Yesterday we finished planting the first round of corn, and only have a few plants left to get into the ground before we call the 1st planting DONE!  I’m so happy!  We have added some really great things this year including 3 new Apple trees and 2 Concord Grapevines.  These will be fantastic for us as apples & grapes are at the top of our favorite fruit lists.  Next week I’ll be taking the time to update our Gardens section of this site. Remember Blue’s Mystery Chix?  Well, here they are at 2 months old, aren’t they adorable?

They are living on the back porch on an open deck, with netting to keep them in, and they come into a dog crate at night to sleep in the roofed part of the porch.  It’s temporary as I have all but 1 of them up for sale.  Turns out the Blue is looking like a Blue Australorp really, not Blue Orpington and the Blacks also appear to be Australorps and would be carrying the blue gene.  This may very well be helpful to someone working on a Blue Australorp project.  We’ll see.

Today was very windy, I had to keep my seedlings inside.  There was also very little sun to speak about, the wind chimes played their song all day long and are still ringing as I type.  I have been in one big “blah” mood for a few days now, too much work, too little time, not enough motivation.  On Tuesday I received a box with little fuzzies in it, 9 white & 3 blue orpingtons.

Unfortunately there were shavings in the box instead of the usual packing materials and 1 of my whites had what they call spraddle leg.  This is essentially terminal due to the fact that they won’t be able to walk, feed or care for themselves.  Spraddle leg looks painful and when you see the pain wearing on what should be an energetic little chick, you just can’t help but cry a little inside.  It’s essentially like when Bambi was trying to walk on ice, and his legs flew out from underneath him, except in reality little chicks don’t get back up to regain their footing, they simply lie there, face into the ground crying, never able to get up again.  It’s awful and I hope that you never have to experience this, putting down an otherwise perfectly healthy chick because he/she seriously lost their footing.  This is why you MUST use some kind of non slip surface in your brooders for the first few days of life.  They won’t come back from this well, if at all.

The weather is supposed to perk up tomorrow and on Sunday as well, so I need to get some computer work done today so I can get out of this office tomorrow!  I’ll close with pics of my new fuzzies!  8 White Orpington Chicks, 3 Blue Orpington Chicks and 2 Mixed Wyandotte Chicks