Just Call me, “Granny Chickie Babe”

EGG-citing news here on the Chickie Babes homestead! Did the title give it away? Fingers and toes crossed because I might be a chicken grandma!

I sound ridiculous, I know. I am totally okay with being the crazy chicken lady because as I’ve found out, there are many other crazy chicken ladies just like me! Some I am fortunate enough to call friends and others I have met because we share a love and passion for all things chicken. Believe it or not, there is a whole community of us out there whose day revolves around opening and closing up the coop. Who give their hens motivational speeches through the dead of winter so they know warmer days are coming. A community that has to walk the outer edges of Tractor Supply during chick days to avoid making eye contact with the baby chicks. Who see sheds, shacks, and even old outhouses and think, “Man, that would make a good chicken coop.”

We save leftovers for our flocks, watch them scratch and peck around for cheap entertainment, and always do a headcount before bed. If anything seems the slightest bit “off,” we have already researched every chicken ailment imaginable so we can do what is necessary to keep our feathered babies healthy. Need to know how to perform a bumblefoot surgery? I can help you. How to treat potential respiratory illness? I have a few suggestions. Possible Marek’s disease? Well, let’s hope it’s not. Lice, mites, worms? Sounds disgusting, but it’s a reality, and prevention is important! Egg bound? The kitchen sink turns into a chicken sitz-bath. Pasty butt? Mom will clean your bottom. Our flock has become in one way or another a reflection of ourselves, and we want happy, healthy chickens!

So let’s talk about me becoming Granny Chickie Babe! As I’ve mentioned, becoming a chicken mom has put me in contact with so many wonderful chicken-people. If this blog or perhaps my Instagram  haven’t done anything else for me, they have at least given me a platform to hopefully inspire one person to start a hobby of their own! Today was one of those days where I had the chance to meet a fellow chicken lover, gardener, and hopeful-homesteader. She has followed my blog (how cool!!) and happened to be pointed in my direction by a family friend for potential Black Copper Maran hatching eggs. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have not ventured down the path of incubating my own eggs quite yet, so I wasn’t quite sure how to respond when she contacted me about hatching eggs! Long story short, I saved up a dozen of my darkest BCM eggs for her to incubate… Thus making me a (fingers crossed) CHICKEN GRANDMA!

Meeting others who share similar passions and interests in homesteading makes my heart smile. I love to hear about other’s dreams and hobbies and share my own, too. I have only recently ventured into the whole “eat what you grow, grow what you eat” thing, so I welcome with open arms any opportunity to pick someone else’s brain about their own homesteading adventures! The most wonderful thing with homesteading is it can be as big or as small as you make it. It can be a few chickens or hundreds. It can be a small garden or several acres of green houses. It can be goats, ducks, cows, or whatever else you raise whether you have two or twenty. You can be a stay-at-home mom or work a full-time job and enjoy being a “homesteader.” It is a way of life that is fueled by self-sufficiency, getting your hands dirty, and enjoying what nature can provide us if we nurture the environment and have a little patience. With that being said, I will patiently wait to hear news on my future chickie-grandbabies as their new chicken mom begins her journey with incubating those eggs!

Mysterious Olive Egg

Magic has happened on the Chickie Babes homestead! A mysterious olive egg has started showing up in the hatch box, and I honestly couldn’t tell you who is laying it! I had lost all hope for an olive egg layer when my shipment of 19 chicks (all the way from Florida) turned out to be darn near 50/50 split between roos and hens. From what I could tell, the small amount of olive eggers (OEs) I received all appeared to be roos… as my good friend, Jackie would say– RATS!! I was a little bummed out as I had high hopes for my future egg rainbow. But like any “normal” chicken mom/chicken lover/crazy chicken lady, a light bulb went off in my head: Keep a few roosters, and eventually hatch my own OEs! Sometimes I really blow my own mind with the ideas I get. HATCH my own chicks… It was common sense, really.

