Here Chick, Chick, Chick - Continued

Here Chick Chick Chick - Continued:

Current date, March 7, 2013.......Okay, so a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I posted my last entry.  I didn't intend to have such a long break but all I can figure out is that life got in the way.  Perhaps it could also be that I've been totally unorganized and flying by the seat of my pants.  Anyway, I've returned to the world of blogging and hope to be a better poster!!  Below are all of the posts that I started and never finished.  If you are tired of hearing about our chickens or just aren't interested, don't read this compilation of blog entries.  You'll be bored!!  You can come back when I start talking about the cows and calves.  Oh boy, that oughta grab everyone's undivided attention and interest!!!  YeeHaw...............welcome to the Texas Panhandle!!!  It's a tough "Life in Pampa, Texas"...........................

***********************Much much earlier - Probably September**********************

So, it's been a couple of months since we made the trip to the end of the earth (northern Amarillo) to pick out our little flock of chickens.  For those of you who haven't read the first blog entry, the picking out process was a bit unusual.  The slowest and/or easiest to trap chickens were caught by using the seller's fishing net.  We have spent the last weeks pampering our little flock and getting to know each one of them.  Our sweet little flock consists of:

                                              Louise and Thelma - Rhode Island Reds. 

                                           Good Golly & Miss Molly -  Our big white hens

                                                            Clementine - Barred Rock

 

                                                                  Elvira - Australop

                                                      Gretel - Appenzeller Spitzhauber

 

Little Red Hen

 

 

 

Chicken Little 

Chicken Little & Little Red Hen - They are some sort of chicken and pheasant mix.  Seriously, we really can't figure out what all is in them.  If any readers of this blog happen to recognize any chicken breed in them, let me know!!!  Maybe some Rhode Island Red.....

We are in the process of taming all of them and turning them into pets.  Call us crazy but we are both 65 years old so we can pretty much do whatever we want and not give a damn what anyone thinks.  Ahhhh, the joys of growing older!!!  So, we have pet chickens. 


**************************** Probably Late October************************

Several weeks later - a PS to the above post -

Okay, so I let a long time go by without finishing and actually hitting the "Publish" button for the last post.  A couple of months ago, we decided to go get 2 more chickens.  So, we ventured out to a million miles from nowhere to the Chicken Farm, grabbed the fishing net and raced around the yard like wild crazy people chasing chickens.  Of course, we came home with 4 additional chicks so we now have 13 little hens!!

We added in the following new girls - 3 are of unknown origin:

                                                                            Goldilocks

                                                                                Moxie

                                                                             Foxie

                                                                 Jemina - Australop

There were a few little squabbles amongst the old and new hens but all seems to be going great now.


*****************And the last unplublished post - Probably early November****************


Now it's another several weeks later - I now know that I really have to work on my blogging finishing techniques.......amen sister!!!

We have had some major chicken changes (the next blog will cover these changes) and two sad occurences since the above entries.  The sad news.....our new hen, Moxie, died a few weeks ago.  We don't know what happened to her.  I found her laying on her side in the cage and she died right after I picked her up to see if I could figure out what was wrong with her.  The really sad death was our dear little Louise.  She had become a real pet.  She spent a lot of the time, that we let them run around the yard each night, sitting on our laps or shoulders. She even spent some of her time sitting on David's head and she had a great affinity for Coors Beer.  She had a little nip every night before she went to bed.  A few weeks ago, we thought we had all the "assumed" girls (story to follow in new blog) in the cage.  We closed the gate and let the dogs out.  Dear Louise had slipped out of the cage and you know what happened...sad, sad, sad!!!  We were both so sad that we said we would never name or get to know another of our farm animals.  In our frame of mind, it just isn't worth taming any of them nor were we interested in finding out if any of them had interesting little personalities.  As it turns out, that "frame of mind" lasted only a few days, and we are back to calling all the animals by name and we are currently trying to find out who will be our newest beer drinking chicken.  Goldilocks seems to be our best candidate for a little nightly nip!  We are totally hopeless animal lovers and if you don't understand people like us, that's okay!!!  Luckily David and I found each other so we don't make any other 2 people miserable.

                                                          Louise having a little nip.

                                                                               Moxie

RIP Little Girls!!!!!  Both of the girls are buried at a little cemetary we started at the ranch.  One of my summer projects is to build a little white picket fence around the area so that we will always have a nice peaceful place for all of our animals.  Their little heavenly part of the ranch!!!

