Jack

Jack

Monday, June 9, 2025

My, The Birds Are BIG This Year

 Saw something out in the front yard yesterday morning...

I kinda thought the bird seed block was disappearing awfully fast.

Crunch, crunch, crunch...
This little buck was a LOUD chewer, and stood there and stared at us like, 'Yeah, whatta ya gonna do about it?' 

Just before this he'd been stripping the little marble-sized apples off my tree, and helpfully removing the lower branches. By the time he was done, he left us four small chunks of the bird block on the ground.

Oh, and don't mind the screen door. One of our Howling Nevada Windstorms kinda destroyed it, we're on the hunt for a new, much sturdier one.
 

 

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Year 17 of Chickam!

On top of the nine hatchery chicks we got in mid-May, here are the chick hatched from eggs from our flock!
 
In order of hatch, here they are--and lets just say that Mjolnir, our buff Orpington rooster, is WELL represented here:
Lemon Zest (mom: Luna), egg #6. We got so many blondies this year, we food color-spotted some of them. Lemon Zest got green head/chest spots, and is clean legged.


 Jay Jay (mom: Brick), egg #6. Green head/chest spots, feathered feet/shanks. 


Ishkabibble (mom: Bobo), egg # 4. Reddish-blond with a dark stripe down the back of her head and neck, heavily feathered feet & shanks. She was an assisted hatch , mostly I think due to the oblong shape of her egg--she couldn't rotate to unzip. Her name is fake Yiddish, and originally meant 'Don't worry', then changed to 'Should I worry?' then 'You should worry', and these days basically means, 'What, me worry?'.


 Mace Wungdu (mom: Brick), egg #7. Blond with feathers legs & feet, red head and neck spots. 



Yeti (mom: Takoyaki), egg # 2. The only non-blond in the hatch, she is grey with a tan face, clean legged. 

Sunshine (mom: Luna), egg #5. Blond, clean legged, with green spots on her wings ONLY.



Ick (mom: Arson), egg #13. Blond, clean legged, blue spots on her wings ONLY. Ick as another assisted hatch. She had twisted herself up in the inner membrane of the egg, then pooped all over herself and required a major cleaning job. She comes by her name honestly.
Sorry to say that Ick died suddenly a few days after this, a victim of the chicken owner's catch-all term, 'Failure To Thrive', which basically means 'Who knows What The Hell Happened?!' She never progressed--when the other chicks had full wing feathers, she had none, and in a single day went downhill and passed, despite handfeedings every 30 minutes.
Mother Nature does that, sometimes... 
 

That's it for this year!