Before all of you think I’m taking this blog post in a whole different direction, let me just put it out there I am not quite ready to hatch my own chicks! As little will power as I have when it comes to those sweet little peepers, I am holding myself back with every ounce of my being to not buy an incubator this spring. I’m the type of chicken mom that will start off incubating a handful of eggs knowing darn well I wouldn’t be able to resist incubating more and more. I am blessed with chicken math and 5 chicks will turn into 50 and then 150 and, well, you get the picture. I’m not sure my coops would accommodate hundreds of chickens and hubby would shut down my entire operation if I attempted to do so. This spring will be the first with my young hens laying and I am going to enjoy seeing the beautiful colors they produce! They have already amazed me with the their chocolates, freckles, greens, pinks, blues, and now olive!

You might be wondering how an olive egger lays an olive-green egg. OEs are not actually a specific “breed” of chicken but rather a cross between a dark brown egg-layer (like my black copper marans) and a blue or green egg-layer (like my easter eggers). Not quite rocket science, but genetics really. Interestingly enough, all eggs start out as white and depending on the hen’s genetics, the color gets deposited as the egg travels through the oviduct. Because of the genetics of an OE, the shell itself has a blue tint to it from the easter egger genetics with a brown overlay from the black copper maran genetics- resulting in the olive color! Viola! Chicken magic at its finest!

 

Spring is Coming!

Who else is excited for Spring?! I know I certainly am. Every year winter seems to start a month earlier and end a month or two later. I’m convinced this is some sort of reverse global warming and pretty soon we will be seeing mammoths and sabertooth tigers roaming the back fields.

I personally wouldn’t mind going a few years back to the Jurassic period- except the dinosaurs would live in harmony with us humans, and chickens would actually be a thing. I’d farm chickens and have a pasture full of triceratops… Trust me, I’ve already put a lot of thought into this!

I used to think I’d grow up to be a archaeologist and dig up dinosaur bones deep in the desert. I actually reconsidered visiting that childhood dream when farmers dug up an entire mammoth just down the road a few years back! I begged hubby to bring home an excavator to dig through our corn field, but no such luck. A girl can dream….

The reality is, my chickens want nothing to do with the snow. They remind me everyday their ancestors were not from the ice age and they did NOT sign up for this sh*t. I have a solid understanding of “chicken talk” now and pretty sure half of the things they say to me are not very nice. I shovel the snow out of their run and make little paths for them to follow around the yard, but my efforts are never good enough. They desperately want Spring to get here, and so do I.

The young chickie babes started to lay right before winter hit. I got a few green eggs and chocolate eggs from my black copper maran ladies, but egg production came to a halt once the cold weather was here to stay. The OG chickie babes went into full-fledged molting mode for the second year in a row right in the dead of winter. They looked pitiful! But after a month or so they grew new feathers and are back to laying big, beautiful, tasty fresh eggs.

I am so excited for Spring and all the beautiful colors the girls will lay! If you are interested in fresh chickie babes eggs, don’t hesitate to contact me, I would love to share with you!

Chicken Motherhood & Rooster Grief

Where have I been?!

Good news: I have 14 days off before I begin the LAST semester of my Nurse Practitioner program! I went MIA on this blog as school, clinical, and work completely owned my life the past couple months. It was hard to gather my thoughts with such a full schedule! I will say I finished the semester off strong and I am ready to power through these next 4 months!

Let’s catch up on my chickie babes! They are SO big now! I’d like to think they love me as much as I love them, but I believe most of their interest in me is largely because I’m always giving them treats. I’m fairly certain they correlate my high pitched “hellos” with left over garden vegetables and bread.

I have ONE new chicken that has began to lay a beautiful light green egg. I have opened up the hatch boxes but she still insists on laying her egg in the corner of the coop. I am in the midst of painting the hatch boxes bright, cheerful colors in hopes the girls will appreciate my efforts and lay big, beautiful, colorful eggs. Add some curtains in the mix and they will basically have the Ritz Carlton of all hatch boxes to lay in. Spoiled girls…

My roosters began to crow a few weeks ago. Their first efforts at crowing were so comical! It was hard not to laugh at the pitiful squawks but they quickly perfected their talents and let the whole neighborhood know it. Like typical men, competition was inevitable and each afternoon there was a crow-off in my back yard. Big Red and Fiona took home the prize most often, but the Black Copper Marans certainly gave it their all.

