Our chickens - the new flock - are exactly six months old this week! It seems like only a second ago we were picking them up from the post office. They filled their small box with cheerful chirping.
Now they’re laying eggs. I love how they lay them all together in the nesting box. This is what I see nearly every day when I go to clean their coop and collect their eggs. We’re getting between nine and a dozen eggs every day now. So, we’re making souffles and custards and giving away a dozen eggs to pretty much anyone who comes within shouting distance of us.
As the hens are becoming mature, so is The Roo. He began crowing as soon as we took Gorgeous George to Santa Fe. He also began experimenting with sex.
For weeks now we’ve seen The Roo trying out his amorous skills on the hens. My cousin nearly always says, “I just don’t think he’s doing it right.”
Until this week. Early this week, we saw The Roo, now with his wings extended, kind of enveloping his hen. It looked beautiful. And afterward, instead of squawking at him and running away, the hen kind of riffled her feathers back into place and sauntered off. Perhaps The Roo had figured out how to do it.
So, yesterday, I was only mildly surprised to see The Roo with our oldest chicken, Stripey. Stripey is a Barred Rock. She is nearly nine years old. We thought we were going to lose her last summer, when someone was pecking her, and nearly all her feathers were destroyed. It was hard to watch her walking around without feathers. Her flesh looked red and painful. But, when we got the new flock, the pecking stopped. Her feathers grew back, and now she is (apparently) attractive to roosters! At least, to The Roo.
They had their tryst - I was inside the new coop filling their feeder during most of it - and then The Roo got off her, and she didn’t move. I could see him kind of nudge her with his head. He walked to the other side of her and nudged her again. She was motionless.
I walked over to where she lay in the yard. She looked dead to me. I touched her - she didn’t react. Finally, I ran into Jan’s house. “The Roo has killed Stripey with his funky rooster love!” I yelled. Jan came out to the yard with me.
Stripey was gone.
Well, at least that meant she wasn’t dead! After a brief search, we found her happily gorging on grain in the feeder I’d just filled. Happy as can be. So, he made her pass out? With his funky rooster love? That’s what I’m thinking. He’s figured it out, all right.
In goat world, Petra - one of my favorite of last summer’s does - somehow got poked in the eye with a hard piece of hay - maybe a stick that got stuck in the bale.
When I fed the girls in the back pen one morning last week, the entire side of her face was drenched in tears and she was squinting her eye shut. I immediately got Jan to take a look at her. We ended up going out in the afternoon every day for a while, me catching and holding Petra, Jan cleaning her face.
Last summer, when I was socializing her, Petra was tiny. For months afterward, when the goat farrier woman came, I would simply pick her up and hold her on my lap while her hooves got trimmed. I did that with all the goats - even Leroy. Now she’s so big I can hardly hold her. I tried wrapping my arms around her, and we both fell over, with her lying on top of me. Jan just washed her face as we lay on the ground.
Anyway, after days of that, and days of me thinking that surely she was going to lose that eye, she began to heal, and this morning, you can hardly tell anything ever happened to her eye. I am so relieved.
Meanwhile, we’re preparing our pregnant does to come into the milking parlor. Every day we let them hover outside the door, and I offer peanuts to anyone willing to come inside. Most of the goats now come in without being frightened.
On Monday, I went to prop the door open (with a propane tank) so that they could come in for treats, and suddenly they all flew off in separate directions. They all ran so fast, it seemed that surely there was a terrible goat emergency. I stepped out onto the paved area in between the milking parlor (Jan’s back porch) and the kidding parlor (my back porch). Four goats were huddled as far into the corner as they could manage. The other four had retreated to the back end of their pen.
I looked around, and suddenly found the monster that had just chased them all off:
Yes. Lawn chairs. Even the dogs find them suspicious. It looked to me as if someone had put their head underneath the chairs, and then raised their head while it was still down there. Which meant they were briefly wearing the chairs, like an enormous hat. Well, no wonder all the goats were frightened! I would run from someone wearing such an unfashionable hat, as well!
And last, a shameless plug for custom soap. I had such a blast making Tim’s batch, with the stamp I ordered from Etsy. I’m eager to make more stamped batches. Anyone have a wedding coming up? A Bar Mitzvah? A family reunion? https://www.serenasoaps.com/
