Monday: 3 eggs

Tuesday: 3 eggs

Wednesday: 2 eggs

Dinner last night: Bacon and eggs

My wife's breakfast this morning: Eggs and toast

A couple of nights ago we had bacon and eggs for dinner as well. The first egg fried didn't cook all the way through and my wife remembered her grandfather's egg grading chard from years ago, showing how the different grades of eggs should stand when out of the shell. She then realized that she was used to store-bought eggs, which, being older, tended to spread out more than farm fresh, and therefore cooked faster. Adjustment made, meal eaten.

She has also looked up ways to preserve eggs for winter, including ways to freeze them into little cubes using ice trays. And the list of people wanting to try fresh eggs continues to grow. Good thing I have looks of chooks.

Friday: three eggs. Again, one a little smaller and paler than the others. All in the same nesting box, the one favored by the young pullets (guess I should about stop calling them chicks now) as sleeping quarters.

Satruday: Two eggs. Ended the week with a total of 11 eggs, way up from 5 last week. Worked some on turning the manure pile and moving some manure to where Henry's garden will be. The pile was steaming yesterday - turning into a hotbed of methane production, I guess. Between Henry and another friend who is a brilliant landscaper and green thumb, I think we'll have the manure taken care of. For this round, anyway. Also was able to deduce which hen was the third layer in the bunch and tagged her leg. I think I got the right one.

Today: Went out before church to let the chooks out and found two hens sitting in the nest box, with a third standing by, waiting impatiently to get her turn. After church I found three eggs. I also caught examined Jean-Bob, and I think the case is growing for calling it he/him. There's two little buds on his leg that I think are going to become spurs. Along with the redder color in the comb and wattles, along with the fact that both of those are bigger, it is definitely a he.

In other observations, today it's been raining, yet three of the Reds are out combing the yard, looking for worms, no doubt. Guess they haven't heard the expression "Mad as a wet hen."

One more egg collected last night for a total of two yesterday.

The second laying hen is for the moment starts doing her thing around 6:30 because I caught her on the nest again. She went out with the others to scratch a little, but then went right back in. So I caught her and put a red band on her leg. Looking at her, it might be Lucy, who I always thought was the skinny one. Might explain the smaller eggs (yeah, I know, she's not experienced yet - but there's a marked difference between hers and Eve's).

Two more to start laying before I wait on the chicks to grow up.

Rocky showed a little courage today - he was eating out of the goat feed pan at the same time that Lewis and Clark were stuffing their muzzles from it. And Jean-Bob's comb is still a bright red, brighter than the other Wyandottes. I still suspect that she might be a he, kind of the reverse of that old Lou Reed song.

Please note the addition of a new link category for Chicken Blogs. The first entry is Pecked, a discovery from the Backyard Chickens Message Boards. Whereas I write more about the daily, mundane side of things, Pecked is where poultry and philosophy some how meet and co-exist. There's some very good writing going on there.

One egg yesterday from Eve (large and quite brown); this morning when I opened the coop out there was one from the other laying hen (smaller, lighter brown), freshly laid and still warm with the hen hovering over it. I didn't have a chance to catch and band her, but I suspect the opportunity will come around again. I also suspect there'll be another Eve egg when I get home tonight (unless my daughter grabbed it for me this afternoon).

Mmmm, fresh eggs in half the time now.

After no egg yesterday, a surprise today. Two eggs in the cubbyhole where Eve has been laying. One was the brown that we've seen since Eve started up, the other was a lighter brown and was smaller. So it looks like one of the other Reds has geared up. Some detective work will be in order to learn who it is.

Tonight I decided that, since two of the Reds now lay in that corner by the door, I was going to make it more egg friendly. I've tried to keep straw in that corner, but it gets thinned out fast by the general population. So I took a scrap piece of 1 x 4 and nailed it against the door beam, then slid the tile brick that holds the water can an inch or two toward it to form a nice little retreat about 8" by 18" or so. Then I filled it with fresh straw, proud of my handiwork.

Tonight when I went to lock the chooks up, the coop was almost empty. The four Reds were up on perches, and only two chicks were accounted for.

You probably see where this is going. The other ten chicks - who will all be 8 weeks old tomorrow - were crammed into that little space as if it were designed specifically for them.

Maybe that's supposed to be the charm of these things - their inexplicable behavior.

More eggs on Saturday and Sunday, making a total of eight in nine days from Eve.

Saturday we borrowed a farm pickup from my wife's cousin and went across country to pick up my daughter's new doe, Clover. She's an American Alpine from a champion bloodline, and is a pretty little thing (for a goat).

The problem is that Clover is a spoiled brat. She was hand fed by the breeders, so she doesn't know the ins-and-outs of life on the Faust Farm. For example, I put down the grain for the goats on Sunday, and Clover turned her nose up at it, coming over and nuzzling me because she wants to be hand fed.

She'll catch on. When I started keeping chickens in the barnyard, Lewis and Clark were total annoyances, too, and eventually they learned the routine and that Brings Food Man also must work with the cat and chickens.