As any chicken owner would tell you, keeping the peace with roosters when you have 15 in one coop is basically impossible. I have dreaded the day where I had to re-home my roos as I knew they would more than likely end up in someone’s chicken soup. Today was the day I had to say goodbye to 11 of my handsome roos. To say it was a sad day is an understatement. I am almost willing to say today was traumatizing. I did not like the feeling of watching my roosters leave my possession. They were my sweet little chicks just a few months ago. I nurtured and raised them into what they are now, and I feel I failed them by having to give them away.

I truly enjoy every one of my chickens whether they be sweet, silly, shy, cranky, bossy, or feisty. But keeping that many roos was proving to be difficult and very stressful for the hens. My roosters were becoming possessive of their certain favorite hens and were not too fond of their male counterparts. I hated having to gather them up. I hated knowing they were scared. I felt and still feel guilty, sad, and quite frankly sick to my stomach. I have a small amount of comfort knowing the farmer they went to is going to get good use from them. I really did enjoy my roosters. I wish I could have kept them all.

It will be an adjustment period these next few days, but I am hopeful the grief I am experiencing will get better. I am going to cherish my dear chickie babes and work through the many new emotions and experiences I am having as a chicken mom. As for tonight though, I think I will enjoy a large glass of wine, watch the many videos I took of my roosters, and cry myself to sleep to lessen the heartbreak!

Until I write again my dear friends!

Coop Palace Progress, Let There Be Light!

Boy do I love my husband.

I’m reporting to you live from my Coop Palace where hubby is currently up in the rafters wiring five new lights. He’s no electrician but he is a go-getter when it comes to DIY projects. In his own words, “Either it’s going to work or I’ll get electrocuted.” Touché, young grasshopper. Touché.

So here I sit, handing him tools, staples, and wire nuts when he needs them and admiring his hard work. Over the past couple weeks he has framed in the roost area, built a beautiful door mostly out of recycled wood, and finished two hatch boxes. Of course these things didn’t come without a few miscalculations and more than a handful of swear words. We even dodged a trip to the ER. (I’ll save that story for last). I will say compared to previous mishaps, hubby handled himself with such grace and poise this time around! (If you can imagine what that looked like…)

It all started with the door. In a perfect world, the door should have fit nicely into the door frame, but of course this old *rather cute* barn is living on a slant and nothing is level. We carried this whopper of a door over to the coop and put it in its place… *Shoot.* The door wouldn’t close. Hubby tried muscling it a few times… nope. Wasn’t fitting. A few hard hits with the sledge hammer to the door frame and still no luck. I ain’t a builder but I know when something ain’t fittin’…

So to solve the door problem, we are going to go straight hillbilly-builder on ya’ll and shave off some wood with a planer to make it fit. Problem solved.

Next comes the hatch boxes. Aren’t they the best hatch boxes you ever did see?! I love them, and they are exactly how I asked hubby to build them. I love when he brings my ideas to life!

Anyways, the darn hatch boxes… Hubby got all excited to build, build, build and he didn’t take into account how they would fit into the wall. He had to take down the frame and wall he put up on one side of the coop and reframe it to accommodate my hatch boxes. A pain in the butt, but I’d say he handled himself with class. Crisis averted on my end of things. Whew.

HOWEVER. This was also the portion of the project where I dodged a bullet (or should I say NAIL… TWICE).

Let me preface this by saying hubby is fearless. He gets his power tools fired up and there will be saw blades flying, staples flinging, nails shooting and zero shits given. He works quickly and he gets into a groove. Sometimes he asks me to help him by holding things while he saws, or staples, or nails and I quickly jump in so I don’t ruin his mojo. And today that meant my hand was almost nailed to my chicken coop not once, but twice.

