Goodbye, Birchie

Backyard Poultry

Birchie in the Yard

This is one of our Araucanas named Birchie. On Friday while we were away, a little hawk flew into the tree in our yard over the chicken pen. The hens all crowded into the wire-enclosed runs as usual when they see a hawk, so it couldn’t swoop down and grab them. But this bird flew down to the ground outside the run and reached through the wire to catch its prey. Sadly, it was Birchie. This was our very first loss to a predator in the past two years of keeping them, and we really don’t know why it happened just now. The other 23 hens were quite traumatized and spent the next few days huddled in their house.

Laying a Blue Egg

Here is Birchie in the nest box (before it stopped laying for the winter). It had beautiful feathers and was always a little smaller than the other hens. When I let the hens free-range, I liked to pick it up and give it a boost into the air so it could flutter down like a bird. Birchie would tag along after the other two Araucanas, peeking out from behind its feather tufts. Recently, though, it was staying alone in the house much of the time, like the other hens were harassing it. Birchie was a joy to raise for the nine months we had it. I think I’d rather have enjoyed it and then lost it, than never have raised it at all.

Fireworks Card

Artists' Gallery

Flower Card

Did you recognize this as another painting from that same photograph? This is actually a greeting card I did about a year before the large painting. As the instructor at my art class pointed out, it’s quite a bit darker than the photo. The background, especially, is too dark, but I like the depth it creates. I kept putting on more and more of the pure paint color to try to lighten it up; I later realized you add white to the paint to get the lighter shades. And lighter shades make all the difference in a painting!

Fireworks Photograph

Artist's Gallery

Reference Photograph

And now, here is the photograph that I used for the “Fireworks” painting (view it here). You can see how the painting followed the basic structure of the photo, and the front flowers have the same tilt and overlap. The colors are a little different, since I did the painting to match our living room. The flowers are also arranged much more geometrically in the painting, which has some good effects but does look a bit unnatural. Are there any other differences you see?

Frying Eggs

Backyard Poultry

Sunny-Side Up

Yum!! Nothing is better than a free-range, rich yellow egg sunny-side-up! The fresher the egg, the more the white stands up, and these are no exception. We had always got our eggs from a local farmer who has natural feed and large barns for his hens, and we thought those were much better than grocery store eggs. We didn’t know they could get better—these eggs are truly liquid gold! Here is a riddle I read once about an egg.

In marble halls as white as milk,

Lined with a skin as soft as silk,

Within a fountain crystal-clear,

A golden apple doth appear;

No doors there are to this stronghold,

Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

Gift of Eggs

Backyard Poultry

Egg Carton

Although we could eat all the eggs we got, we also gave them away as gifts. The ones above were for our landlord, who operated this farm for many years. The livestock has been long gone except for a few barn cats—until our chickens arrived. In the old barn you can still see the milking stalls, the cattle walk for loading cows on the truck, the musty hay loft, and some old machinery. The family who milked the cows always lived in the house here. So I think our landlord is happy to see farm animals on the place once again!

Nestbox

Backyard Poultry

Hen in Lower Nest Box

Here’s one of the young hens trying out the nest box. At first they’d lay their eggs almost anywhere, but soon they became very particular about laying, preferring nests that already had eggs in them. You could tell which hens were lower on the pecking order, since they’d have to leave the more-desirable nests if higher-up hens wanted to lay! We had this double-decker nest box to use when the chickens were out in the runs, and two boxes in the henhouse. The ones in the house were opened from the outside—but, for the hen’s sake, no spying when occupied!!

Basketful of Eggs

Backyard Poultry

Eight-Egg Day

Aren’t these eggs a beauty? There’s nothing better than going out and collecting freshly-laid eggs from your own nest boxes. It took my eight hens about six weeks to get up to seven and eight eggs a day. I even took pictures of every single egg I brought in for a while, I enjoyed them so much! Our next discovery was that Acorn, our “Easter egg” Araucana, did not lay blue eggs! (You can see the eight eggs here, and none is blue!) Later, I found out some Araucanas lay “pink” instead of blue eggs. I guess Acorn cheated on us—have to try again next year!

First Egg

Backyard Poultry

An Egg in the Grass

It was early August and the chickens were out in their runs on the grass as usual. I was just out checking their water and food, and suddenly—surprise!—I saw a little brown egg lying in the grass! What an exciting moment!! Since it was a week and a half early, and no nest boxes yet existed, we quickly constructed a makeshift box and put it in the run. The chickens all took great interest in it and took turns climbing in and out (even the rooster!). I’m not sure if they understood the nestbox’s real purpose or not!