Sunny & Hens

Since we reduced our flock of chickens, our hens and now two roosters are turning into a nice little flock. Sunny is in charge of the hens though. And he is a good rooster. He takes care of his ladies.

The first day we let them out, he was a nervous wreck. The hens were walking around looking at everything, and poor Sunny kept circling them trying to keep them all together and near him.

I could see him saying, "Stay together now...STAY TOGETHER!"

Of course the hens were too curious to stay as close as he wanted them. I don't think he enjoyed himself at all.

The next day, he made the hens stay in the coop until he had put the Rock in his place. The fighting didn't get very ugly before the Rock acquiesced, and then Sunny led his ladies out.

Now the Rock behaves himself, although if one of the hens gets far enough from Sunny, the Rock, well, gets her. But as soon as she starts squawking, Sunny charges over to her rescue, and the Rock gets out of the way. The rest of the time the Rock just follows the little flock along, staying close but not getting too close.

I love watching Sunny with the hens. I made him nervous when I was trying to take pictures of them, and he made them all run to hide in the coop. "Come ladies, quickly now! Follow ME!"

It took a couple of nights, but the Rock has also worked his way into the coop in the evenings. And the guineas walk in every once in a while. They are such polite birds. When the guineas walk in, it's like they are looking around and saying, "Oh, this is nice! I like what you've done with the place! And oh look, food! How pleasant!"The hens always look a little cross when the guineas decide to come in.

We've been keeping them in the coop until about 10 in the mornings so that most of the eggs are laid before we let them out. Well, the other morning we were all going out to do some farm chores, and we found 6 eggs in the coop, and one of those eggs was definitely a guinea egg. It's smaller and pointier than chicken eggs. So we were excited that the guineas had finally started laying.

Then, the kids caught our lavender guinea laying an egg on the side of the barn. Even more excitement!

So we were looking in this messy pile of junk (tomato stakes, scrap wood, bikes, etc.) and look what we found:

9 eggs! Some are guineas and some are chickens. How funny is that? It really is like an Easter egg hunt. We couldn't carry all the bounty that day, and had to put all of them in our bucket.

That night Eowyn soft boiled a bunch of the guinea eggs for us to try, and they were delicious. She couldn't peel them fast enough for Esmond. Jeremy said he was popping them in like grapes as soon as Eowyn would get one peeled. They are just his size.

Such a wonderful bounty. God is good.

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