Historic East Coast Snowstorm!

Wow, do we have snow!  It's about 8-12 inches, and forcast to continue all day for us! This is the view from my front porch this morning!  Stay tuned, I'll have more pictures as I venture out further! 

Too bad this isn't a work day for me - I'm sure all businesses in Washington will be closed today!  Wonder if the stores will be closed?  I still have some Christmas shopping to do...

Christmas visitor

This morning we had a visitor - a wood mouse.  We often get mice when the weather gets cold out.  Well, it's cold out there now!  The wood mouse stood no chance against the mighty Jack & Shadow.  If anything - animal or bug, comes into our house, they know about it.

They were chasing the little guy when I got up - Randy had to take it away from Shadow.

Sorry, little mouse - we like Christmas visitors, but not mice in our kitchen.

Li'l Puff

This little strange chick came with our other chicks that came with the momma hen, Freckles.  The Amish people from which we got the chicks said that not all of them may have come from the momma hen, some other eggs may have gotten mixed in her nest.  Sure enough, one little chick just doesn't look like the rest.  All the chicks are about 2 months old, but this strange-looking little one, which I call Li"l Puff, is much smaller and looks so different.  Puff has a puff of feathers on her head, and a strange bumpy beak. 

Here is Puff on the right side with the other chicks and Freckles.  Puff is kinda ugly, but is oh-so friendly.  She is the first to jump into our hands when we come into the coop. 

Does anyone know what type of chick Puff could be???  Any ideas would be appreciated.  We figured we'd just wait and see what she grows into...

Egg Comparison

We cooked up Freckles' first egg.  Before cooking, we compared it with a store-bought "large" egg.  It was darker but basically the same size.  It was 1.4 oz in weight.  Can you tell which egg is Freckles'?

Our chickens have not been able to free-range yet, nor have they been able to spend too much time outside. We are in the process of building them an outside enclosure which is totally safe from fox, raccoons, and other land creatures and covered to keep out the hawks and owls.  It's not yet completed - we still need to finish laying concrete under the fence and build the cover (will post about it when it's done - it's a slow project!)  We've seen and heard numerous hawks and owls around the chicken coop, and our little 2 month old pullets and cockerels would make a tasty snack to them.  We take the chickens outside to the garden or the fenced chicken area when we are able to be out there nearby "babysitting" them.  I'm sure when Freckles spends more time outside her eggs will be different.

Freckles has given us a second egg already, one day after her first.  She laid 2 days in a row, then took 2 days off.  The second egg was 1.7 oz.  I was upset I didn't get a third egg already!  Guess she needs to get back in the swing of things- she just did raise a bunch of baby chicks, and I need to be patient!

Freckles Laid an Egg!

We have one hen named Freckles based on a suggestion from Sue (Thanks, Sue).  Well, Freckles laid her first egg last night!  What a shock! It's a medium sized, light brown egg.

We bought Freckles along with 8 chicks back in October.  I didn't expect her to lay an egg yet because she still is mothering her chicks, but she surprised me!  I like the name Freckles because she has these dark spots on her shoulders.

We don't expect any of our other chickens to lay any eggs until the April/May timeframe next year because they were all born in October. But maybe Freckles will bless us with her eggs all winter long!
Thank you, Freckles!!

Chicken Update Day 48

The chickens had a week of antibiotics in their water, and they all have gotten better.  Previously they had a bad case of an upper respiratory infection, which made us rush to find a cure.  The antibiotics worked wonders, thank goodness!

Here's Leggy, the white leghorn cockerel (with a guinea hen in the front).  I know, I'm not too imaginative when it comes to names.  I didn't want to name my chickens, I didn't want to get too attached.  We aren't going to keep all the roosters, and we seem to have quite a few.  But nicknames got started, and the names have stuck.  Leggy has become my baby.  I think he is beautiful.  I have been trying to make sure he doesn't grow up to be mean, because I don't want to have to ever get rid of him!

Here's Leggy in my lap with a few of the hens.

And here is Leggy sleeping in my arms.  He is the most hyper young chicken, but all it takes is a few neck rubs when he's in my arms, and he goes right to sleep!  Most of our chickens can be put to sleep like this!

We have 5 chickens that look like this - dark with a white face.  We were told they were Bantams, we call them "hawks".

Happy Thanksgiving

Went out this morning for a quick walk, excited it wasn't raining.  It's been raining for days here in Maryland.  There was a morning fog; it was so beautiful.  I woke a herd of whitetail deer who were sleeping in the field - look down the path to see a deer bounding across the road.  I got a few more pictures of the deer, but they were tough to see thru the fog. 