If you’re picturing a hammer and a nail, you are sadly mistaken. I was almost nailed to my coop with a framing nailer. In my opinion you should be required an 8 hour framing-nailer safety course and be licensed to use one of these things. They are powerful and shed no mercy on whatever body part may be in its way should it accidentally be aimed inappropriately. Knowing as little as I do about framing-nailers, I knew enough to tell hubby had missed his marked when I felt the nail graze my hand…

I let out a high-pitched squeal, as I had every right to do, and his eyes got as big as softballs. I shook it off and trusted hubby to hit his mark the second time around. I bravely held the 2×4 in place again….

WHAT THE HECK, KYLE?! I felt another scrape and heard the nail hit the ceiling as he missed his mark a second time.

I quit my wifely 2×4 holding duties after that attempt. He proceeded to hold the 2×4 himself and shot off a third nail which stuck him in the side of his hand far enough to draw blood. He’s tough, though. He laughed about it and continued on…

My Coop Palace is just a few odds and ends shy of being finished and I can’t help but smile… everything about it is more perfect than I could have ever imagined! Hubby doesn’t half-ass anything, and that’s another thing I admire about him.

And now I can proudly say hubby is a self-proclaimed electrician! My coop has 5 new working lights! (Nobody was electrocuted).

I’ll end this post with what hubby just said, because it sums up his hard work perfectly. “Today was a good day.”

 

Spring Blooms and Little Chickie Babes

My mother has a green thumb.

Actually, I think all of my mother’s fingers are green. Perhaps her toes, too. She’s THAT good with flowers and anything gardening related. She knows every type of flower I could ever think of, as well as when to plant it, how much sunlight it needs, if it is an annual or perennial, and other tidbits only an experienced gardener would know. She loves lillies. And poppies. And I want to say zennias, too. Or maybe that is my dad. Dad doesn’t like lilacs, but mom does. I like lilacs, also. They smell nice. At least better than fresh cow manure that ripens the air around these parts. And boy let me tell you, it gets pretty RIPE at times.

When I think of my mom, I think of tulips and irises, moon flowers and tall grasses, hostas (that are always getting ate by the deer and rabbits), lillies of course, sunflowers and cosmos… petunias and daisies. Flowers are kind-of my mom’s thing and she does a darn good job at it.

Then there’s me.

I planted hostas around the chicken coop last summer. I got them half dead and super cheap from Meijer. The guy working the outdoor area asked me if I was sure I wanted to purchase them “in that condition.” Yes, buddy. You think those withering, brown leaves scare me? No. Because regardless, that’s likely how they’ll end up. I have zero expectations when it comes to gardening. Zero. No expectations equals no hurt feelings.

I absolutely love watching spring unfold around our new home. This will be our second spring here and I forgot how lovely everything looks when it’s not covered in three feet of snow! I also forgot how much dog-poo accumulates in the yard throughout winter. And how annoying those helicopter things are that fall from our maple tree and cover our deck. Hubby begins his seemingly never-ending cycle of picking up sticks and mowing the lawn with equal parts of complaining about picking up sticks and mowing the lawn. Boxelder bugs are sneaking in through our windows and Boomer won’t stop eating them. Two trees in our back yard randomly fell a few days ago. The chickens occasionally poop on the concrete patio. BUT, as for the half-dead hostas I got last summer? They GREW BACK!

Then my chickens ate them.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do love everything about spring-time and being a homeowner… yard work, dog-poo, and hosta-eatin’ chickens included. I am thankful for longer days and warmer weather. For being able to study on the back deck in the fresh air. To watch the sandhill cranes arrive in our back field and spend the spring/summer hanging around the yard. I love watching the OG chickie babes scratch and hunt for bugs and dust bathe beneath the trees out back. The dogs run full speed chasing each other in the field and I swear they have smiles on their faces. Our crimson king we planted last year for our one year “house-iversary” has buds on it and I couldn’t be more excited to watch it grow as we live here! And, my most favorite thing about spring? BABY CHICKS!