Meantime, on Saturday I built a small perch on the front of the hanging next box to hopefully facilitate it's use - if not by the Reds, then by the chicks as they reach laying age. I also cleaned out part of the tack room in search of missing pieces of the goat cart harness (the goat cart was delivered on Friday evening - check my daughter's blog because I'm sure she's detailed all of that). Sunday I found a pitchfork in an old part of the barn and confirmed that it was much better to use for moving hay and manure than the hoe was.

I have also come to the conclusion that, at least at the chick stage, the four breeds I own have different personalities. The Red Sex Links are the most adventurous. If there's something new like a perch or a pile of hay (or, yes, manure), they're the first ones to check it out. They were the first to venture out of the coop as the weather turned nice. The White Rocks are more sedate versions of the RSL's. It's like they know they can go exploring and such, but it's not cool to be excited about it. The Silver Laced Wyandottes are the barnyard ninjas. Life in the barnyard is one big party of near-body slams and flying leaps. The Rhode Island Reds are the most timid. They prefer the safety of the coop, and are usually the last ones to venture out, if at all.

And of course, as it turns out, the most timid one of all of them is Rocky, the potential rooster.

Well, perhaps Jean-Bob will turn out to be one - and then I'll have a ninja rooster.

After taking Thursday off, the first of the Reds to start laying (I'm thinking of naming her Eve for obvious reasons) presented another egg this morning. At least, I think these are all coming from the same hen. It's just a matter of time before the others follow suit.

Yesterday afternoon was nice and many of the chicks - now 7 weeks old - finally ventured outside for the first time. They enjoyed scratching around, but a lot of them were just acting crazy, sorting out who is dominant over whom. They'd stretch up and almost body slam each other, raising their hackles. They'd run at each other, keeping their heads low. They'd leap in the air like ninjas, flapping for extra height before coming down almost on top of one of the others. Think The Matrix with chicks.

The highlight of the day was when one of the Reds wandered back into the barnyard during all of this. They were all out foraging in the yard, which was great for letting the chicks sort their personal pecking order. Otherwise, the Reds would have picked at the chicks and sent them running.

In any event, one of the Reds came wandering back into the barnyard at about the moment when one of the Red Sex links charged one of her peers, doing that running and flapping thing. The Red was so shocked that she turned and ran out of the barnyard.

Score one for the chicks.

Am also wondering if the aggressive Wyandotte known as Jean-Bob is perhaps a rooster. JB doesn't seem to have as much silver factor as the others and is still mostly black (except for the head now). JB still exhibits behavior that is more aggressive than the other Wyandottes. And JB's facial features are much more colorful, more red than the others. The potential roo dubbed Rocky seems kind of wimpy by comparison. It'd be funny if Rocky turned out to be a hen and Jean-Bob the rooster. But then, such things have been known to happen in the chicken universe.

Another egg yesterday. No hidden surprises.

I think I mentioned I borrowed a digital camera from work a couple of weeks ago. I've culled the lot of pictures I took into a host of barely-adequate representations of the coop, chickens, and goats, and have opened a new wing of this site.

So click here to start your tour of the Accidental Farmer's Photo Gallery.

An egg four days in a row. That's a record for me. Mildred layed huge eggs but was highly erratic. Well, she was meant for the dinner table from the beginning.

On Monday I let the hens loose in the morning before work. My daughter found an egg in the tack room next to the stacks of baled hay when she went to work her goats in the afternoon.

Yesterday I left the girls locked up, and by afternoon there was an egg in the usual place (not a nest box, of course). They were let out for the afternoon for their reward.

I also did some poking around last night since an egg was laid in the tack room. I went into the goat stall and looked about, and sure enough - in a dark corner I found the empty shell of a brown egg. One end was broken off and the insides were missing.

This means either that the egg was laid there on Friday (before this egg streak started), or one of the other Reds is laying in odd places. I'll keep an eye on them to see if I can puzzle things out.

Meantime, I'm wondering if it's time to remove the plastic eggs from the nest boxes. Remembering Mildred, she never did lay in the box I put the golf ball in. She laid in the one next to it, as if she thought the other nest was taken. Of course, as I've said, she was an odd, um, duck. She laid her eggs on the floor until one day I caught her when I thought she was about to lay and put her in one of the nest boxes. That's the one she used from then on.

Maybe I should do the same with the Reds.

Emboldened with advice from the Backyard Chickens Forum, I went out to turn the chicks loose, only to find that one of the Reds had laid an egg. Not in any of the nest boxes, of course (why on earth would they do that?).

I still went ahead and let the chicks out and put away the chick gate for the time being. It went much better than I had expected. The Reds did a little bit of pecking to assert their dominance over them (read: we get to peck at the feeder first), but they otherwise ignored the chicks and went out to do their usual regimen of sunning and scratching for food.

Sunday morning when I went out to feed them before church, one of the Reds had sequestered herself in a small recess in the wall and was covering herself with straw, while the other three stood guard. The three vacated as soon as the door was open, but the nesting hen remained behind. So at the risk of disrupting her laying, I banded her leg and let her go. She pecked a little and eventually ended up back in the recess (and an egg was waiting when I got back from church).

