Hen Pecked

It wasn’t until I became a “farmer” that I learned where all the sayings that we have in our society come from. Things like: “Birds of a feather flock together”, “Hen pecked”, “She’s just like a Mother hen”. I’ve seen all of these in living color.

I told you about my little Abigail Adams who is a runt that my sis gave me. She also seems to have been attacked at some point in her young life and has a twisted back. Well, I didn’t know that you shouldn’t try to introduce a runt with a deformity, into an established flock. My girls didn’t take to kindly to little Abigail. In fact yesterday morning I found her bloody and cowering in the corner of the coop. Her flesh had been pecked off the back of her neck, larger than the size of a quarter. It seems as if she’d been hen pecked pretty badly. Her entire neck was pecked open to the bone. While crying, I took little Abigail to the house in a little cage.

I put Abigail in the basement with straw in the cage, then I researched how to naturally heal a deep open wound and found that raw honey would not only heal it but pull any debris out. So I put raw honey on a gauze pad and wrapped gauze around her neck and taped it. I changed it at dinner time and her wound had stopped bleeding. That was good. She slept a lot. I gave her some kefir to drink and grain to eat.

This morning, she was alert and had drank a good amount of kefir. I changed her bandage and the wound actually looked good. It was already starting to close around the edges. She was very sleepy. And it was obvious that she had been through a great deal of stress.

This evening I went to change her bandage and noticed that she drank a lot of kefir throughout the day. I gave her some raw milk and she began drinking like she’d been starved. That’s always a good sign! Her wound looks very good so I left it uncovered for a while to allow it to air. The bandage doesn’t have a foul smell (no pun), and that too is a good sign.

I think Abigail Adams is going to make it. We’ll have to keep her separated from the other hens and give her extra TLC! It’s amazing how hens imitate human life. We can be very cruel to one another, especially those who are deformed and are afraid.  My hens tried to kill Abigail because she was different……let’s not imitate hens!

All the creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all.

Sunny Side Up Please!

My friend Tammy and I both had our minds on eggs the other day. Maybe it’s our wish to see the sun and our need for Vitamin D. Tammy found some great info from Mother Earth News that says, eggs from pastured chickens (meaning-chickens who roam free eating bugs, grass, lettuce and the sort) have 4-6 times as much Vit D compared to a regular supermarket egg. That’s fanominal!!!!

Here are some other good nutritional facts:

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

You can read the entire article at Mother Earth News

The eggs in the picture show the back egg from pastured chickens eating bugs, grass and old produce. The egg in front is from uncaged chickens on organic feed but no greens. Your goal is bright orange yolks.

Rockie Sings!!!

Yesterday it snowed and we got around 2 inches. THEN the freezing rain started on top of the snow. Which makes for a very interesting adventure. Our yard was transformed into a skating rink overnight.

I was wishing for a saucer sled to go down the hill this morning on my way to let the chickens out. I walked side ways and crushed my boots into the frozen tundra very carefully. That’s all I needed was a 50 yr old woman and a 10 yr old dog falling down with no one to help them get up. Lady, our little Cocker mix just slid down. Boomer, our Lab attempted it very carefully. He’d start sliding and then try to stop. His feet were going every which way. But he only went down twice, very gently. And I managed to stay vertical the entire time!!!

I was glad to be wearing my steel toed cowgirl boots. They did a good job at crushing the ice so I could open the gate to the chicken yard. Too bad it opened in.

The long journey down. The kids used to love sledding down our little hill.

Now the fun. I let the chickens out and they slid every which way. I broke open the compost pile with all the greens and tossed them a few.

Little Abigail Adams. You can see that the feathers that flew look like Annies.

THEN to my utmost surprise Rockie found his voice…..he crowed for the first time!!!!!!!!!! It was a glorious sound. He was so proud of himself that he kept doing it. I hope Honey doesn’t hear him, or else it’s the chopping block.

Rockie The Rooster in the back. Annie in the front.

Now for the long ascent up the hill. Lady slid backwards. Boomer and I held on to each other and pressed on.