The newest little chickie babes are growing, growing, growing! All 19 of them… They are still fairly small and I can fit two of them in one of my palms. It is such a fulfilling, delightful feeling. Two little fuzzy peepers sitting in your palm, staring at you. Their warm little bodies and soft down feathers paired with those adorable little chirps makes my heart melt every time.

The light chickie babe is one of my olive eggers. I am hoping she will grow to lay beautiful olive-colored eggs to add a unique pop of color to the browns and whites. The black chickie babe is one of my black copper marans. She will grow to lay a “chocolate” egg… a deep, dark brown color that is almost too pretty to crack open! I love watching these happy chicks grow and gain their own personalities. They put a smile on my face and give me something to look forward to each and every day! I am one happy chickie mom!

 

Welcoming More Chickie Babes!

CHOCOLATE EGGS…. Reese’s peanut butter eggs are my absolute favorite. Anything chocolate (especially with peanut butter) and you’ve got my full attention. I’ve dreamt about loading up a cart full of 75% off Reese’s eggs after Easter, but somehow I have managed to resist.

Chocolate eggs took on a whole new meaning once I saw a photo of the darkest, most beautifully intriguing chicken egg. This egg was a deep, dark brown and had speckles on its shell. This truly was something that made me scrunch my nose, tilt my head sideways and say, “Huh…” Paired next to the gorgeous shades of blues and greens laid by Ameraucanas and Easter Eggers, my egg envy was sent into overdrive! I decided I needed some of these chickie babes for my own because… well, chocolate.

Black Copper Marans lay this chocolate egg. BCMs are a French heritage breed of chicken not commonly found in North America. These hens lay the DARKEST egg color of any poultry breed!

Along with my BCMs, I also added Olive Eggers to the chickie babe flock. Unlike chocolate, I absolutely despise olives. Quite honestly, I have attempted on multiple occasions to try and force myself to like olives… I have yet to be successful. Something about olives appeals to the vomit center of my brain and not my taste buds. They make me dry heave, which I find to be a bit dramatic. Anyways… I digress. Fortunately, I finally found a type of olive I actually like!

Olive Eggers are a chicken hatched from a dark brown egg layer (such as a BCM) and a blue egg layer (such as an Ameraucana) to create an olive green egg. I’m excited to see what shade of “olive” these girls will lay!

When I first brought forward the idea of selling chickie babe eggs, I had in mind creating cartons full of beautiful and unique egg colors you won’t find in your local grocery store. To me, raising chickens is a hobby just as much as it is an opportunity to provide for  community members, friends, and family. I am so excited with the positive feedback I have received and with that feedback, I decided it was only right to add MORE chickie babes to my already growing flock! This means more chickie babe eggs, more colors, and more opportunity to share my happiness with others!

 

“Are You Gonna Eat Your Chickens?”

Eat my chickens? Let me think about that—- NO. Actually, that deserves an exclamation point. NO!

Ok, ok just hear me out all you dang hillbillies. I can feel you rolling your eyes at me. My husband is especially rolling his eyes. Let me try to justify my reasoning behind the fact that I never once have considered eating my chickie babes. Never… Not even a millisecond, or a trillisecond, or a nanosecond… You get it.

Quirk, my Barred Rock.

I’m going to preface this so you get to know me just a little bit better. I harvested a doe once. It was a pass through shot with my bow, right behind the right shoulder blade. Textbook perfect. I grew up hunting with my dad every year on opening day of gun season, which just so happens to be my birthday. I was even lucky enough to totally biff a perfect broadside shot at a monster buck at roughly 20 yards… (My dad will probably say it was only 10 yards…) But hey, it’s a great story and my dad will never let me live that down. I’m 3 for 3 with a shotgun on turkeys. Even provided my family with our Thanksgiving turkey with one of those bad boys. I’m the bullet-slangin’, shotgun-shootin’, turkey-harvestin’ queen in these parts of town, and I will remind my dad of that every chance I get. I know all about Fred Bear, Ted Nugent, and can sing you the Michigan Out Of Doors theme song. I know all the lyrics to “Thirty Point Buck” and I’m willing to bet you’re not a real hunter if you don’t! I most certainly was raised with a hunter’s mentality. You eat what you harvest and you are damn thankful for it. You don’t kill just to kill, and you better be certain you can get a good shot on it before you go flinging arrows or bullets. Respect mother-nature and the gifts she gives you…