*****************************  Current time March 7, 2013*************************

We have learned a lot about raising chickens.  A lot of the stuff we didn't even want to know - and that's a fact.  We learned how to weatherize their coop and the chicken run. We did a pretty good job and it held against the "Blizzard of 2013"!!!   Damn, we're good!!!!  We've learned about "Chicken Aprons" and other cool stuff....yeah right!!!  Don't bother to Google "Chicken Aprons", I'll tell you about them in the next post.

We are getting a lot of eggs.....February's total was 141 for a daily average of 5. Not bad for our interesting little flock of chickens.  And that number really isn't bad when I tell you that about 4 months ago when the hens started laying eggs, some of the "hens" started crowing and "bothering" the other sweet little hens.  Which leads me to tell you that, damn it all, we have also learned a lot about roosters and if I never see or hear another one, my life will be very happy!!!  Out of the remaining 11 female chickens, the owner sold us, only 7 of them were really little hens.  We figured out what to do with the loudest and most obnoxious 2 roosters and I'll tell you about that later......  The jury is still out on what to do with the other 2 little bastards!!!  Don't even figure in a "kill them" factor since both of us are not bent in that direction.  Yes, I know, we would have never made it in the days of killing our food to have a meal.....I know I'd have been a veggie and fish person in the "old days"!!

See y'all sometime soon...........

Coming next to this blog - I HATE ROOSTERS....Cock-a-Doodle-Do!!!!!!

Here Chick, Chick, Chick!!!!!!

Okay, so I'm from the BIG city, Houston born and raised (or "raised up" as they say in the Panhandle).  Then it was off to Austin to attend and graduate from the University of Texas.  I lived in Austin my entire adult life so moving to Pampa was a little change of pace - to say the least.  I'm loving it though and David and I are getting to enjoy some country ways in the middle of the town.  One of the things we wanted to do was raise some chickens.  My family had a few chickens when I was little but I don't really remember it.  My older sister remembers that she used to step in the little blobs of chicken poop and it would ooze through her toes.  I have no such memories!  Anyway, sometime the first part of June, we dragged out some of the old wood that Daivd had stored away in the backyard and we proceeded to build the coop. 

So, the work began on the amazing Five Star residence for our chickens!!  The completed Four Seasons chicken hotel will be revealed in a later blog.

The coop was finished and attached to the dog run in the backyard.  On the first official day of "Popoo and Gigi Camp", my oldest granddaughters, Hayden and Campbell, David's granddaughter, Emily, David and I piled into the car, drove through McDonald's and headed out to the far reaches of northern Amarillo in search of a chicken owner's farm David found on Craig's List.  The seller told David that he had some pure breeds and some cross breeds available.  The picture on Craig's List showed the chickens in a pen and they all looked so cute.  Funny how pictures can be deceiving!!!

Yes, this is a picture of the chicken pen.....the wide open spaces.  The chicken seller must have put the chickens in the turkey pen to take the picture and then released them out into their wild environment.  I will say that the next 30 minutes was like something from a "Ma and Pa Kettle" movie.  Oh my gosh, there must have been three hundred chickens running around, a mixed breed lab/pitbull dog barking ready to kill anything in his path and a bunch of turkeys gobbling in the background.  The dog was held back by a flimsy fence and our 2 dogs immediately jumped out of the car and were ready to kill all the chickens and the pit bull.  Visions of having to report death by dog bites and chicken pecking to the grandchildren's parents passed across my brain.  While I held back our weimaraner from sure death, the 7 pound maltese, Shelby, set about convincing the pit bull she was going to kill him.   My very life passed before my eyes.  After we calmed everyone down, David and the owner proceeded to capture the chickens we wanted with a fishing net.....yes folks, I said a fishing net.  We went from wanting certain kinds of chickens to just being happy that some were caught and dumped unceremoniously into our, not so big, dog carrier.  The girls were having a blast totally unaware of the chaos surrounding them.  Emily has chickens so she was great at catching the little babies for all of them to hold. 

Campbell

Emily

Hayden

There is more to the adventures of the chicken capture but that is for another day's story.  One last thing, this girls were convinced that we needed to take one of the baby chicks home since it only had one eye left.........See y'all later!!!