My Edible Garden

I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

New Happenings

The Silkie Tribe 
Well things around here have been totally insane. I have been working crazy amounts of overtime while my boss recovers from surgery. Hopefully things will settle down soon. Some days it was all I could do to make sure everyone had food and water. Today was my first day in 28 days.

So I let some of the birds out to run. The weather was really nice; the iris, tulips and lilacs are blooming. Here the Silkies enjoyed a day in the sunshine from the front, Mr. A. Snowman, Precious, Black Magic, Fiona, Smokey.

Fiona is the girl that was broody, her foster chicks are off in the bushes taking dust bathes.




Bianca is broody

I'm afraid little Princess & Roger were killed by an unknown predator. After that I moved Miss Bianca in with the other Silkies where she would be safer. What I didn't realize was that she was making a nest. She was still coming out every morning for breakfast and with my work schedule I wasn't paying a lot of attention. So I have no idea how long she has been sitting on these eggs. Guess we will just wait for the chicks to show up when they are ready.

Precious





Little Precious was apparently injured and spent some time in the house recovering last month. I didn't know that Silkies were prone to brain trauma from head injuries such as another bird pecking them on the head.

But she is well now and doing fine with the other Silkies. I think it was a rambunctious little rooster of another breed that was in with them that injured her.





The Kennels with the chicken house
I bought a large kennel new and found another smaller one on craigslist so have been busy getting them all set up to use for breeding and growing out youngsters. It's still a bit chilly at night and the wind has been blowing; therefor still needing tarps and plastic on the sides. Pretty quick I"ll have to change it out for shade cloth.





Claude


Claude is a really big chicken. My son saw him and remarked "That is a big freakin' chicken Mom!". My grandson saw him today and said "That is a big chicken!"


Claire 

Hennrietta
 I have been hatching babies from Claude and Hennrietta, have 11 chicks now with more hatching today. Maybe another day soon I'll be able to get pictures of all the babies I have!

3 comments:

  1. Mary, spring is so filled with new life. Both plants and animal life bring fresh life into the world. It's my favorite time of the year. I don't have any birds or animals but I do enjoy watching the new wild life come into the world. My big garden (Terra Nova Garden) has a flock of wild turkeys that help me with the garden chores by keeping the bug population almost down to nil. Every year the little poults are cute. However, I have to say the groundhog is cute as well but I'm not so thrilled about that family hanging around the garden. They have behaved themselves so far but I'm still taking precautions to keep them out of the main garden. Baby groundhog was killed in the road last year so we will see what happens this year.

    Have a great new baby chic day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Must be hard when you work so many hours! You have quite a little family to take care of and keep you busy. I bet they miss you when you aren't around! Nancy

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your blog, Mary. Are Snowman and Smokey mounting the girls yet? At what age to get they "going"?

    ReplyDelete