Lady Grey (the chicken)'s Secret Stash

There is one chicken here who has been a loner from day one. At first I thought she was picked (pecked?) on because she was beautiful and different from the rest, then i realized she was bitchy & her attitude towards other chickens sucked. (Which comes first the chicken or the egg?... being picked on and turning mean, or being mean and then getting picked on!) OI! I call her Lady Grey, she wanders around alone mostly, she is the only chicken who has figured out how to climb out of the fenced in area, she comes to my house every single day and tries to sneak in the window or door if it is open a crack. She steals my cat Toot's food, Toots let's her cause Toots is a total pussy when it comes to giant birds. At night Lady grey goes back to the barn, where the chicken coop is but I never see her go in the coop with the others. She always preferred JuJu the donkey to her own kind. I have been wondering if she lays eggs, because of course she will not get in the coop or nesting box with the others. It wasn't until this morning when I was prepping to have new bales of hay delivered that i found her secret nest, where she has been laying some pretty light brown eggs!

!!!! I love her style, i love how she wants a private chicken life, i love how she is sneaky, and i looooove that she was keeping a secret nest full of eggs!

XOXOxoxo

7 Eggs!! I Am Rich!

OH myyyy GAWD! My chickens are actually laying eggs! Last summer they were dry as a bone, hardly a chicken could do a thing it seemed. I had almost lost hope in the flock, i thought maybe they were too old, too inbred, too many bought at auction.
But alas! Warm weather and alot of free range fun = seven eggs this morning.
What is even cooler, two of the hens appeared to be setting (both the Rhode Island Reds)... i let myself get pecked as i pulled all the eggs from the nest to put in my basket.
I will let them have the next batch --- if they make babies too, I am going to explode with excitement!
xoxoox

Hen Sitting On Ducks Eggs

My uncle loves raising ducks and chickens, and yesterday he dropped off a pile of duck eggs to see if any of my chickens would sit on them and make um' hatch. Why ya might wonder?
Well, humans have done things to animals, something called domestication... in fact humans went so far as to only breed over and over the traits the *thought* were the best. They bred the chickens so much that most hens have totally lost all instincts to sit on their nest, sadly some ducks too. It is now a rare bird who is willing to set, and the only way he has been able to hatch some baby ducks is to shove the eggs under a rare setting hen.
So I snuck some duck eggs through the back hatch in the barn/coop where the hens lay their eggs... (see pic above)...
One hen sits in the nesting boxes all night and her name is Skinny Minnie. She seems to sit alot, and prefers it to sleeping on the roosting branches- so my fingers are crossed she will somehow get a glimmer of maternal instincts and just warm them babies up!! Cause oh my gawd, everyone knows baby ducks are SOoooOOoOOoOO f'en cute, I could die just thinking about their fuzzy wittle selves, their quack and swimming, floating, riding the ripples.

Rootin' for Minnie to have some instincts & duck babies. Yeah, it'll be confusing that her babies like to swim and have big beaks... but hell a good mommy overlooks their ugly ducklings and excepts that the times are a changin'.

XOXOXoxo

First EGG at The Luck Cabin!

I have one rooster and one chicken - and they made one egg.

xoxox

Prepping The Chicken Coop Nesting Boxes

NO chickens yet, but the part of my Mini-Barn (built this month) that is for the hens and their handsome rooster is only a day away from being completed! My uncle who built this barn (who was nice enough to teach me some shit while buidling it) loves raising chickens - he has bunches of chickies, and we designed their safe house together. :)
He said for the nesting box the best layers underneath where the chicken will lay eggs is the following:

• Bottom Layer - Dirt
• Middle Layer- Hay
• Top Layer - Cedar Shavings
  

I didn't have hay and I noticed all the dirt was wet from the rain. So I made a dirt/hay compromise for now ---

I made the bottom & middle layer all super dry peat moss, and then put thick cedar shavings on top! I figured this was good cause I use peat moss for my compsting toilet, and essentially you want the same kind of 'clean composting' action going on where your chickens will poop-pee.

Hope the ladies will love it!!!

Xoxoxo

Composting Crock!

Lemme jus' tell ya'll why I feel like a movie star...
because my blog has now been online long enough & gets so many hits a month, that I am able to do product reviews for rad eco companies like Gaiam! So when the earth friendly mega store contacted me to do a review of their kitchen composting crock I was SUPER excited (that is like celebrity status right?)
I have wanted this very same stainless steel kitchen nasties holder for about 5 years now - but never had gifted it to myself. I was totally missing out.

I have been using smelly open buckets, bowls, plastic tupperware ect to keep my kitchen scraps but because I cook 3 meals a day everyday year after year for my gluten free diet I end up with more food scraps then the average person. Leaving it to the open air not only kinda freakin' stinks, but in the summer it attracts flies instantly, which causes maggots and makes more flies. (I will tell ya my new maggot idea in a sec...)
This composting crock though let's air get to the compost scraps with some holes at the top, but also has a cool stink filter on it, so that the skanky rotten food smell can't escape back out. And trust me, it works cause I stuck onions in that thing!
So here's my Omnivore's Dilemma style idea for chicken food... I was planning on feeding my future chickens my compost/food scraps because it's worked out so well in the past. I already know how maggots (as sick as they are to us humans) are high in protein and good for feeding to the chickens soooooo, you could actually leave this crock open for a day and let the flies in to lay the eggs, then put the top back on & let your maggots grow inside there, then feed them to the chickens before they finish turning into flies!!! Way awesome.

So now this compost crock is not only good for holding scraps but also for producing your own chicken food, albeit it might be gross it's about as economical as ya' get can.

PS- Go here for more green living solutions at Gaiam.

PSS - They sent me another composting bucket to compare this one with but you have to use wheat powder in it for the composting process, so I gave it to someone else and they'll be sending along their review soon!! For those of you not allergic to wheat, the Bokashi Compost Bin is like the mac daddy... it even has a spout where you can pour out compost liquid to put in your potted plants.

PSSS- Go here to read my favorite blogging product review eva'. You'll laugh.

XoXo