Remember Your First? Our First Fresh Egg!

There are many firsts that we cherish: First crush, first kiss, and of course, first pullet egg from your new chickens.

You remember where you found it, what time it was, and how you first tweeted about it.

It was the morning of August 2nd, tucked away in a corner next to the water tower. It was smaller than a small supermarket egg, but cute! The shell was like 50 grit sandpaper with bumps, and I felt sorry for the hen who laid it.

Our first egg in the new hen house!

This is the first time that I have had chickens since I was a boy. These are my wife’s first chickens.

These free-ranging beauties are hard at work to take care of us!

What happened to the egg you might ask? Sunny side up and shared so we got to enjoy it together

We have gotten a pullet egg per day since the first was laid three days ago. Because hens are supposed to start laying small eggs only once every 3-4 days, it stands to reason that we have three hens that have started to produce. None of our 11 chickens (all about 22 weeks old) have cockledoodledooed, so we presume that they are all girls!

Let the omelets  begin!

P.S. We won’t fail to say “Thank You” to our girls every time we collect eggs.

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Battle Against Tobacco / Tomato Hornworms

Well-camouflaged tobacco hornworm can be a garden menace!

Time to talk about the nasties. This bugger is a vicious defoliator, mostly attacking plants in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family – tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, and of course, tobacco. The specimen above was first assumed to be the tomato hornworm, but a master gardener from Colorado State clarified the difference between the two caterpillars. They’re the larval stage of the “hawk”, “sphinx” or hummingbird moth – begrudgingly beautiful – but can wipe out your tomato plantation in no time.

These critters added to our tomato heirloom woes (notably “blossom drop” from the very high temps) just yesterday when Roy discovered them feasting on the leaves. In the evening, he applied Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis – an effective natural pesticide against caterpillars. In less than 48 hrs, we put on our “pattern identification lenses”, and picked about 20 of these nasty buggers. Picking them off the leaves is like pulling velcro apart, and they seem to fight back by bending backwards and grabbing you with their vicious little jaws. (Actually I don’t think they bite and people will handle them with bare hands … but these critters still gross me out!)

The Bt was effective almost overnight, but we still found a half dozen or so lively, fat beasties today.

Bt already took effect in less than 24 hrs. for some caterpillars

The happy ending to this story is that we get a whole lot of entertainment feeding these caterpillars to our chickens. The chooks will come to you eagerly, snatch the beasty from your hand, and fight over the gourmet meal. They were pretty subdued in the video, but you do see the Buff Orpi do an Olympic sprint well away from the competition!

A more informative video on tomato and tobacco hornworms to watch is from GardenForkTV.

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Chook Chronicles – April 16, 2010

Meet "Jeanette", a UFO, garden fertilizer & breakfast provider

It is Day 4 and our twelve chicks (all about 3 wks old) are still kicking – literally. I am slowly becoming more efficient in the cleaning and care, esp. making sure that their water is changed several times a day. Every day of survival is another day of health and another egg factory in the making   Cleaning their boxes isn’t too big of a chore, and the newspapers go straight in the compost bin!

We all look in on the chicks several times a day, letting them get used to being handled. The 12 are currently split up in 2 groups of 6.

Happy Blondes

Big Bertha & Psychos

In one box are the “blondies” (Buff Orpingtons), and these gals (presumably all gals, but unlikely) seem to be the most sedate and poo-lific. The second box has a mix of Black Sx-links, Rhode Island Reds, and Buff Orpingtons. Unfortunately, this seems to be the psycho group, segregating according to color (what’s up with that?), taunting each other, and seeing who can screech the loudest. The largest are the Black Sx-links, one of which I have called “Big Bertha” of turkey-esque size. Every time you handle her, you’d think she was Marie Antoinette at the guillotine.

We are currently studying various chicken coop plans, including those we found in this book, Chicken Coops, by Judy Pangman. Many people criticized it for lacking real building plans, and perhaps the title is misleading because there are no detailed plans for any of the coops – just pictorial representations and occasionally, dimensions. For us, however, these “concept” plans should be sufficient.

I’m especially excited over the opportunity to use a lot of scrap building materials and “junk” that we’ve accumulated over the years. Rather than haul these to the dump, constructing and interior decorating a chicken house brings me back to my childhood when I’d build houses for my dolls

We’d love to see a link to your own chicken coop or ones you’ve seen that you really like!

Tweet tweet for now,

Gigi

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