Author: Caryn

Wet hens

On By CarynIn chickens
Wet hen (Navi)

What the heck? I went out to put the chickens to bed (really to make sure they were headed to roost and lock up), and three of the hens were soaked. It had been raining all day, so I imagine they were out in the rain, but I didn’t think they liked to be wet!? After trying to take pictures of cold wet chickens all excited because the light was on at bedtime (obviously that didn’t work out well), I dried them off as best I could since it was forecast to be cold that night and hoped for the best.

They all survived the night, even Navi with her pendulous crop. There must have been a seriously tasty tidbit to tempt them into the downpour. Crazy chickens.

Confused Daffodil

On By CarynIn Garden
Daffodils growing in October

More anachronisms. My daffodil bulbs have decided to sprout… in October. (The tall leaves coming up through the ground cover in the picture.) I wonder how that is going to work out for them? Between the June bug earlier this week, and the daffodils, it also makes me wonder what winter will bring this year.

Hard boiled eggs

On By CarynIn eggs

Yay! We have enough eggs to run a batch through the pressure cooker to make hard boiled eggs.

Freshly washed eggs in the pressure cooker

The eggs are on the small side and slip through the circles on the egg holder, so I had to set them in sideways. It worked fine, though. The eggs came out beautifully. The shells peeled away easily, and the yolk is perfect.

Hardboiled egg

I put a cup of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker pot, load the eggs in the egg holder (I can do 14 at a time), run my pressure cooker for 5 minutes on high, and manually release the pressure. I use tongs to put the eggs directly into a large bowl of ice water.

Green June Beetle

On By CarynIn Wildlife

I found this pretty beetle when I was walking through the back woods. It was cold and wet, but readily grabbed onto the offered stick. I took pictures then put him in a dry sunny spot. iNaturalist says it is a Green June Beetle.

Green June Beetle

Trying a new ID method

On By CarynIn chickens

I put the Wyze camera where we could see the popular nest boxes. It is neat because we can see the chickens in the nests, but the angle does not make seeing their colored leg bands easy (or even possible).

Jade getting settled into the nest

So we are trying a new method of chicken identification, at least for the purposes of figuring out who was on the nest when. I took pictures of all their combs, which are all slightly different. (Scientists identify orca whales in a similar way; by taking pictures of their dorsal fins.) Trying to get a clear picture of the comb when they are wiggly and their head is rarely still was a challenge, but eventually I figured out to tuck the subject under my arm and angle my phone camera back toward their head. I then used Adobe Lightroom to adjust the photos and get the combs all facing the same way.

I printed a reference sheet and then checked the camera. I think this is a viable method! I was able match Jade’s comb with the reference. Not sure how much time I will spend going through the saved footage to figure out who laid what egg, but it might be helpful if I have an off egg and need to figure out the culprit.