Louisa Enright's Blog

Turkey Tracks:  March 1, 2012

Sweaters for Chickens

I’m not kidding.

There are folks out there making sweaters for chickens.

And, they’re adorable!

And, I’m finding myself wondering if they’d protect our hens’ backs from our overzealously amorous roo.

And, I have all that leftover yarn of all sorts…

Anyway, for a heartwarming laugh, take a look?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/babymantis/20-pictures-of-chickens-wearing-sweaters-1opu

And, there are patterns all over the net, but this one looks the least daunting:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rescued-battery-hen-jumper

Turkey Tracks:  February 7, 2012

Valentine Roosts Outside

About two weeks ago, when I counted chicken heads in the coop prior to locking them up for the night, Valentine was missing.

Valentine is a Freedom Ranger meat chicken.  But FRs also lay gorgeous, big eggs.  When Valentine first started laying, almost all her eggs were double-yoked.  Rose raised her last spring/summer, and I reached into the pen one day and pulled up the first hen I could lay hands on to bring home for our coop.  Valentine.

Here’s a picture of her late last summer.  Her head, back of her comb, is covered with antiseptic cream since she had some altercation or other with one of the other hens or the rooster.  She’s was so BIG at this stage that she scared the rooster–whom she tried to follow everywhere.  She’s too heavy to fly up on the coop  perch to roost with the other chickens:

Anyway, that night two weeks ago, she wandered up out of the dark just as I realized she was missing.  I picked her up and put her into the coop for the night.

Last night, she was nowhere to be found when I went out to lock up the hens.  It’s important to lock that coop down tight.  On several mornings now, I’ve had racoon tracks all over the fresh snow on the egg box cover.

I took a flashlight and looked all over the yard, in the garage (did she go in and we didn’t see her?), and down the driveway.  I looked everywhere every space I could possible think of into which a fat chicken who can’t fly might tuck herself.  No luck.  I was encouraged that I had not seen feathers anywhere.  When a chicken gets attacked, there are always a lot of feathers.  But, the flock has been spending a lot of time up on the warm hillside, where the snow has melted and the leaves show.  Feathers might not show up in the dark on the leaves…

I told John, and he immediately grabbed a flashlight and went out to look.

No luck either.

This morning as I was fixing all the animals some food, I saw Valentine stroll down the back path.  When I went out, food bowl in hand, she came running to me like a young chicken–wings out and clucking.  I put it on the ground for her.  She was starved.  And vocal.  After she had eaten a bit, she started telling me some long tale, and she followed me around, still talking, the whole time I was outside fluffing up the coop, changing out the water, and making sure the grain bowl had grains in it.

I can’t imagine where she slept.  I hope she does not do it again.  But, she is a…Freedom Ranger.

Turkey Tracks:  February 6, 2012

Chickens in the Window

Chickens are very social.

We are indoors a lot these days, winter being winter.  I love this time of quilting, knitting, cooking hearty foods.  It’s so restorative.

We’d get out more, but we’ve had a lot of ice with all the fluctuating temps melting the little bit of snow we have and then freezing it back into treacherous, mirror-like sheets of ice.  Two dear friends have already fallen and hit the back of their heads and are suffering with concussions and wrenched muscles.

Anyway, I can be working away at something in the quilt room or the laundry room, and I’ll get this feeling of being watched.  Sure enough, some of the chickens–or all of them–will be gathered in a window and looking at me.

Here are some chickens in the window earlier in the winter–before we had snow:

That’s Pretty Pierre to the left, the roo; Valentine next to him, a Freedom Ranger, and Rosie, a Copper Black Maran hen with beautiful neck markings.

If you talk to them, they crane their heads and, often, talk back.

Here they are not long ago–at the front door.  John was so enchanted he took pictures and sent out a Facebook entry about “the girls coming to tea.”

Don’t let anyone tell you chickens are dumb.  They’re not.  They know exactly how to get you to come give them some sunflower seeds or millet.  They know they’re sitting ducks in the snow, so stay in their coop.  And they know what to eat and what isn’t so good for them.

I love my chickens!  Even when they poop on all the porches.

