1st Green Egg

Remember the Americauna chix that we got last spring? One of them laid her first egg yesterday! He was so excited to find it waiting in the nest when he got home from school!

Poached Eggs

This morning the girls learned how to make poached eggs - 4 different ways to cook eggs under their belts now! Good thing our hens are good producers! That's a bantam egg, by the way. A perfect size for a girl who wasn't sure she was going to like poached eggs. She did!!

Black Giant Chick

This is our very favorite chick! In a lifetime of raising chickens, I have never seen one that is quite so inquisitive. As soon as you go out to the pen, she comes running right up to you and looks up at you, as if to say, "Hey there! What's up?" She loves to listen to us talking to her & seems to enjoy being picked up. It's always interesting to see how they change as they grow up, but I'm really wondering about this one...

Light Brahma Chick

The chicks are growing up so fast! Remember how they looked just a few weeks ago?

Scrappy

Of all the chickens that I have raised over the years, Bantam Sumatras are my very favorite! The roosters' feathers are so magnificent, especially on a sunny day, glistening with iridescence, against a nice grassy lawn...just gorgeous. Scrappy has been a member of my flock for almost 10 years now & he still rules the roost!

Hen on a Nest

Last spring my younger son painted this hen for me as a 4th grade school project. I LOVE it & I'm so proud of it. He knew I would appreciate it because it fits into my kitchen decor perfectly...

Barred Rock Hen

The Barred Plymouth Rock is a dual-purpose hen, a great layer, or meaty enough for the stew pot. Their coloring is eye-catching, although they look like jail-birds from old-time movies!

Roosty

Roosty is the patriarch of our farm. He arrived on our doorstep (Someone literally dropped him off while we weren't home!) many years ago. Our oldest, then just a toddler, took an immediate liking to him and carried him all over the place. I kept a close eye on them because roosters don't always make the best of pets, but Roosty was wonderful. And he's always been good to the hens, as well. A couple of times, during the last few years, I have made the mistake of suggesting that perhaps Roosty is getting past his prime and we should replace him with a younger breeding rooster. The boys won't hear of it! So, Roosty will stay for as long as he likes...

Black Hen

Before the boys were born, and while they were too young to have an opinion, I bred several different breeds of 'fancy' purebred chickens. I was selective about which rooster I bred to which hen, in order to maintain the standard for that breed. A few years ago, the boys asked if we could take the incubator into their classrooms and hatch chicks. I thought that sounded like a wonderful project! Which breeds did they want to hatch? Mixed breeds! They just wanted to walk out, grab a bunch of eggs from random nests and see what came out. What came out was an amazingly colorful mix of chicks that were all different sizes since some of my chickens are bantams (miniatures) and some are full-sized. We have repeated that project each spring and the children LOVE it! And we've found that the mixed breed chickens are so beautiful and unique. Take this hen, for example. She displays some of the characteristics of a Silkie - the soft fuzz and crest, dark skin and rosecomb - and the beautiful black plumage of a Sumatra.

A special thanks to Hope, from Knoxville Daily Photo, who presented me with this award yesterday:

Free-range hens..

...are happy hens! All of our chickens are free-range, which means that they can roam the farm all day long. At night they go into the coop, where they are safe from predators. Occasionally we have a visit from a day-time predator, like a fox, but having 2 dogs running around loose all the time discourages them. We prefer our eggs to come from happy hens that get to eat grasses, bugs or whatever catches their fancy. The only thing is, you have to watch where you step!

Pretty Hen

I really like the markings on this hen's feathers...

A hen and her golf ball...

...it's a beautiful thing...
The hens don't realize that the ball is not another hen's egg. We place balls in the nests so that the hens (particularly the young ones) know where to lay their eggs. Otherwise we would find them in the strangest locations!

From my front door...

So sorry I missed posting yesterday - I've injured my back, so I'm confined mostly to the couch, with a little bit of walking around the house allowed, as I feel up to it. I was racking my brain, trying to think of something interesting to post, and came up with this idea - repeating my very first post! Compare the view out my front door today, with the view back in February...

Rooster Head Shot

Meet my parents' rooster. He commands a flock of 6 hens. He started his life in the classroom, believe it or not. Each spring I take the incubator and a clutch of eggs to school and the kids get to watch them hatch. (I'm scheduled to take it to the 2nd grade classroom tomorrow.) I even take a high-powered flashlight, called an egg candler, to class sometime during the incubation process, which takes 21 days. Using this light, we can look through the shell and see the chick developing inside the egg. If we're lucky, we can even see it moving around! Needless to say, the kids are always absolutely fascinated. It's such a fun project! The only down-side is that anytime we hatch chicks, we always end up with way too many roosters. Fortunately, this guy found a very happy home.

Click here to read about some of my other roosters finding a happy home and to see pictures of them....