Cooped Up – Day 3

Cooped_Chickens_Day3The chickens seem resigned to their current state of confinement to the coop. Since there’s only 7 of them, it’s pretty roomy. It won’t be like that for too long, though – batch 1 of the second generation chicks will be out there in a few weeks.

Seeing the hawk swoop down on wild birds fleeing the feeder out back validated that keeping the chickens cooped was the right decision. It’s a small hawk, but clearly deadly to chickens.

The hawk deterrents (owl statue, reflective tape) have arrived and we’ll be putting them out where we’ve seen the hawk. We hope they scare the you-know-what out of any hawks looking for a chicken meal. Wild birds: tell your friends that crows and mockingbirds are welcome here!

The ducks, as always, are relishing the mud. On their way into the coop tonight, Ty grabbed a huge worm that had come to the surface as a quick snack. A duck saw his prize and tried to steal it, but he gobbled it up. No rooster-like chivalry there.

Duck_Eggs_Big-SmallThe ducks left two cream-colored eggs in their coop this morning. One was larger than the other – large even for a duck egg. We think it’s Coraline’s egg. Whoever was laying the greenish eggs has either stopped laying, is hiding them somewhere, or the color has changed to the normal “cream” hue because we haven’t seen any green ones since.

Now we just need some to be fertile so we can load up the incubator after the current duck and chicken eggs hatch…