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.

Well that’s rather Whovian

On By CarynIn Uncategorized
Flesh colored slime pots

I found four little pots of flesh colored slime on our table, lined up in a neat little row. Felt a bit like the intro for a Dr Who episode. Turns out my youngest mixed up all her slime colors and redistributed them in the original pots. That doesn’t really diminish the chill factor, does it? On that note,

Happy New Year’s Eve!

I’m old, so I’ll be going to bed, but the rest of you crazy kids be safe. See you on the other side.