I’ve been playing with the portrait mode on my phone as I take pictures of chickens.
Portrait mode
Category: chickens
Chicken check
My eldest helped me with another chicken check. We really should be doing these monthly. I read that feathers growing back in is painful and have been trying to minimize contact. We treated everyone for scaly leg mites with a essential oil ointment. Most of the chicken feet looked OK, but a few had definite lifted scales. Some have gained weight, some have lost. Taco and Tigger were the lightest and they both have the lifted scales on their feet and legs. Gail Damerow, in her chicken health book, recommends slathering the legs in petroleum jelly for a week. Taco is our hardest catch, so we’ll do what we can.
Thankful chickens
Happy Thanksgiving! My family won’t eat butternut squash, but the chickens like it. It also hangs easily using a gimlet and kitchen twine. The twine is tied in a circle and clipped to the carabiner so the hens can’t ingest it.
Swinging
My chickens use their swing all the time, but usually jump off before I can get a good video (because treats!) I finally managed to get a good shot of a hen enjoying the swing. So here is your smile for the day.
Another way to hang pumpkins
I admit, I really just wanted to get the pumpkin out to the chickens without much fuss with the knife. I could have cut it in half and left it at that, but since it takes a few days for the chickens to consume the squash, I like to hang it off the ground so the ants and dirt don’t get in. (Or at least as much dirt. Chickens have dirty beaks when they’ve been pecking away at the ground.) So I used a gimlet (very neat, handy tool for making holes, predates the electric drill by a bit), and put cotton twine through the hole to make a loop.
Critters and Craft 