It’s quite unbelievable to me that it is partway through January already!  I have been SO busy, and that is an understatement for certain!  I hope you had a WONDERFUL holiday, no matter which you celebrate, and that your families (poultry, pets & livestock too) are healthy, happy & successful!

For me, last year went out with a BANG!  I came up with a wonderful idea to start sharing the Chicken Snacks I created for my own flocks, and so far they have been very well received.  I still have some kinks to work out as far as printed recipes go, and some of the folks who have been buying these snacks are really quite creative & helpful in that they are sharing their experiences & suggestions with me so that I can pass them onto others.   I’m looking forward this year to getting all the legal paperwork done so that I can make this into a bona-fide side business for myself.  I’d like to do more than just sell the Chicken Snacks, as I am always swirling with ideas and brimming with creative talent 😉  (don’t worry, I can still fit my head through the coop doors :D)

So far this year the ENTIRE country practically is freezing.  Even our Florida Oranges need little winter jackets (can you imagine?? LOL) because the Arctic air from our friends in Alaska & Canada has decided to head south for some winter fun.  Fun perhaps for Jack Frost, he might have a chance to defrost, meanwhile us southerners are FREEZING OUR WATTLES OFF!!!!  Seriously! Enough with the cold I say.  While I continue to read stories of good people losing their chickens to this cold, I have found that mine are doing well.  Can I get two cheers for COLD HEARTY birds??  Hip Hip Hooray, Hip Hip Hooray!  There is a little drying on a couple of the roosters combs, but by and large everyone is out and about even in the single digit temperatures.  Crazy chickens!   I do have 1 hen in the house though, she is in a crate in our living room until further notice.  It’s a buff hen, and for some reason or another, she had the hardest time getting rid of her mite infestation.  But finally she was free of them and started laying eggs again.  Then the cold hit, and the mice came flocking back and the mites have re infested her again, her and 2 other birds out of my flock of 50 or so.  Totally strange.  Anyway, I thought she was going to clean up well, I did treat for them and about two weeks later when it was time to give her a second dose we found her in the nest box ‘flipping out’.  I really don’t know what to call it, her head was flying everywhere, like Stevie Wonder motion combined with a seizure.  It was scary, losing her balance, she was clearly on the verge.  We brought her in, flea shampooed her to remove the mites immediately, gave her the follow up dose and decided to keep her in.  She is still missing a good deal of feathers from the molt, and I think that the cold simply put her over the edge.   She spazzed out all day the first day, we gave her vitamin water & I scrambled an egg for her which she ate greedily while still wrapped in a bath towel.  Its a good thing because judging by her droppings, she hadn’t eaten in a day or two.  She hadn’t lost any significant body weight though.  Then we provided some Flock Raiser and let her be in her crate while she dried under a heat lamp.  Day 2 we saw a few of the “spasms” in the morning hours but she was calm & still most all the day eating more and more, even preening by the evening.  Day 3 is like a different chicken.  She’s up and around, is eating well.. the droppings are more & more solid each time.  We even let her run around the house briefly yesterday.   Actually I was making up some chicken snacks, mixing seeds, and I spilled a few and thought she might clean them up for me, like the dogs do the rest of the foods.  So I put her on the floor by the pile I made and she looked at it, then looked at me like “WHAT?  You want me to eat off your FLOOR???  What do I look like? A DOG??”  I swear, it was funny.  How silly of me to think that a chicken might eat the sunflower seeds & corn off the floor.  Nope.. grass, dirt or feed bowls only apparently for my flock 😉

Anyway, everyone else really is doing well.  All who were laying are still laying.  8 of the Australorps have started laying, even Lexi’s Bantam Cochins have started to lay.. their first egg came on a single digit day!  Go figure, these chooks don’t seem to mind the cold much at all.   The ones who are NOT laying, are all older.  They were 7 or 8 months old when the cold set in and they quit or they were a year & a half old and quit laying at the molt and haven’t started again yet.  ALL of those who should’ve came into lay in the middle of Nov/Dec & now Jan, seem to be laying right through as if to scoff at the sun and show their defiance of mother nature!

Well.. it’s been a long post, and I should scoot off now to get other things done………..

I spoke too soon.  My daughter just came in from filling feeders with a Cockerel from my GLO pens, he was bleeding ontop of his beak.  It looks as though he’s torn the connection where the comb comes in or just even peeled back a little skin right there.  I applied some Quick Stop and held pressure on it, CAREFULLY blocking his nostrils so he didn’t inhale that stuff.  So… there is our first cold weather injury…  it’s single digits again out there right now, highs in the teens today so we’re having to check often on everyone, replenishing warm water etc.  Lets hope Jack Frost heads home soon and this is worst we’ll see.

I hope to get a regular blogging schedule this year, so that it will be easier for those of you who are following along, to know when I’ll be blogging.  I’ll let you know!