Ice out and other signs of spring

The farm pond is officially one year old and last weekend was its first official ice out.  It happened fast too.  On March 23rd, the pond was frozen solid.  I'm sure I could have easily walked across it.

7 days later after a couple days in the 50's and 60's and some rain, I wandered back to the pond and except for a small raft of floating ice that the wind had blown to the far southeast side, the pond was free of ice.

It was a chilly but sunny day and the dogs and I took a nice 3 hour walk around the farm.  Peters Creek was wide and spilling over the bank that day.  A pair of mallards has been visiting the creek daily and if you look carefully at the picture below, you can see them just on the horizon as they took flight off the creek as I walked by.

Even though the ice is off the pond, the ground is still quite frozen.  When it warms up during the day, there is a thick layer of squishy slick mud on top, but underneath the goo on top, the ground is still quite firm.  So it will be some time yet before plow meets earth around here.

Last weekend also brought about a long overdue project.  Last fall, I started a new batch of laying hens.  They came to the farm as day old chicks during the first week of October.  I set them up in the 8'X12' brooder pen where I start my meat chicks in the summer.  Starting the pullets in the brooder pen meant I could let my older layers and roosters have full run between both pens in the layer barn.  This gave the older chickens more room during the snowy months when they don't have a chance to go outside in 2 feet of snow.  Most winters we will see some sort of brief January thaw and I figured that would be a good time to divide the two pens in the layer barn and move the young pullets over just before they started to lay their eggs.  Well this winter wasn't like most winters.  We never had a thaw and the weather stayed cold and snowy.  It was too frozen to try and strip pens and get the pullets moved over.  And so the pullets stayed in the brooder pen.  I moved a bank of nest boxes over when they were ready to lay eggs.  The brooder pen does have fold down roosts for them, but they are less then adequate for long term use.  Then as the snow started to melt I started having issues with water coming in the brooder pen.  Issues that I never have had in the summer with the meat chicks.  That was a pen management nightmare, but I was able to keep on top of things for the most part.  FINALLY last weekend I was able to strip out the pen in the layer barn and move the pullets to their new abode.  Their tiny little chicken brains were totally freaked out by the move, but after one week, I think they are finally adjusting.  Another week or so and they will get to start free ranging in the yard with the older birds.

This past week also brought the first groundhog sighting of the year.  OK, it was down the road a bit, but I'm sure a few of the farm residents are out and about too.  Two nights ago, I did evening chores to the sound of spring peepers.  Yesterday, a walk back in the field found the garlic shoots starting to emerge.  Spring is progressing step by step.

The semi-myth of those stand up egg whites

The "kids" grow up so fast it seems.  Only 8 months ago, they were little egg-sized balls of fluff.  Now they are cackling and crowing young adults.  It's probably a good thing that we don't have any real close neighbors because when all the girls (and the two boys) get to "talking", the noise level in the chicken barn is quite loud.  So far this winter has been bearable.  We've had stretches when the ground is covered by snow, but we've also had several mid-winter thaws that have taken us back to green grass a time or two.  The chickens love being outside when the snow is gone.

But when the snow is on the ground, they excitedly run to the barn door when it is opened and promptly come to a screeching halt at the edge of the concrete.  Sometimes there is a major chicken pile up with the ones in the back plowing into the ones in front at the edge of the snow.  Except for a few brave older hens, most of my chickens will not step foot on snow.

Right now we have about half of our older hens laying as well as the majority of the 8 month old birds.  I even bought a few Americaunas for the first time and their green eggs are a big hit with the kids that show up at the farmers market with their parents.  And talk about a variety of size.  When chickens first start laying eggs, the eggs are small.  Gradually the eggs increase in size.  My older hens are laying a lot of extra large eggs right now while the younger hens eggs are more medium in size.

Now that the "youngsters" are laying regularly, I finally have the opportunity to write about the semi-myth of stand up egg whites and what that says about the age of an egg.  First you need to know there are actually four parts to the egg white.  Two of those parts are closely associated with the yolk.  The other two parts are the egg white that is seen when you crack an egg open on to a frying pan.  There is a thick gel-like part closer to the center and then a thin watery egg white that spreads to the outside.  As an egg sits in your refrigerator, it gets older and as an egg gets older, that thick gel-like part of the egg white gets thinner and flatter.  Therefore it is often written that if you crack open an egg and the egg white is watery and does not stand up tall then that egg is old.  This is true for store bought eggs that are graded when they leave the farm.  But there is a HUGE exception to this rule of thumb that is often seen in eggs that come from small backyard flocks.  These are the eggs that will often be for sale at farmers markets.

Several years back I had a customer complain that the eggs I was selling were old because the egg whites were very watery.  That is what he had been told and probably what he had experienced with his store bought eggs.  Well we sell out our eggs every week at the summer market so the absolutely oldest egg is seven days old.  I collect them, I wash and sanitize them and into the refrigerator they go.  So why would I be selling eggs with watery egg whites?  The answer is that I have hens in my flock that are much older than in commercial flocks.  As hens get older, egg whites have more and more of the thin watery part and less and less of the thick gel part.  Some hens have eggs that do this more than others.  When I look at my eggs in the egg basket, I can tell you which eggs will have thick stand up egg whites and which ones have thin watery egg whites.  Since there is no difference in flavor or nutritional value in eggs from older hens, I choose to keep my hens for an extra laying season compared to the big egg farms.  It is what I do.

And for a demonstration, I recently cracked open two eggs into a fry pan when I was making Sunday breakfast.  Both eggs were less than 24 hours old.  The egg on the upper left came from one of my old hens.  The egg on the lower right is from one of the young hens.

