Chicken Keeping Can Make You Crazy: New Chicks

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by ninagarden in chicken, chickens

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chickens, chicks

: Greta (now called Grr), Bubbles and Esmerelda today.

: Bubbles the Ameraucana, Gretal the Silkie and Esmerelda the Giant Orpington, back in April when we first got them.

Chicken keeping has been keeping me busy! We decided it was time for new chicks because we only had two Buff Orpingtons and they were slowing down egg production. They were only three years old, but I guess if you spend your engery laying an egg every day for two years, that can happen.

About a year ago, I learned from our chicken vet that Lavender Orpingtons were for sale in our area. He described them in such a way that I had to get some.

(So the adventure begins. It is really long and you will think I am a crazy chicken lady by the time you are done with this story!)

I went hunting Lavender chicks. Little did I know this would be so troublesome and lead to general hysteria in our household, crowing hens, calls to the vet and desperate runs to the feed store when I should be working.

After looking all over the Internet for lavender chicks and not finding any, I heard a tip from a place called The East County Zoo (they sell chickens not elephants) that a woman in Alpine raised lavender Orpingtons. I was very thankful for the help of East County Zoo, although my husband wishes I had never heard of them.

Alpine is near my horse so I thought, “Great, I will talk to this chicken lady and go get my chicks one day after visiting Bayito. The kids will love it.” Sometimes I have to find fun things for the kids and husband to do on the way to see the horse. It is a long, boring drive.

I made a fun day for the family out at the ranch, and our big excitement was going to the chicken lady, who it turns out told me she had lavender chicks, but then when I called to confirm we were coming, told me she didn’t. They hadn’t hatched yet.

You can’t cancel a trip to pick out chicks when your two little girls are so excited and have planned this for about a year. So we decided to go anyway, and the chicken lady told me she would drive the lavender chicks to me in San Diego when they hatched, and we would have a chick delivery.

We would pick up the other two chicks that day and since each of us agreed we would get our own, the girls could each pick one.

There is a reason I call this lady the chicken lady. It will become clear as this story goes on.

Also, notice in the pictures we have five chicks and not three. This will also become clear. We also do not have a Lavender Orpington…I think we have an Ameraucana frizzle, but we are not sure what she is. We don’t even know if she is a chicken. Sometimes she looks like a dove.

It has all taken hours of research and left very little time for anything else! I will continue this story tomorrow and start with the Chicken Lady.

Chickens, Kale, Sugar Snap Peas, Fairy Garden, Horse Report and Late Valentine

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by ninagarden in chicken, fairy garden, horse, kale, snap peas, Valentine

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chickens, fairy garden, horse, kale, snap peas

It’s been a busy six weeks for us at home, in the garden, and in the great outdoors. The heat wave brought the nasturtiums, the apple blossoms and sweet peas. Out in the mountains, the spring-like weather produced a great crop of ticks. Yuck!

My veggie garden is growing well, and the peas are sending up their tendrils across my net that was only meant to protect them from the birds while they were seedlings. Too late for me to take the net off. That is their trellis now.

My daughters have been fighting over garden space, each claiming the other has “the best” spot. I am strategically using this battle to help me accomplish things in the very short amount of time that we have. My oldest daughter, who got the “best” spot, weeded an unused corner of the yard and turned an empty planter into a beautiful vegetable garden. She probably planted everything too close together but that’s how you learn. (See picture below.)

My youngest, who is nearly nine, was so mad that I gave away the premium garden bed (which isn’t true), that she volunteered to pull all the old lettuce that was going to seed out of another raised bed so she could claim it as her own. Brilliant! I then gave her seeds, and now I have two more vegetable gardens planted!

January was rose pruning and I’ve posted so many rose pruning photos over the years that I won’t bore you. It is always a huge job but I managed to get it done in two weekends. I’m into speedy gardening right now with the horse, volleyball, dance, carpooling kids around and all the other things we have going on.

With Bayito (my horse), I have had a fast lesson in the ticks of Southern California, de-wormer and herbal insect control. I bought so much natural bug repellent–marigold spray, essential oils, Skin-So-Soft and other stuff, that I bet my horse is the best smelling mammal in Campo, California! I am really into doTerra essential oils right now and the Terra Shield insect repellent smells good and appears to be working. We can all use it.

The days are spring-like but we need rain. I also need some new cowboy boots!

Here are some of the shots of the new gardens, the old fairy garden, the apple tree and our chickens, who started laying again. Hooray! Scroll to the end for a late Valentine’s Day gift from the garden.

Below are photos of my snap peas:

Apple blossoms:

One of my veggie beds–I never seem to eat the lettuce fast enough:

New vegetables my youngest daughter planted:

Old garden that the nine-year-old doesn’t think is good enough–she hates the Borage growing all over her fairy garden but she doesn’t want me to remove it: