OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN!

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm! You know how I love my chickens and everyone I know who keeps them or is involved in the West Tennessee Poultry Club and is again, CRAZY about their chickens...well, last Friday, one week after introducing the new chicks to my broody Buff Oprington hen and removing her nest full of golf balls she had been sitting on, I found one chick had not survived. So this Garden Daddy decided to replace my little lost chick with another one so as to have the full compliment I had planned on.

After arriving at my local feed store to look over the chick selection, I came home with not only a replacement but 2-additional chicks. I slipped the trio under little mother and she could not tell the difference in how many she actually had. So again as previously stated, and all you flock keepers out there do not be offended, but chickens are a little on the dumb side, she could not tell any difference in one week old chicks and day old chicks...literally birds of a different feather. These little critters are just thriving, growing and fluttering around their enclosure and following Mother in her scratching and foraging, learning how to be chickens in a natural setting. My best friend keeps calling it my "science experiment" but if it is, it is working! The top two photos below are of Mama Dorothy, the Buff Orpington hen with her babies. I ended up with 2011 chicks to date, 6-Wellsummers, 1-white Chochin, 1-buff Chochin & 1 what appears to be a blue-wheaten Ameraucana, all seem happy and doing well. I am still threatening to add a duckling or two to the mix...or other if I thought I could keep animal control out of my hair here in center city Jackson, TN.

I also thought I would show you two of the molting birds in the coop. I have more than two in molt at present or ending molt in various stages of severity. The bottom photo is of a Silver Lace Wyandotte and the 2nd one up from bottom is a Barred Rock or also called Barred Plymouth Rock. Don't let this scare you but it is a natural occurrence. Not to be confused with parasite issues, which can also cause feather loss. But this is their first year of age and are no longer just pullets...but full fledged HENS! Egg laying has picked up again with molt nearing the end for the most part and now getting 10-12 eggs a day once again, still looking back to getting another 14 or so a day from my 16 full grown hens (I won't mention that I ended up with 9 new chicks under Dorothy...by the way that name came from Dorothy off the tv show, "The Golden Girls").

This Garden Daddy has the community garden well under way this spring, with greens of different varieties, lettuces, cabbages and onions in the mix. Things are in a satisfactory state there with many hours volunteered already on that project. So I leave you today with out our ongoing urban farming affirmation forever in our mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"