Turkey Tracks:  January 20, 2012

Some Favorite Pictures

Bryan took this picture on their visit in September.  It took me a while to pry it out of his camera, but it arrived not too long ago.

We had our house trim painted in September–thus the ladders next to the rock wall.   And you can see how social our chickens are.  They’ll come get in your lap if you let them–which Ailey is clearing worrying about.  Chickens are especially friendly if you’re eating anything.  In this pic they’re after the millet treat next to us.

Here’s another favorite picture–taken over Christmas when Mike, Tami, and the four kiddos were with us.

Talula and I were making stuffed green peppers–using the meatloaf recipe that’s already on this blog.  Here’s another view:

Here’s a pic of the stuffed green peppers ready to go into the oven.  They are topped with the roasted tomatoes I made last August and September and froze in mason jars.  That recipe is on the blog as well.  It takes about 45 minutes at 350 degrees to cook them.

Tami or Mike took this pic of John and Penny, who is the most affectionate dog.

Maryann came over Christmas and spent hours and hours playing with the children, who truly love her and her gentle ways with them:

Kelly came to us with a VERY loose tooth.  It took days and days with all of us periodically checking “how loose is it now,” but eventually it came out.  To our surprise, he lost the OTHER ONE the next day.  The tooth fairy only had a $5 bill found late at night after everyone else was in bed and, so, was completely broke after two nights of lost teeth.

Here are the kiddos at the Snow Bowl, which is walking distance from our house.  We signed them up for a week of ski lessons while they were here, and to our amazement, by Friday, the boys were riding the T-Bar lift alone and Talula had mastered the Mighty Might Lift and the beginning slope in fine fashion.  Wilhelmina made progress, but kept running out of energy and would fall and lie down in the snow.  (Skiing is hard work.)  Her teacher told Tami the following:  “This little girl won’t come up out of the snow.  She told me she’d get up if I gave her chocolate.”

And, of course we got a Christmas tree.  And of course it’s Maine grown.

We put it outside on the upper porch and decorated it with white lights and pine cones.  We never did slow down enough to string popcorn and cranberries for it.

Turkey Tracks:  January 20, 2012

Chicken Feed Recipe Posting

The chicken feed recipe is one of the most popular posts on this blog.  For over a year now it ranks second in the number of hits.  The first are the essays on the most recent science about the dangers of adding fluoride to our water.

I’ve had a request to repost the recipe.  But, how about if I tell you how to get to it on the blog?

On the right sidebar, below the comments, is a search tab.  The title of the exact post is “Chicken Feed Recipe”–and the recipe is at the end of that post.   There is a picture of a jar of mung bean sprouts up front.  The posting date is February 9, 2011.

You can also search the blog by putting in one of the categories:  chickens, craft projects, quilting, recipes.

Now, as to the chicken feed recipe.  I’ve found a local place where I can buy organic whole wheat and organic cracked corn in large sacks.  (I’m forgetting the poundage and am not going out to the garage right now to check–they’re probably 25-pounders.)  So I’ve been buying a sack of each of those and using about 3 parts each of the wheat and corn–then add  in the other grains and peas in one-part increments.  I’ve got a used big yogurt container and a lot of those BIG ziplock plastic bags, and I put all the bags of grains/peas/grit in a circle on the garage floor–the wheat and corn first as I use more of those–and fill a bag at a ziplock bag at a time with each ingredient in its proportion.  I put the filled separate bags into a big plastic garbage can, and I’m good for several months.  (I’ve got 8 chickens right now, and I last did this mixing before Thanksgiving.  I think I pulled the last mixed bag out this week.)

Remember though that I also give my chickens a big bowl of torn bread, whole raw milk, and raw meat (hamburger usually) every morning.  I add in whatever fat I’ve got from frying bacon or a meat roast and, sometimes, leftovers I think they’ll like.  (They have to compete with the dogs for tasty leftovers.)  In our currently frigid weather, I warm the milk for them, and they LOVE that.  They purr and talk and thank me quite nicely.  We’ve got frozen ground and snow, so I’m also supplementing with whatever greens I can find for them–they love kale–and I will start some mung bean sprouts for them today.

Turkey Tracks:  January 17, 2012

Rose’s Pretty Eggs

Rose Thomas has the prettiest eggs in the whole world.

