Double Trouble!!

Well, well, well... What do we have here? Yes it's a second "clucky" hen..... What can I say?

It's a sitting stand-off... who's gonna hatch the egg first......

We won't tell them that 2 chickens sitting on an (unfertilized) egg won't make it hatch any faster...This now means that I only have 2 chickens earning their keep. With Spring around the corner (high season for egg laying), this isn't good.

She’s gone clucky!

What is clucky (broody)?

It’s when a hen decides to sit on her eggs for days, sometimes weeks on end in hopes of hatching her (or another hen’s) eggs. The eggs won’t hatch because they have not been fertilized by a rooster (because I don’t have one). The chicken becomes anxious and bad-tempered with a tendency to peck at anyone or any other hen coming close to the nest. One other thing to note is that she also stops laying…. Not good!

This is a pic of my clucky hen



I try to keep her out of the coop to discourage her from sitting in the nest. Since she sits all day long she has already lost a bit of weight which isn’t healthy for an already small hen.

She can’t get in, so she paces the ramp





Since the others need to lay (earn their keep!), I have to put her in the “dunce box” for a couple of hours while the others go to work- with food and water provided of course…

Classy, huh?

Fortunately, out of my 6 chickens, 4 are laying so, one nest will do. The other two will come in to season next month. At which point I hope my clucker has come right…

Juicing it

Winter is winding down with Spring just weeks away, and I’m getting antsy. I long for the days that I can play in my garden… yay! So this weekend I decided to dust off the old juicer that we received from Catherine and Jen for our wedding. It’s one of the only electric appliances that came with us from America. (Reason being is the plugs and voltage are different here. We have a voltage converter to use when we use the electrical items from the States…. too long of a story and I’m getting off track…)

Back to juicing....

Since I’m getting antsy and still can’t plant my garden, I decided to start planning which veggies I’d like to plant this year. I thought I’d get motivated by making juice. What better way to decide your veggie garden than create your own favourite vegetable juice recipes.

Saturday’s juice was made with celery, tomatoes, carrots and a lime. This is the before and after.




Sunday’s juice had more veggies (since I have a veggie garden and not a fruit garden). We made it with carrots, beetroot and oranges.



I couldn’t believe how much juice came out of the beets! This juice was my favorite out of the two but, I’d make them both again.

Now, nothing goes wasted in this house. I kept the peels from the carrots, beetroot and oranges for my compost bin, and the pulp from the juicer (which is like a fine breadcrumb consistency) for the chooks.


The girls devoured it (no photo of the devouring!)! Later my decomposed food scraps will become soil which goes back into my garden. I love it!!!

New Discovery

While at my local produce store, I saw a lady gathering loose scraps of lettuce and other types of greens from a bin under the shelf. I asked what she was going to do with that bag of greens and how much do the owners charge her (while thinking I could grab some for my chickens). She informed me that she keeps guinea pigs and rabbits and that the bag of greens were free!!!! OMG! I couldn’t believe it!! All this time I’ve been buying whole cabbages and different types of greens to feed my chooks while I could have been getting it for free….

This is the bin under the lettuce.


And, here are the chookies enjoying their free greens.


Like they say, one person’s trash is another one’s treasure.