Parking Lot Sugarin? Not Quite..

   I know this blog is mostly dedicated for chicken talk but I've been desperately itching to try my hand out with my very own backyard sugarin'. Unfortunately, when I look out my window to my "backyard" all I see is some cracked black top and three snow covered cars. Gotta love apartment life right?
    So instead, I took a little ride to my parents house in Cheshire and convinced my hibernating father to come out into the cold with me and tap some trees. The conversation went something like this.
  
Me: "C'mon Dad, lets do it, it'll be so awesome."
Dad: "But honey, it's so cold out, you don't wanna go out there, let's just do it on a nice warm day."
Me: "Pleeeeeeassseeee."

So after teasing him a little bit about being a big softy with the cold, I finally convinced him. Together we used a couple old water jugs with some holes screwed in them, a couple pipe nipples from Tractor Supply, and some some old wire to keep the jugs secure. The end result? We tapped only two trees. I've heard that about 35 gallons of sap will be boiled down to one gallon of syrup....If I'm lucky, I'll probably get enough syrup for one pancake. At the very least it will be one delicious pancake!
     I'll keep you posted with how my syrup endeavors go...that is if anyone out there in blogger land even reads this. Anyone? Maybe?

"Teacher! The Chicken Ate my Homework!"

What are bantams good for?
...meat?....no
..eggs?....no
...eating your homework?...bingo!

It's strange but true, my little apartment pet bantam will NOT leave my papers alone. If I don't keep an eye on her little chicken butt every two seconds, she'll be pecking at my homework....and yess she will consume it.
 
"Hey teacher the chicken ate my homework!".....I don't think that one would go over so well.

Still, it truly baffles me. I'll throw her pieces of lettuce and vegetables...she won't touch em'. When it comes to a nice yummy sheet of toxic ink paper, chow time!.... STRANGE

Anyways, I think we all have a case of cabin fever here. Little Pidge deals with it by eating toxic ink paper, and as for me?..Well I deal with it by attempting to take runs out in the snow. Both ideas very stupid...That spring breeze I felt around Valentines Day didn't help either. It had me fantasizing about planting a garden in two feet of snow.If I didn't have about a zillion articles to write for my class, who knows, I just might have attempted it.

Please let spring come and save my sanity!

A Neat Way to Make a Broody Hen Useful

 
 ^ (Here's a hint.)^

 (Even though it's winter, put yourself in the following position for just a minute.)
            It's a cool spring morning. Drops of dew still cling to the grass beneath your feet. You stroll out to the chicken coop and run your hands over each nest for that smooth warm lump. So far, the girls have been getting back into the swing of spring and laying an egg a day.... but then you reach the last nest. There she is, with that permanent scowl, in the same spot she's been in since last month: the one broody hen. Barely laying more than a few eggs in almost 30 days, she's proven herself pretty darn useless.
       This is a problem we've likely all had to deal with. It seems as though every year there is at least on hen with the dreams of hatching out her own eggs, and each hen always manages to maintain that same poker face! I swear, no human being has ever or will ever given me a dirty look as evil as the glower I receive each year from the broody hen.
        But if you're a big ole' softy like myself, you still probably don't have the heart to cull them just because they aren't being productive.
         So what do you do when life gives you lemons?! You give it fertilized eggs of a different bird so it can hatch em' out!!      Well....you know what I mean.
         Last summer, I stuck a fertilized peking duck egg underneath my broody buff orpington. She hatched it out and was happily a cluckin' and a frettin' over the little ball of fuzz underneath her, loving it as if it were her own. That little duckling was healthier and happier than any incubator hatched chick I've ever seen and the mother was pretty happy too.

 (Diane again with her little one Stan)


        To do this, any kind of fertilized bird egg will work. It's great because (A.) you don't have to worry about using a fire hazard heat lamp and (B.) you don't get stuck with more chicks than you want by buying them through the mail. Being a foster mom is also a perfect job for a broody hen that's too old to be useful for egg laying anyways. An old retired hen will readily hatch out any fertilized egg you give her and will likely be an even more attentive mother.







