Month: January 2020

Fancy

On By CarynIn chickens, Uncategorized

I had some shredded Romaine lettuce left over from Taco Tuesday (it really needs the capitals in our house), and wanted to feed it to the chickens. My rope net bag’s holes were too big, and I really don’t like throwing it down on the ground. But I do have some scrap and stained lace doilies. I ran a ribbon through the edge of a stained doily and made a small bag. The holes in the tatted lace were small enough to hold the shredded lettuce, but large enough for the chickens to get pieces out.

Lace doily turned into a small bag
Chickens inspecting their new lettuce bag.

They are French hens, it seems appropriate to have fancy feeders.

Sprouts

On By CarynIn chickens

I bought a kitchen sprouter. The mason jars were working OK, but I had one go moldy so decided to upgrade.

Wheat (front) and alfalfa (back) sprouts in the sprouter

I followed the directions, and put the sprouter by the LED grow lights. After about a week I had sprouts large enough to feed the chickens! I transferred some to a flat container and the chickens loved it.

Hens eating sprouts

The chickens have some competition for the sprouts, though. I forgot how good alfalfa sprouts taste!

Hitherto unwitnessed behavior

On By CarynIn chickens

At least by me with my chickens. I have read that other chicken keepers have noticed their hens putting straw or leaves or shavings on their backs before or after laying an egg. This is the first time I’ve seen one of my hens. I think this is Sunrise. She has a yellow band and a green band on her left foot, and a smaller comb. Not very effective camouflage if that was the original advantage, but a very interesting example of gene driven behavior.

Sunrise putting shavings in her back after laying an egg.

By the way, I found Cockatrice on a nest recently, so now all 12 of our hens are laying. We are getting anywhere from 3 to 7 eggs a day, despite the low light hours of winter. Summer egg counts will be interesting.

Grow lights

On By CarynIn Garden

Most of our windows are north facing, which is good for not heating up the house in the summer, but not so good for growing green onions in the winter. So to boost the light level, I purchased some LED grow lights strips and installed them under my cupboard in the kitchen.

LED grow lights
Green onions in test tube rack under the grow lights

I put a new batch of roots in the test tubes and they like the new light! The picture shows about a week of growth. Now the previous batch made it through three harvests before petering out, we’ll see if these keep going.