Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Updates - And Bad Smells

Hope your Labor Day weekend was a restful one.

We came back from a weekend of camping on Grand Mesa in the Western Slope, feeling like we'd been away for a week, instead of just a few days. We needed the time away.
     Just before we left, the Brick found one of the oldest hens -- she'd apparently fallen from one of the high roosts, but gotten her leg stuck in the process. She was hanging upside-down, dead.
     Knowing the great compassion of chickens, in general, I'd bet they looked casually on while she fluttered and squawked. They were probably hoping she'd get close enough for a bite. (Cannibals.) I hate knowing this -- but chickens are anything but kind and gentle. In fact, Daughter #1 calls them miniature dinosaur raptors -- and she's right.

I resemble that remark!

    We'd lost another chicken to seeming old age a month before that. It's time to purge out the older chickies -- most of them aren't laying anymore, so their future as a chicken dinner is looming.

Neighbor Tim took care of the chickens while we were gone. We'd been wondering why we were suddenly getting so few eggs -- turns out the hens were hiding them underneath the remains of the Christmas tree! Tim found a nestful of 13 eggs... most were rotten. Then last night, the Brick found five more...one so bad that it exploded when we threw it away.

     The garbage can smelled.

     The kitchen smelled.

     The HOUSE smelled.

It took a long time to clean everything up, and get rid of the stench.

*So we DID have eggs available, when we were scrimping and saving. But --

*We didn't find them in time. Ewwww. 


Yes, the chickens have nesting boxes...but do they use them...only when they feel like it


At least the youngest chickens are starting to lay. But that wasn't the end to our odorous adventure. I'd left a few melons on the kitchen counter - they started to spoil, and dribbled juice all over the kitchen floor. The dogs capped it off, by having a Very Large Accident on the same floor his morning.
    Which I get to scrub this afternoon. 


Why did we come back home, again?


2 comments:

grammajudyb said...

Oh my goodness...what a mess. I always thought I wanted to have chickens....maybe not now! LOL
Hope the rest of your week goes better.

Cindy Brick said...

Chickens are still worth it, for the eggs, especially. Now that our babies are finally laying, we're getting 8-11 eggs a day. I sell 3-4 dozen weekly to friends, which more than pays for the chickies' feed (and a little on materials for their coop and yard). Then we get the rest for ourselves.
The hard part is when they're molting, most often during the summer. We were down to 2-4 eggs a day. Some of the customers got eggs then -- and we got nothing. Rats. That's what made finding the nest of rotten eggs so much more frustrating.
I did boil the "iffy" eggs and serve them back to the chickies, though. They like a boost of protein now and then.
And we're doing better.
Readlly.

Thanks for writing.

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