But my chickie babes? Oh my. Oh my, my, my. I gotta sit down for this. Thinking about eating them has me all light headed and feeling guilty. (Gosh, I hope I don’t dream about EATING them tonight… That will be traumatizing.) I nourished those sweet little nuggets and watched them grow. I look them IN THE EYES and talk to them like they can understand me. (Oh hush, we all do it with our dogs. I’m not crazy.) They are not food. They PROVIDE me food. I’ve heard a few fellow chickeners refer to eggs as “butt fruit.” I like that… I think I might use it more often.

Butt fruit. 

**Sigh** I just can’t eat my chickie babes, guys. I look at these girls and I smile. I see personality. I see chickie babes that are smart, clever, and downright intelligent. They are every bit of curious, and sometimes ornery. But mostly they are just happy to be… chickens. They cluck and whine and carry-on a whole chicken conversation with me when I let them out in the morning. The run up to me when I get home and follow me around the yard in a single file line. I am the chickie mom. I can’t EAT them! Some of them even have NAMES. Gaaahhhhhhh…. You can’t eat something you NAME.

Squirt and Fiona, my silkies.

Ok… so what in tarnation am I going to do with them when they stop laying their delectable butt fruit? You know, I really haven’t given much thought to it. Perhaps I’ll just sip my coffee and watch them peck and scratch around the yard and admire their personalities much like I do now. Maybe I’ll have a whole separate run for my OG chickie babes that are “out of commission.” It will be their very own chickie babe retirement community… I’m not really sure quite yet. But I can’t eat them…. I just can’t.

Egg Envy

When you venture from the path of normalcy and join the delightfully unconventional chicken community, you most likely headed straight for a DSM-5 diagnosis of OCD. (The nurse in me comes out.) In layman’s terms, this is what we chickeners like to refer to as “egg envy.” Yes, egg envy- where you search for those special rare breed chickens that poop out shades of brown, green, blue, and what-have-you to put together the most visually aesthetic and irresistible combinations of colors. (Speaking of pooping out eggs- did you know that chickens poop and lay eggs out of the same hole? Mind blown, yet again.)

Ok, deferring from the “poop” connotation and back to the eggs and colors… (nurses can talk about poop ALL day) If you are at all curious like I was, egg color is determined by the hen’s genetics. Different pigments deposit in the eggshell as it makes its way through the oviduct, giving the shell its color. Hens are amazing female creatures (much like any female creature); they will produce an egg regardless of whether they have been fertilized or not. Hens have an inherent amount of ova that mature and release (ovulation) roughly every 26 hours, hence the fact you can have only hens and still get fresh eggs “on-the-reg.”

That was my very brief and simplistic chicken reproductive/anatomy lesson. I’m still learning quite a bit when it comes to my beloved chickie babes, but understanding their reproductive system is essential to having happy, healthy chickie babes. Back to the EGG ENVY— until I became a chickie mom, I assumed all chickens laid the same color egg each and every time… But that is far from the truth! Some days I get freckled eggs, some days I have beautiful reddish/brown colored eggs with a matte finish, some have a pink or purple hue to them, and there’s the occasional “egg acne” from my oyster-shell-loving individuals. Each day the OG chickie babe eggs are far from boring. One of my most favorite parts of being a chickie mom is seeing the delight on the chickie babe consumers’ faces as they open their egg carton to reveal charming color combinations, and unique textures and patterns. There are never two dozens that are alike… the possibilities are remarkable.

Nothing tastes as good as how colorful your eggs are! I especially enjoy nourishing my body with one of nature’s most colorfully coated, natural sources of high quality protein each morning. I’m looking forward to the colors my new chickie babes will lay later this year. It will be exciting to add a larger variety of colors to my egg selection and share with others! I hope you found the photos I included of my OG chickie babe eggs delightful! They never cease to fascinate me!