So there you have it.  If you buy eggs from someone who has a small flock of chickens and happen to get some eggs with watery egg whites, those eggs are more than likely not old eggs.  They are just eggs from old hens. Same farm fresh tasty goodness.

The Yard Aquarium

My husband likes to refer to our chickens as "the yard aquarium".  I think that is a very fitting description.  The laying hens especially provide as with ample entertainment as they get to free range in the yard most afternoons as long as the snow is not piled chicken-deep on the grass.  Our amusement comes from two sources.  One is that they are chickens and we are people.  So often we are left wondering exactly why they do what they do.  The second is that because they are chickens, they have tiny little brains.  They have a hard time finding solutions for obstacles in their lives.  So this blog is a collection of minor happenings in the lives of the chickens on our farm.  It is the reason we have a yard aquarium.

Meet Lucy.  She is one of our laying hens that work for a living.  As such, until about a week ago, she did not have a name.  Names are generally reserved for those lucky few hens that get elevated to pet status, but sometimes a working chicken does something special to distance herself from the crowd.  About a week and a half ago for no apparent reason, Lucy decided that she did not want to go back into the barn to roost at night with the other hens.  She's a skittish little thing and I don't know if you have ever tried to herd a chicken across the yard, but it is very difficult.  And so it came to pass that I just decided to let her do her thing.  It took a few days, but I finally found where she was staying at night which was tucked in behind some old railroad ties that are stacked behind the chicken coop.  Every evening I would tell her she really should go to the barn because she was in danger of being eaten by a variety of predators that wander through the night, but being a chicken she could not grasp the concept of something she could not see right then and there.  Well that and she doesn't understand English.  Every morning I would start my morning routine by walking to the chicken coop saying "here loose chicken, here loose chicken".  She would come out of her hiding spot and I would feed her some vegetable scraps or a little cracked corn.  It didn't take long for "loose chicken" to become "Lucy".  And that is how a working chicken manages to snag herself a name.  This behavior lasted about a week.  Then 4 nights ago Lucy went back into the pen with the others to roost.  3 nights ago, she stayed outside by the railroad ties all night and now the last 2 nights in a row, she has gone to roost with the others in the barn.  Crazy little chickens.

Leaning up against one of the barns is a collection of old pipe gates that are not being used right now.  A few weeks ago I was walking out to the barn to lock up the chickens for the night.  It was just starting to get dark and as I passed the front corner of the barn where the pipe gates are standing, I heard a long pitiful "bawwwwwk".  I looked over and there was a chicken wedged between two of the pipe gates.  Probably in the quest for finding the best bug or worm ever, the hen had walked in between the gates until she could go no further.  And because she is a chicken with a tiny little brain, she could only think of one solution to her problem and that was to go forward.  And in her attempt to go forward, she found herself trapped with her wings awkwardly wrapped around the rungs of the gait.  All it took from me was to gently push her backwards about two chicken sized steps and she was free.  She must have been there for some time though because the first thing she did after she was set free was to run to the waterer and drink for several minutes.  Tiny brains.

One of the other big jobs I finally got done last month was the summertime stripping of the laying hen pen.  With the hens being outside most of the time and the hot weather we have had this summer, I put it off longer than I should have but I finally got it done.  I always wait until late afternoon to do this chore.  By that time the chickens are done laying for the day and they are out in the yard foraging.  It really messes with their tiny little chicken minds to be in the barn while I am shoveling, scraping, sweeping and using the shop vac.  But the confusion for them does not end when the pen is clean and the brand new wood shavings are spread across the pen floor and all is quiet.  Wood shavings that are months old and mixed with chicken manure and dander take on a very drab gray-brown color.  Brand new wood shavings are bright in color with almost a pinkish hue.  Mix together a sudden change in floor color with a very stupid animal that can see in living color and it becomes rather amusing.  The nighttime going to roost isn't too bad as colors are subdued in the fading light.  However morning is a different story.  When I walked into the barn the morning after I cleaned the pen, almost all the hens were still on the roost even though it had been light for a good hour.  You should have heard are the squawking and carrying on they were doing.  The color change was too much for them to comprehend.  They acted like they new shavings were hot coals.  If one of them happened to teeter off the roost and land on the new shavings, it would set of a commotion of wing flapping to get back on the roost as quick as possible.  Every time I do a major clean out of the pen it is the same.  Fortunately it only takes a few hours and the girls do figure out that the new shavings are not dangerous.  It can be tough being a prey species thinking everything is out to eat you.  Tiny little brains.

The new layer chicks are five weeks old today.  Last week I finally started introducing them to food items other than the chick feed they have been eating.  First up, zucchini.  This is always a favored treat among the hens.  The chicks on the other hand have only ever seen feeders filled with crumbled feed so squash is a foreign object to them.  At first as usual, the sight of squash sent terror into their minds and they all huddled in the back of the pen.  One brave Americauna chick did finally come to "look" at the dreaded zucchini before retreating to the back with the others.  I never did see any of the chicks peck at the squash while I was in the barn, but by morning it had disappeared so they figured it out.  Since then they have enjoyed watermelon, tomatoes, spinach and apples.  Each new food item is getting less scary.  

It won't be long until I toss some scraps into the pen and a feeding frenzy will ensue like it does when I toss treats to the hens.

And so the yard aquarium continues to make me smile.  I get such a kick out of looking out the back window to see chickens hanging out on the back deck.  Even chicken droppings on the front porch make me smile.  The chickens act happy and they make me happy.  And although I don't have the room or the time to have a larger flock, it's nice to know that my chickens are feeding a few families with their eggs.  For that I am thankful.