I got some over Christmas as our own flock was mostly resting and as Mike, Tami, and the four kiddos were coming.

Here’s what one sees when one opens one of Rose’s egg cartons:

The really dark brown egg is from a Copper Black Maran.  The white egg on the far left is from a Barbanter.  The blue eggs are from Americaunas.  The rosy tan eggs are from Red Sex-Links or Freedom Rangers.  I’m not sure what the other darker brown eggs are from–maybe Marans who are not painting so dark.  And, that little olive egg on the far lower right is from a Cooper Black Maran and Americauna cross.

They’re like Easter Eggs, right?

And the yolk color is a deep, amazing orange.

Rose feeds organic feed grown and sold in Maine–which has some soy–since she has a big flock–but she supplements with milk when she can get it, seaweed, whole grains, greens from her hoop houses, and household leftovers, including meat and fat.  On cold winter mornings, she takes her flock some warm mash–made from grains.

Please Maine farmers, grow and mix us some feed that is SOY FREE!

With a small flock, I can mix my own whole grains–and there is a good recipe elsewhere on this blog–but those with larger flocks cannot afford to do that.

Turkey Tracks:  January 17, 2010

Pearl’s First Egg

Pearl was born in early May.  Rose Thomas hatched about 40 “blue egg” chickens in incubators.  Among the batch were some pure Wheaten Americaunas, and Pearl was one of those.  Rose gave her to me in late summer when we decided she was big enough to leave home.  She was part of the young flock–including the Copper Black Marans from Georgia that Rose raised for both of us–I put together in late summer and early fall.

 Pearl became the “low man on the totem pole” in the flock.  She was the most timid and the last to meld with the group.  She was very attached to me, and whenever I came outside–once I let the flock free range for the fall and winter–she found me and stayed right with me, talking away all the while.  Here’s a picture of Pearl–she’s the tan chicken standing in front of the raspberries next to Rosie, a Copper Black Maran, and Pierre, the new, young rooster, also a CBM:

By early December Pearl was at least seven months old and had not yet layed an egg.  Our two other Wheatens were molting, so we had had no pretty blue eggs for some months.

One early morning a day or so before Mike, Tami, and the four kiddos came for two weeks in mid-December, Pearl flew up from the ground and landed on my shoulder as I was standing in front of the coop.  I picked her up, loved on her a bit, and put her down.  Later that day she laid her first egg–on the mat in front of the back, kitchen door.

Here it is:

Pearl is laying regularly now, still comes to greet me in these cold mornings, and seems more comfortable with the whole flock.

Turkey Tracks:  October 27, 2011

October Update

We’ve had the loveliest Indian Summer here on Mid-Coast Maine.  But, as we move into November, the weather is suddenly colder and our thoughts are turning toward getting out warmer clothes.  We’ve nearly finished winterizing and final harvesting.  It’s actually a lot to do.  But all the pots, except one by the garage door that  John can’t part with yet, have been emptied, cleaned, and stored.  And, all the porch furniture has been stored in the garage.  The hot tub has been emptied, cleaned, and been filled with fresh water.  The chicken coop has been moved and all the bedding cleaned.  I’ve put straw around it for the winter.  I’ve planted next year’s garlic and mulched the strawberries.

We’ve put up the boardwalk, and John has cleaned it.  The wood grows mold over the summer, as it’s in the shade on the north side of the garage.  That mold is incredibly slippery and dangerous.

You can see, too, that the garden has been bedded down with straw.   THat’s a roll of 2-foot chicken wire we’ll put around the low side to keep the chickens from scratching the straw out into the grass.  I like them to scratch in the garden; it breaks up the straw and blends it into the topsoil.

The cold frame is full of a last crop of lettuce and radish plants.  See…

The leeks I planted did very well this year.  I left some of the smaller ones in the garden and covered them with straw to overwinter.  The cabbages were small.  We had a really rainy, cool August, so I think they didn’t get enough sunshine.  They’re tasty though!  And we’ve been enjoying leek and potato soup infused with carrots and cabbage, cooked until veggies are tender, and made smooth with a hand-held blender.  Often I throw in some of the last of the parsley chopped fine.  Serve with a big chunk of butter or a swirl of heavy cream.  It’s the classic French recipe, actually.

