Chicks and Pigs

The interesting thing about having your hens free ranging is that, well, you don't always find all the eggs. We generally collect eggs a couple times a day and the hens for the most part lay their eggs in areas we have situated for them. Hens prefer to lay eggs in areas that are somewhat protected, which for them means hidden and hard to see. But if you know that you can set up areas where they would like to lay their eggs and generally it works. But if you free range hens that means you are always on the lookout for eggs that are laid in new and bizarre places, and it means you don't always find them. We apparantly have a couple rogue hens that not only stayed hidden with their eggs, but they hatched them out. Hatching eggs outside in mid October is not exactly great conditions for raising chicks, so we are watching the hens to see how they are doing and at the first sign of distress or of them deciding raising chicks in -5 is too much work, we will swoop in and bring them inside. So we have one hen with four chicks in our yard and one hen with a couple chicks in our very nice and patient neighbours yard.

So this is a picture of the hen with her chicks. If you look closely you can see where she has hidden them.

This is a better picture of the chicks. You can see that they are all slightly different in markings. We have a couple different breeds of hens and we have three Buff Orpington roosters (which are a light brown) and a Bard Rock (which is black and white). So we will see what the babies look like when they grow up. The only thing I can say with confidence is that the yellow chick will probably grow up to be light brown. I have no idea about the other three - although I think the more solid dark one of the bunch will be a rooster.

We also brough home three weiner pigs. We have a couple more due to arrive when they are old enough. These piggies are actually a little big for weiners. The producer was kind enough to keep them for an extra week or two while I was busy with consulting work. Their new pen has a couple logs and a big pile of dirt/manure for them to play in, which they wasted no time in getting to know. Something about pigs really makes a ranch feel like a ranch. And between the chickens and the pigs there are no leftovers at our place.