Mega Egg-A-Day update July 5 to July 20.

I’ve been working on a few other things, and haven’t done the Egg-A-Day posts for a while… I get distracted by birds and flowers and stuff.

Here are some of the better ones, and I will mention that about midway down there are videos of Pixie rolling eggs, Pixie looking at the camera up CLOSE, and a demonstration of how a rooster picks a berry.

So, here they are. This is a relative status quo post, as we still have the racoon visiting occasionally, and it’s getting eggs and chicken food that’s left out later into the evening, but so far (and it’s probably dumb to say this) I still have 13 unperforated chickens. And last night, I went out to check on a suspected disturbance in the yard and it was 3 young looking coons, 1 in a closer tree, 2 up a farther away tree… three. Three?! And they look smaller than the other coon. Hmm. I had seen a road kill coon about 1/4 mile away which looked about the right size for the one visiting the yard, but I was saddened to find eggs going munched afterwards. I mean, if a coon’s going to get roadkilled, I was hoping it was the problem coon, so if something had to die on the road at least it solved my problem. Oh well, maybe it was the coon ‘holding’ the territory with my yard in it, and then when it got whacked, the new 3 sneaked in? Or I have now got a gang of coons and a single coon to combat.

Here we go:

July 5.

July 6. I found a few bits of egg shell on the 6th, and Jezza is still cute and needs a furrever home!

July 7, a bit of luck to be gathering them after dark and not having the coon get to them.

July 8.

July 9, in which I video a mildly miffed Pixie.

July 10, so I went out earlier in the day to check on a noise in the yard, and saw, uh-oh, feathers! But they look like maybe it’s Gizmo’s feathers? So I made sure I got eyes-on for all the chickens, and tried to get pictures of them. Everyone seemed to be ok (and still is as of this writing), but if you look at the pictures closely, you’ll see what probably caused the kerfuffle. It’s kind of blurry, but the brazen bugger just slunk out right past me out of the run, and between the shed and the run. He must have been trying to raid for eggs? And oddly enough, lately, I’ve noticed that Gizmo, who used to be the lowest of the roosters, is suddenly not only bossing Mac-n-Cheese around, he’s running Dire off whenever he feels like it… I’m wondering if of the three roosters, Gizmo was the only one with enough nuggets to lay a few kicks on the coon? The coon did look a bit mussed (no blood) while it slunk past. I wonder if that’s why there were eggs to collect that evening.

July 11, Pixie and Kyle weren’t pleased with me. And Indy just wanted some cuddles… she follows me around when she wants attention, and if not, she’s off doing her thing. Pixie is mad because I moved her and took her eggs. Kyle is mad because yet again, I allowed there to be a thunder storm, and OH NO NO NO those are terrifying, even while wearing a Thunder Shirt.

Skip July 12, I was in Duncannon, glowering at a pizza. So, here is July 13, gathering both the 12th’s and 13th’s eggs. Not surprisingly, we did lose some eggs to the coon, but also there were that hadn’t been munched.

July 14th, nothing too exciting here.

July 15, with a minor loss of egg, but still some to collect. I think there might have been another in the olive barrel, but all that was left of it was gooey sawdust.

And July 16. I included a picture of the Locust tree up near the driveway because the leaves are so pretty. And some pictures of the chickens because it’s kind of a main theme in the Egg-A-Day… eggs ‘n’ chickens, you know.

And July 17 I was at work until late, so the coon(s) had free range of the eggs…and made use of it. However, while I was doing the collecting, I did get a chance to take a few pictures (mostly blurry) of a spider demonstrating that while they have tiny eyes, a lot of arthropods (such as arachnids and insects) do produce eye shine if you blast light onto their eyes.

And July 18 gave me a chance to get another quick video of Lacey doing her cluck up or down the path in the yard… So weird! Chickens…Also, one of the chores I got done was re-great stuffing the gap between two of the wood sheds, and filling some holes in the metal roof over the chicken run (and on the wood run, too) with the excess in the stuff can. I have no clue if that will keep more water out of the run, or somehow make it worse, but we’ll see.

July 19, nothing too exciting. It’s been hot and humid and nasty in my opinion lately, just in case y’all have been wondering.

And today, July 20. Nothing too exiting with the eggs in general, but I do want to mention that yesterday night, as I mentioned earlier in this post I think, I spotted 3 young raccoons near the coop, up two trees. I’ve been using gobstoppers as ammo for the sling shot wrist rocket thing (as they won’t chip like marbles and leave glass shards, or leave metal lumps in the wood, but I think they’re solid enough to leave a bruise on a coon if I actually do hit one).