     

My Little Roos

          I've always been a little bit jealous when I hear other chicken owners refer to their flock as "my girls." What a perfect term! It just rolls off your tongue...
          Unfortunately, I happened to be blessed with five roosters in the bunch. Call them chauvinistic or what you will, but my boys would be deeply offended if I ever referred to them as girls.
         Just kidding, I'm not  that eccentric... At least not yet. Though who knows, by the time I'm ninety I may be having full fledged conversations with them. Right now, I hereby grant myself permission that when I reach that age I'm allowed to have as many conversations with them as I want. Hell, I'll talk politics with them!
             (below) One of my roosters: Sampson. I think he might be a democrat...I mean..umm..a Silver Laced Wyandotte!

The Poultry Congress a Success!

         This past Saturday should be deemed a holiday for chicken and all poultry lovers alike. The Northeast Poultry Congress was held at the Big E in West Springfield Mass. That meant, of course, that I was there in a heartbeat!

        Chicken lovers from all over came to show or buy birds. Even Jan Brett, the illustrator of popular childrens books, was there!
        The echoing stadium was lined up with cage after cage of talking birds. Over a thousand different birds were showed. You can imagine how many roosters crowed every second!  Each one competed with the cockerel in the cage next to him for volume! Their attempts at manliness were as cute as a little roo can get...
        A  separate room was devoted for birds being sold. My fellow chicken lovers came along: my dear friend Rebekah and my boyfriend Steve. Rebekah drove home from the congress with a little Cochin rooster. The farmer that sold her the bird made a point to mention what a shame it would be to cull the rooster if he wasn't sold. That comment was all it took for her, the softy that she is, to buy the little roo. We later joked that he could sense she was a Subaru driving vegan. But who knows? I bet the old time farmers do have a sixth sense for Subaru drivers!
     The farmer that sold Rebekah the roosters hatched his chickens out  himself. It goes to show that if your interested in hatching out your own chickens, you'll likely end up with  a ton of roosters. If you use that method, know what you're getting yourself into! Very few people are interested in buying roosters.
     I, on the other hand, came home with my sweet little Old English Wheaten Game Bantam.

              ^^^^^  (Rebekah and I with our new lil chicks!)

Steve and  I made sure it was a little hen for our tiny apartment. Our neighbors would wonder if they heard a rooster crowing every morning.
         For more information about going to the Poultry Congress go to (http://poultrycongress.com)....It's worth it!

No Land for Chickens? No Worries!

  There are a lot of chicken lovers out there that don't have the place to keep chickens. I am definitely one of them. The backyard to my one bedroom apartment is a parking lot. But recently I found the answer for chicken lovers in my situation.
     Buy a bantam! Many of these miniature chickens are about the size of pigeons. They can be kept at home just as a parrot would be kept. I bought my "lil girl" yesterday and fittingly I have deemed her "Pidgy." She is a Wheaten Old English Game bantam. All it takes is a 2' x 1' cage, a few shavings and BAM, you have your own personal chicken coop! Each egg laid from this small chicken is about half the size of a normal egg. That means every other day you can enjoy a farm fresh egg breakfast! In my case I suppose it would be "apartment fresh" wouldn't it?

     My little Pidgy has already taken to her surroundings very well. We keep her in her crate when we can't watch her. Otherwise she is "free range," so to speak. She has already claimed the top of the TV as her favorite place to sit. Last night my boyfriend Steve and I watched a whole movie with Pidge roosting  on top of the TV, happy as can be!
      Old English Game bantams are only some of the many bantam breeds to choose from. You can find many bantam varieties that are the same as the full sized varieties. Beware, not all bantams are as small as Pidge. Make sure you know exactly how "mini" they are. Some, like the Buff Silkie Bantam, are quite large and I wouldn't recommend them as house pets. Others, like the Serama, are the smallest of all bantams.
   Good Luck!

My Story

     "What's your favorite animal," the girl asked me on the first day of  freshman orientation.
      She and I were a part of a group of students sitting on the perfectly mowed grass of the perfectly green campus lawn.    I sighed...The girl with the neon blond hair and flashing eyes wasn't going to find many similarities with my answer. But this was after all, just a part of another silly "getting to know one another exercise."

     As she handed me the ball, my reply was..of course...chickens..
   
  My name is Laura and a few years have gone by since then.  I'm still  a poor college student living in a modest apartment...but I spend as much time as I can tending to my "babies" on my parents  farm .

      Throughout this blog I'm hoping to share some of the things I've learned with some fellow chicken lovers out there. If you like learning  about chickens or just enjoy a cute short story about their antics, then I think you'll enjoy this.
    I'm new with blogs so I hope you like it!