I also banded the Silver Wyandotte that my daughter dubbed Jean-Bob, just so we could tell her apart from the others. You have to maintain a certain sense of whimsy when doing this, and with chickens it's not hard.

I've also delayed deciding whether to get some Barred Rocks. The ones they had remaining before Easter at Tractor Supply didn't look quite right to me, and an acquaintance who works there told me that they're expecting 500 more chicks in soon. So I think I'll wait and see what happens. I think I'd be pushing my luck to see if any Easter Eggers are in this next batch, but they may have some Barred Rocks with brighter eyes and bushier tails than those I saw last week.

By the way, my son was home from college this weekend, so he got the first egg and ate it in an A/B comparison with one that was store-bought. He much preferred the fresh free-range egg. So now maybe he doesn't think his old man is quite as nuts as when this whole chicken enterprise started.

(My mom got the second egg).

First, I did something really boneheaded last night. I fed the chicks as soon as I got home last night because I had to run off with my fellow Elders to pray over a member of our congregation with health problems. When I got back, I forgot to go back and close up the coop. Luckily, there were no marauding raccoons or rabid badgers around to get in and decimate the flock.

Now for the quandary I'm in. I've been planning to let the chicks loose this weekend. They're six weeks old now, and I think they're big enough to make their way among the Reds. When I go in to feed them, they rush to greet me, and they peck at my shoes when I step into their area. When I reach for their feeder, the stupid things think that food has magically appeared inside and rush it, so I have to shoo them away. And they peck the food down in a matter of minutes after I give them the refilled feeder.

So I'm thinking that they need to be out where they can feed themselves and start pecking around in the barnyard for grass and bugs and juicy worms.

The thing is, this morning I found the empty skin of a soft-shelled egg in the barnyard - which means that the Reds are settled after the departure of the Rosses and are getting into laying mode again. I'm afraid if I loose the chicks into the general population, it'll upset the apple cart and the Reds will take another couple weeks off from laying.

On the other hand, if I wait until the Reds are laying full steam in another couple of weeks, will loosing the chicks create a halt in production while things get resettled?

Maybe it's best to delay production now - if that's what will happen.

I just don't know.

Guess I'll post the question on the Backyard Chicken's message boards and see what the experienced folk say.

Saturday I took my mother in to get her hair done. While she was doing that, I told her I was going to Tractor Supply to pick up some goat and chicken food.

"Are you going to buy more chickens?" she asked.

I said, "If they have Barred Plymouth Rocks, I just might."

So I walk in pushing one of those low, flat carts designed for lugging feed bags around. Chick days are still on, and they have a tub full of ducklings... and a tub full of mixed pullets... a tub full of Gold Comet roos... and a tub full of straight run Barred Plymouth Rocks.

I had to think about that one really hard.

Ultimately, I refrained because 1) I had already taken down everything in the house that I used with the five week-olds (and the computer boxes I used for a brooder were burned), and 2) I'm not sure what plans for Easter my wife had made, and wasn't sure if more chicks in the dining room was amenable to those plans.

Although I could have made it work, and all I would have had to buy (besides the chicks) was a small feeder. I have an extra waterer, I could have brought the heat lamp in from the coop, and used the old dog crate as a brooder.

I told my mother about this and she laughed. Then she asked if BPR's were the ones that looked like they had stripes. I said they were and she said, "My dad kept those kind when I was a little girl."

This makes me wonder if I wasn't genetically predisposed to like raising chickens. I have no other explanation for why it resonates so much. Perhaps I'm more like my maternal grandfather than I realize (I'm a quarter Irish through him, and always wondered why Celtic music touches such a nerve with me when I hear it).

The icing on the cake is that I went home and asked my wife, "How badly would you have killed me if I'd brought home more chicks."

She said, "Well, I wouldn't have killed you..."

I said, "I was really looking hard at some Barred Plymouth Rocks at Tractor Supply."

She said, "Wow, they have Barred Plymouth Rocks? That wouldn't have been a problem."

But then she mentioned the possible incompatibility of a brooder full of chicks with possible Easter guests.

So maybe... After Easter...

Wednesday night I went into a drug store for something and saw that they had plastic Easter Eggs on sale for 33% off. Because I keep forgetting to dig out some old golf balls, I bought a dozen eggs and put them into the main and floor nest boxes to encourage the Reds a little.

Thursday morning I see three of the Reds gathered at the entrance to the floor next box, all making odd sounds. One of them had her head in the box and was pecking at the egg.

I don't know if this means they thought it was a strange egg (when Mildred laid an egg that had something wrong with it, it always managed to find its way out of the box), or if they've developed the habit of pecking and eating their own eggs. If it's the latter, I'll have to blow out some regular eggs and fill them with mustard to put a stop to it.

At least they're thinking about eggs now.

Also, last night I picked up some nylon wire ties at Radio Shack. And I'm borrowing a digital camera from my day job. Perhaps by Monday I'll have some kind of Gallery in place.