we received a special request to make some chicken soup for someone going through a rough patch. happy to oblige, of course, though i did warn her that our super delicious soup starts with broth made with chicken feet. i think she thought i was joking.
no joke – beautiful broth begins with chicken feet!
and, no, these feet do not belong to any of The Girls. we get bags of feet from our local, amish source for organic meat birds.
the warmest day of spring yet with the temperature reaching just shy of 80°F create the perfect conditions in our still flowerless flower beds for a dust bath and the The Girls need no one to tell them to settle in for a Lazy Sunday of Lounging in the dirt to help control mites.
we kept a large bin of ash for them to take baths over the winter but they never seemed very interested in it. i guess maybe it just didn’t compare to a rolling around in real dirt.
chickens can sometimes have a reputation for not being particularly nice to each other but The Girls really get along quite well and it’s amusing to watch them laying all over each other enjoying the day in the dirt.
while free ranging around the yard one of The Girls discovered how to get into our fenced-in blueberry patch which features 4 inch deep pine needle mulch.
apparently this is the equivalent of Heaven on Earth and all the other Girls soon saw her followed her lead after seeing her ecstatic scratching around the mulch.
it was all good until they realized they couldn’t remember how they got in.
i can read their collective little chicken minds.
“dude, get that thing out of my face and let me out of here.”
having kicked off the 2011 grilling season somewhat humbly, i yearned to get to barbecuing proper ( or, at least as proper as you can get with a backyard gas grill ).
and i’m quickly reminded of just how unsatisfactory i find pretty much all barbecue sauces. my latest purchase, bone suckin’ sauce, is alright as far as bottled sauces go but not particularly to my taste ( even though i applaud them for no high fructose corn syrup, no preservatives & being gluten free ).
anyone have any suggestions for a bottled awesomesauce (preferably organic)? or, even better, willing to share a guarded family recipe?
see, having The Girls was once seen as your patriotic duty. now, not so much. how times have changed.
first seen on backyardchickens.
after a few weeks of enduring sub-zero temps The Girls definitely enjoyed getting out of the The Coop today with mid-day temps reaching 55°F! of course, they’ve had the opportunity to stroll around in winter when weather permits but the spring in their step made in quite obvious that they really, really, really are looking forward to warm weather and greener pastures.
OHMYGAWD! EXPOSED GRASS TO SCRATCH AND PECK!
well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. it appears that one of The Girls, a barred rock isn’t feeling well. when she took food out the coop at sunset, kris noticed she was standing with her beak in the corner of the coop, uninterested in feast which is quite unusual.
upon closer inspection we noticed her eyes were nearly closed and she was shaking and shivering. she’s not sneezing and her breathing sounds normal – not raspy – and she doesn’t have any mucous around her eyes or diarrhea so i don’t think she has a virus. or at least she’s not showing the typical signs of a virus.
even though it’s wasn’t as cold today as it has been in past weeks we thought perhaps she just got cold, so we brought her in the house to get warmed up.
of course, odin is Very Concerned about her health and sat with her petting her and telling her to rest and Get Better Soon.
she looked rather pathetic when she first came inside but eventually she opened her eyes and looked less, well, floppy than she does in this photo.
i can’t find much information on shivering hens that lack any other symptoms. most of the advice seems to be to along the lines of what we’re already doing – bring them inside, warm them up and try to get them to drink and eat. we made her some hot porridge with cracked corn which The Girls usually devour but even hours later she’s disinterested in it and actively refusing water even if we try to give it to her with an eye dropper.
i’m not sure what else to do. any advice is mightily appreciated.
update: 24 hours later and she’s still alive ( several people have told me privately that by the time they get to the shivering, shaking, no eating stage, more often than not they’ll be dead soon )!
she started slowly taking food and water this morning and she’s much more alert and less lethargic. she was so interested in not staying in her box and wandering around the house that we had to send her to the front porch. which was fortuitous move since she’s now expelling liquid diarrhea that’s really, really nasty smelling and not really brown – more like a clear-to-yellow viscous liquid.
all other signs except for the diarrhea are positive. maybe she’s just working through a stomach flu?
