Chicken Littles

August 1st already.  I honestly can’t believe it and am sitting here trying to figure out where this year has gone.  I mean, really!  At this rate we’ll be stoking the fire next week.  Or, so it will seem!

But, like it or not, August is here.  Which also means that our chicken littles are three and half months old and are growing up.

They are finally venturing deeper into the paddock in search of delicious bugs.

And, the big girls are tolerating their presence a little better.

After removing their grow-out cage from the coop they began roosting in and on the nest boxes for the night.  Since chickens are little poop-machines, even while roosting, the nest boxes quickly became gross and limited where the big girls could lay.

Eeeewww!!

So, this morning CountryBoy removed two of the three nest boxes out of the coop and into the stall where the other nest boxes were.  He then added a roost just for the littles. We’ll see what kind of mayhem these changes make come this evening as the littles look for their familiar sleeping quarters that are no longer there!

The big girls already seemed quite pleased to have a few more clean places to lay now.  We’re hoping this will encourage all, or at least most, of them to lay since we keep running out of eggs at the market.  We are averaging a dozen a day which sounds like a decent amount but it’s not enough to keep up with the demands of the market.  And that’s a good thing because it means the customers are enjoying our girls’ eggs.

It does my heart good to see all the girls running around the paddock soaking up some Vitamin D and searching for bugs.  Happy chickens lay delicious eggs with that nice orange yolk!

Hopefully, we’ll start getting some small green eggs in the next month or two from the littles.  They will be too small to sell but we will enjoy them and will use them at our Sunday morning breakfasts at the church.

Speaking of small, the okra have finally begun to make an appearance…

We got a late start on the garden this year but if the first frost holds off we may get a decent harvest.  Fingers crossed.  I’ve got a few people who are counting on okra for pickling and frying!

Till next time my friends!