We’ve strawed the front bed, fenced it, and trimmed back all the raspberries, bayberry bushes, and rugosa roses.  So, the chicken briar patch is gone.  The chickens miss it, too, especially as our driveway hawk has been stalking them lately.

Nancy and Sally are molting big time, and they are sad to behold.  Nancy is the most extreme at the moment.  She has big feather quills coming in all around her neck though.  Chicken feathers are almost all protein, so it takes a lot of energy for a chicken to molt.  They don’t lay while molting, and since Pearl has not started laying (???), we have no blue eggs.  Nancy misses her tail feathers I think.

My Roo, aka as Pretty Pierre, is really coming into his own.  Not a leaf drops in the yard that he isn’t right there to see what it is.

My friend Carole Whelan of Birds and Bees Farm sent me a picture of her new rooster, a Splash Maran.  Isn’t he a pretty fellow?

Friday nights bring the added joy of picking up a pizza made in Rose’s wood-burning oven.  (Rose and Peter Thomas, The Vegetable Shed, Lincolnville, Maine.)  Rich smoky flavors play over the vegetables from her farm–over meat and cheese and sauce she’d added or made.  What a treat!

This picture is overexposed with the camera’s flash, but you get the point.  Are we spoiled or what?

Finally, I’m working on a new quilt–based on Rhea Butler’s method, called La La Log Cabin.  Rhea is from Alewives quilting in Damariscotta Mills.  Here’s a picture of the quilt taking shape on the design wall.  It’s all being made from batiks in my stash:

Turkey Tracks:  October 12, 2011

Chicken Mischief Continued

Sister Susan asked for a picture of our chickens raiding the greens I planted in five deep blue plastic pots after we harvested potatoes from them.

You can see they visit the pots daily.  Since I’ve got a nice crop of lettuce in the cold frame, I just let them have these tender greens.  Chickens would choose greens to eat over anything else, probably, even, over a fat worm or a bug.  John says my chicken wire just gave them a really good platform from which to eat.  All of them were on the pots when I ran to get my camera.

The big girl is Valentine, the Freedom Ranger from our spring batch of meat chickens.  She gives us either a small rose-brown egg or a HUGE rose-brown egg every day, which is always double-yolked.  Sometimes the smaller eggs are double-yolked as well.  The lighter tan girl is Sally, an Americauna Wheaten.  She lays blue eggs.  Her sister Nancy has become quite “broody,” so she spends most days in the coop sitting on whatever layed eggs she can acquire from the other hens.  Both Sally and Nancy are molting, so the coop and the yard are adrift with their pale feathers.  These girls are two years old now.  And, since Pearl, the new Wheaten has not started laying yet, we have no blue eggs at the moment.  In fact, all laying is slow these days as our daylight dwindles.  It’s getting to be time for chickens to rest.

Here’s a picture of our new rooster–Pierre.  Or, Pretty Pierre.  Or, most of all these days, My Roo.  He’s just six months old now, but he’s sweet, gentle, and comes to see what is going on with whatever moves or makes noise in the yard.  He’s my constant companion in the yard as he’s so curious.  He lets me get close now, but it really scares him to be touched.  The new hens have settled in now and all will let me pick the up and cuddle them whenever, pretty much.

 The Wheaten below is our new little Pearl.  She’s quite lovely.  See her little bearded face?  And, Ninja and Annie Chickie, the hen raised last year, are with Pierre.

Pierre, who runs as fast as the wind, has taught me that our poor old Nappy had something wrong with his feet.  I think he might have been in pain.  He walked very strangely, and he didn’t like to walk.  Perhaps that’s why he was cross and took to charging people???

Turkey Tracks:  September 21, 2011

Chicken Mischief

Yesterday as I walked to the garage–on my way to the car to do an errand–I saw that four of our eight chickens were happily perched on the edges of the blue baskets (where we grew potatoes all summer) and were eating the now-lush greens!

Why didn’t I anticipate this turn of events?

I hauled out chicken wire and spread it over the baskets and so far…so good.

But’s chickens are VERY inventive.