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.
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.
Such a wonderful bounty. God is good.
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Watching chickens is so much fun, isn't it?! I love my flock and would love to get some guineas one day as I have heard they are good with keeping snakes away. Here in Australia, snakes are a scary problem on farms.
ReplyDeleteI've heard guineas are good with lots of predators. I got them because of their tick eating, I really hate ticks. We'll see in the spring if it's working or not.
DeleteYou have such healthy looking chickens! Isn't it such a beautiful blessing gathering 'homegrown' eggs...? We have a few hens and a rather mean rooster which we named Mr Darcy. I love to see how excited they get when we let them out to wander and enjoy a yummy snack or two... Visiting from The Art of Homemaking Mondays today! Blessings, Kelly-Anne
ReplyDeleteHow fun to go egg hunting! We found a patch of eggs and assuming they were our chickens, started cooking with them only to realize later that they were wild geese eggs!! Yikes! Thanks for sharing your homesteading fun on the Art of Home-Making Mondays this week :)
ReplyDeleteThey're all so pretty! Thanks for linking up to Awesome Life Friday! We will be pinning this post and Featuring it this week - can't wait to see what you're sharing this week!
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