Lmst

I have not posted a #chicken picture in a while!

Four out of seven of them are still moulting and look just terrible. Every morning, the inside of the coop looks like a chicken exploded.

Only one is laying eggs lately, the very youngest one, born in 2024, but that is just one egg every two or three days. (This is normal for winter and moulting season!)

I did not preserve any eggs in October this year, which was a mistake!

Oh well.

#ChickensOfMastodon
#FediverseChook
#Chooks

Six out of seven of my beautiful girls crouched underneath a leafless forsythia bush behind a black wire fence. There is a brown and white speckled hen, a dark brown and orange hen, some beige and white hens, and a black hen. They are framed by fallen sycamore leaves on the ground and stuck in the branches of the bush. In the background is the beige siding of my house.

Hot chicken chemical contamination fear: New World Te Kūiti recalls cooked chooks, says do not eat

The store said it would give full refunds for the products. “New World Te Kūiti wishes to apologise…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #after #apologising #chemical #chicken #chickens #chooks #cleaning #contaminated #contamination #cooked #do #eat #fear #hot #kiti #new #NewZealand #not #NZ #possibly #range #recalls #says #supermarket #te #were #with #World
https://www.newsbeep.com/211754/

Our hens won't drink under a roof. Eat, sleep, poop, and lay eggs, but not drink.
Bowl of water on the back step? Fill 'er up, we've nearly emptied it already.
Bowl of water in the coop (near the feeder)? ABOMINATION.
Waterer on the back step? Sure, why not.
Waterer in the doorway of a doorless and derelict shed in the chicken run? Not going near it; would rather die.
Waterer randomly out in the run? At last, we were DYING!
#chickens #chooks #hens

The destructive might of the chicken horde has been held back by the chicken-wire-with-assorted-additions fence for a couple of days now, so I have been bold and sowed shade-loving flowers in the bed under the kitchen window.

It was built as a raised bed, but whoever built it didn't consider that burying the foundation's air vents under a foot or so of soil was not a great idea.

Hopefully the seeds don't mind a heavy clay soil under a thin layer of rich loam.
#gardening #hens #chooks

My chicken tried to EAT a button right off my shirt! While I was wearing it!
Luckily it was well sewn on, but now she keeps stalking me in the garden with her beady little eye fixed on the button in question.
The button is made of coconut shell, and it's the sort you button a long tab to if you have your sleeves rolled up (I didn't).
Now I'm worried about what else on or about my person she might take it into her tiny little brain to consider comestible.
#hens #chooks #chickens #gardening

Our junior hen stopped laying in the coop! Provoked, it appears, by me mucking it out. No longer able to contemplate a pile of poo while laying, she's been forced to squeeze into a patch of mud under a pile of prunings in order to lay her eggs in sufficiently sordid surroundings.

The senior hen looks like she'll be coming into lay soon, so hopefully her good example will jostle the wayward witless one back into more hygienic habits.
#hens #chooks

I've realized I've posted very few chicken pictures since the baby chick rave cave days. So, meet two of our roosters: Caesar in front, our benevolent one, and Nero in the back who lives up to his name and always kind of is eyeing me like he'd like to kill me but hasn't decided how yet.

Maybe this will be a chicken thread? May as well introduce you all to some of the residents!

#Chickens #Chickenstodon #ChickensOfMastodon #Chooks #Rooster

Two giant red, brown and gold naked neck roosters with exaggerated crowns and very red heads stand in front of a young tree facing opposite directions (the front rooster faces right and the back one faces left) as in some kind of chicken album cover. The one in back has a somewhat murderous look in his eye that's hard to explain

The oviposition saga continues!
The junior hen has continued to lay eggs at two day intervals in Nest Box No.3 (previously used to hold food, prior to the Hedgehog Incidents).

I have been leaving each egg (dated in pencil) until it is joined by its successor, so as to reinforce the idea that this is indeed the right place to lay eggs. (A Kinder Surprise capsule makes an unconvincing decoy, I have learned.)

Yesterday's egg was therefore still sitting in Box No.3 today when the junior hen elected to a) kick it on to the floor of the coop and then b) lay an egg in Box No.1.

Box No.2 houses water and shell, so will probably remain free of eggy deposits.
Probably.
#hens #chickens #chooks

If you are interested in raising your own chickens, or you know someone who is, it just so happens that I narrated an audiobook about that!

Raising Chickens for Beginners: The Complete Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens - Quality Eggs, Safe, Healthy and Smell-Free Coop by Otis Banks comes with a free ebook edition when you buy the audiobook.

https://geni.us/RaisingChickens

1/2

@solarpunk @audiobooks @bookstodon

#Solarpunk #Chickens #BackyardChickens #UrbanFarming #Chooks

Audiobook cover for Raising Chickens for Beginners by O. Banks. It shows a brown rooster and hen in a field of grass and small white flowers under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Next to the chickens is a wicker basket of brown eggs. A yellow sticker proclaims: "Free E-Book Included".

Wonders will never cease! Our junior hen, after spending a day and a half visiting every muddy nook and cranny in the garden, finally laid an egg...in the coop! And not just in the coop, actually in a nest box!!
Previous favoured locations have included: clump of overgrown grass, pile of prunings, mudpatch under leaning fence, and under the perch, hazardously close to the nightsoil.
Long may this outbreak of unexpected good sense last.
#chickens #hens #chooks

While changing the bedding in the chicken coop, I also removed the old nest material and put new.

I turned my back, came back and saw one of our ladies in the nest, busy moving everything to where she wants it. Adorable 😍

#chickens #chickensOfMastodon #chooks #ChickenToot

Seen at two separate houses in my walk "down the street" today. Looks like chooks are popular here 😊

#Birds #BirdsOfMastodon #Chickens #Chooks

A cream sign with brown writing on a faded wooden fence viewed through the metal railing of the gate. It says "Warning! This property is protected by highly trained Chickens"

A metal sign on a peeling brown wooden fence with a picture of a chicken on it with eggs just laid underneath her on a blue background. Above and below are white backgrounds with black lettering that say : above the chicken - "Farm Fresh" and below the chicken "Butt Nuggets"

It's super funny that everytime i clean our #chickens coop, Bonnie will go in and investigate.

And start purring, check all the corners, and walk out again.

#chickens #chooks #chickensOfMastodon #ChickenKeeping

Our younger hen has craftily created a concealed nesting space in the (wildly overgrown and weed-infested) vegetable garden where she can hoard her slightly muddy eggs in secret.
Or what would be secret if she didn't announce every new arrival with an extended broadcast to the neighbourhood.
#hens #chooks #chickens

Not everyone knows this, but chickens can and do sing.
Popular pieces in the chooky repertoire include:
Behold The Immensity of Mine Egg (a triumphal march)
We All Call Out And Know Not Why (a choral piece, for as many voices as available)
and the big new hit of the season, I Came Into the Garden and I Know Not How to Leave.
#hens #chickens #chooks

Hot day but the chooks still lay. It's dusk and I just went out to top up their water and some of them had gone to bed, but on hearing me, they got up again. I might have had something exciting! Failing that, they scratched ground where I tipped out the dirty water and drank that instead of the fresh stuff. Go figure.

#chooks #chickens #summer

Good morning to everyone except our hens, who decided to join the dawn chorus at 5:42am (with encore at 6:05).
#hens #chooks #chickens #birds #MyHenHathMurderedSleep