Morning fog on the field

Thanksgiving morning, 2009

Chick update - Day 40 - Sick Chicks

It's been 40 days since we got our chicks, and we are having an epidemic.  The chicks have gotten some sort of upper respiratory infection.  They get puffed up, lethargic, and lose their appetite.  It appears to slowly be affecting most of the flock.  One chick has died, several more are very sick.  A few chicks seemed to not be well early on shortly after we got them, and we moved them inside to the infirmary in the house and paid special attention to them, hand feeding and watering them, and soon they appeared to get better. 

Then they got sick again when they were outside in the chicken coop.  At first it was just one sick chick, then suddenly two weren't normal, and we were worried.  Then overnight six got sick... Time to panic!  We called a thousand vets, it's tough to find a vet who deals with chickens.  And of course this happens on a Sunday, and right before Thanksgiving, too...  We continue to hand water the sick chicks with an eye dropper.  They have lost their appetite, and we can't force them to eat...

The local feed store sold us some antibiotics and some antibacterial solution, too.  We started with the antibiotics in their water; maybe later we'll do the antibacterial solution, but not now.  Today we gave all chicks a good dose of antibiotic water from a dropper, even those who appear to be healthy.  Some of the healthy chicks loved drinking from an eye dropper - we just had to hold it in front of them and they gobbled the water.  Several of them drank the medicine-water heartily from a mug which we set on the ground.  The sick ones we had to force them to drink.  Poor birds.  The guinea keets are all fine, as are the two biggest chicks.  The infection affects the small and weakest birds first.

We did finally speak to a local vet who deals with livestock, including chickens.  He told us upper respiratory infections are common if we bought from folks who may have had an infected flock.  We didn't know the people from whom we bought the chicks - they came from an auction.  He said the mother hen we bought could have been a carrier of the infection, even though she appears to be healthy.  The vet confirmed we are doing everything right - medicating the birds, keeping them warm, all we can do is wait and hope the chicks get healthy again.  He did say the chickens would be strong and resistant when they got better from this infection. 

Who knew raising chicks was so much work?!

Hibernating Ladybugs

In the past few weeks the ladybugs have returned to our house to hibernate.  To the inside of our house, that is. 

Last year was our first autumn in the house and we were shocked to find hundreds, maybe thousands, of ladybugs migrating inside when the weather first got cold.  Our home isn't well insulated and the ladybugs find a way to get inside.  Last autumn we collected them in jars and took them away.  We exterminated the house last spring, but the ladybugs still returned, although this autumn we have less ladybugs than last year.  In the past few weeks we have collected them in jars once again and let them go down the street - I think we got rid of most of them now.  It seems once we remove them they do not come back.  They are mostly on the sunny side of the house walking on the walls, but they also get everywhere in the rooms on that side of the house. 

Here's a ladybug on a sneaker shoelace.

Here are a group of ladybugs in a corner of a room by the ceiling.

Some of the ladybugs have spots, some don't have spots.  Although I don't hate ladybugs, I really don't like them inside my house, and I'm happy we got rid of them for now!  I think if it were any other type of bug I'd really freak out!  Goodbye, ladybugs...

Another Tree Across the Road

The other night I was driving home from work late at night.  It was dark, cold, and pouring rain.  It had been a long, hard day at work, and all I wanted to do was get to my peaceful, quiet home, eat a good dinner, and get some sleep before going off to work & starting again early the next day.  And then I saw it - the largest tree ever fell and was laying across our dirt road, blocking the only way home.  It was so discouraging to see that tree.  Why do trees only fall across roads at the worst possible time?  There was no way to drive around the massive tree.  It was a huge, old, dead tree.  The recent rain brought it down and made a muddy mess of the road around the fallen tree.

I couldn't get a picture of it as I didn't have my camera with me, and it was so dark and raining it would have been tough.  I called my husband, who luckily was home, and he drove out from home to "his side" of the tree and surveyed the situation from there.  It was no problem for him.  He climbed over the tree and brought me a change of clothes from home so I didn't destroy my work clothes, I changed in the car, then we both climbed back over the tree and he drove me the rest of the way home.  While I made dinner, he and the neighbor made short work of getting that monster tree out of the road.  They cut it up with chainsaws and pushed it out of the way with the tractor.  It was amazing how fast it was done.  What was I fretting about?  No problem for 2 men, a chainsaw and a tractor.

I took these pictures the next day when the rain finally let up.