Sunday Wonderful

Wow, a gorgeous day and not to be wasted indoors.  Jim wanted a roadtrip to buy a riding jacket that is more appropriate for the warm days.  His vintage look leather jacket is fine with the vents open up to about 70ºf but he came home last Sunday and I thought he was going to pass out.  He had struggled with the bike on our gravel road and driveway and basically walked it downhill the .4 miles and was so overheated it was dangerous.  To make our trip, we checked out various rides he could do or had done that keep him off of the Interstate which is so heavy with semi trucks that it is dangerous.  Between the driving and the shopping we were gone for nearly 5 hours and I saw some beautiful countryside that I had never seen before.

My mother grew up in this part of the country and I often heard stories about the counties and towns, but had never seen them.  I had my camera, but didn’t think to take a single photo.  Near the last part of the drive, we rode for 45 miles along a beautiful creek lined with cabins and homes.

When we got home, I went over to check on the chickens, collect eggs, and give them a treat of wild mustard greens and discovered an empty coop.

For the past several evenings, there have been 3 or 4 of the chicks out at dusk, but the rest remained steadfastly indoors.  Today they are all outside, merrily pecking at the grass or dust bathing in the shade.

The littles totally being ignored by the adults, much to my delight.  They still segregate at night and so I am leaving the partition in place for a few more days.  We are due for a couple of days of rain, so there may be more in coop time, especially for them.  On Friday, they will be 9 weeks old and I think the partition will come down.  I’m still at a quandry about Cogburn.  I really want a self sustaining flock, but since he only has 3 hens in with him now, he is wearing them out and their backs have almost no feathers on them.  They make “saddles” to protect them, but I don’t want to go that route.  If I remove him, there won’t be any coop chicks unless I am able to quickly get some Buff Orpington fertilized eggs quickly when a hen goes broody.  I really don’t want to do the heat lamp brooder bit again, though I know that I will have to for the meat chickens.  Maybe I should just accept that is the way it will be every few years as we replace the older hens.  If we had electricity out there that would run the heat lamp, I would just build a brooder coop with separate run, but we don’t.

At least, this time, I have successfully raised and introduced 10 chicks to the mix with no fatalities.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.