cheep Cheeps have started breaking out of their sleeping bin before we're ready to let them out for the day. That has made for some funny surprises when we walk by their bin in the mornings to use the restroom and get ready for the day. Fingers crossed, we should be able to start working on their permanent coop any day now with. Weather cooperating. Sigh.

This time Scruffy has decided to try and go broody. I was a bit lazy in collecting the eggs in their coop between bad weather and catching some sort of stomach bug, so there were quite a few eggs she was determined to hatch. While I moved her off the nest and took the eggs she sat like this and stared angrily at me.

I decided to take this opportunity and do some other cleaning and tidying of their coop. As I did that, Scruff went to stare at her empty nest for a moment before screeching at my face for removing her eggs. Poor girl. I'm sorry, but being broody isn't allowed. No more chicks!

In between all of the chicken drama I've been slowly updating my UO blog, playing more UO, and working on some posts for this blog. I have one that I'm struggling with, but I can't seem to bring myself to work on anything else until that post is done. 

I've started making sure my nicer camera battery is charged whenever I think about it. The weather hasn't been conducive to nicer pictures, but it's ready to go for the day the sun comes out.


4 comments:

  1. So my first glance at the post title registered in my brain as Chicken Tenders. Sorry. lol

    That snake, eeuw, no thanks. We have little grass snakes around here, some years there are many more than others. I don't scream or run, but I'd prefer they just quietly live their lives out of my sight.

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    1. I 100% picked that title because it sounds like chicken tenders LOL. We have decided that the next named chicken we raise from Kookie's bloodline will have a food themed name that starts with an F, just so we can refer to KFC whenever we're talking about Kookie, Crumble, and the unnamed third chicken LOL.

      I've come to accept that snakes are all over the place here, and I see them constantly, but I still would rather never see them LOL. Same thing with huntsman spiders. They get SO big, and that Texan part of my brain freaks out every time I see them because they look so much like a brown recluse if you just see them in passing.

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    2. F names...... Finger Lickin'? Fried? If you went with a C name it could be Crispy. LOL Kookie, Crumble, and Crispy!

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    3. Well duh, I didn't even get that you meant KFC because you already have K and C. And then duh to me again when I said go with C names and use Crispy, not realizing Kookie was a K. Okay, yeah, I'll stop talking now. LOL

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