every day is a good day
I was gathering eggs at the right time this morning to discover who is laying the rose colored egg. And here she is below. She came squawking out of a nest just as I was about to reach inside, and there was a very warm rose egg next to a cool egg.
She’s very distinctive with her orange feathers around her neck, a blunt beak, and five pointy crests for a comb. I’ll call her Rose.
The new year starts with a mystery. One of the hens is laying a rose colored egg, but which one? This is when it would come in handy to be able to talk with them and ask, “Which one of you is doing this?”
There is sunshine filling the horizon, pouring through an opening in the distant clouds. It’s not raining and for a mid December day in the Pacific Northwest, this counts as a sunny winter day.
Mynah, like many of the other hens, has soul-piercing eyes, especially when she is on a nest. You can almost see her thinking, “How close do I let him get before I poke his eyes out?”
One of the Welsummer hens decided to make a nest in the straw on the ground. And below is the egg she laid. Welsummer’s lay dark eggs with black speckles. They are beautiful eggs and beautiful hens too. I’m rather enamored with them.
Buttercup is free of her chicks. They are all on their own and she is back to laying eggs in style.
The first snow of the season has adorned the surrounding foothills. I could see it yesterday through the clouds hiding the mountains. Today with the clouds gone, the snow covered hills glistened in the bright sun.
Two nights ago, Buttercup finally took her chicks up on the roost. Past two months old, it’s late for them to make the move, but they’re not entirely ready to accept that they aren’t babies anymore. Different ones keep hopping on her back, not wanting to grow up. When they are fully grown, will they look back and fondly remember the nights they spent on their mother’s back?
Not the clearest of pictures, but you get the idea how Buttercup and her brood bed down for the night, in a tight spot between a screen and the wall. Her chicks are two months old now and she still beds down in a corner of the coop with them. She’s got three chicks on her back with the rest of them packed in around her.
I’ve never had a hen take this long before taking her chicks up to roost. Many of the hens coax their little ones to fly up to roost when they are a month old, sometimes before the little ones can even fly up so high. It’s a traumatic event for the chicks, looking up at their mother high up on the roost. They peep loudly, and try to figure out how to get up there to join her.
Many hens have a “sink or swim” attitude when it comes to rearing their chicks. “You wanna sleep with your momma? Then get your butt up here,” is their attitude. Tough love and all that.
It will be interesting to see when Buttercup decides it is time for her brood to roost. At this age, they won’t have any difficulty following her to the highest of roosts.