[I Love Life On The Farm: Chicken Edition] [Find the tour of the grounds here.] [Find the Barn Door Edition here.] [Find the Barn Animals Edition here.] [Find the Caves and Cows Edition here.]
In addition to the cows, llamas, and alpacas on the farm, there are also chickens. Eight of them to be exact.
They lay eggs all day long. In fact, it's the sunlight that makes them lay eggs. That's why lots of chicken houses keep the lights on all night long, so they can mass produce lay eggs. But not at this farm. These chickens only lay eggs during real sunlight hours, and they get to sleep during the night.
This is Sheryl Crow. He's a rooster. Yes, he. That's not a typo - at this farm, Sheryl Crow is a male. (Are all roosters male? Wait, don't answer that.)
I don't think Jack and Jan meant to buy a rooster. They thought he was another chicken, but turns out he wasn't. The funny thing about Sheryl is that he sounds like he's still working on perfecting his cockadoodledo. Because practice makes perfect, he doesn't just crow in the early morning like most roosters, he crows any time the mood strikes him. And it strikes him about ever 15 seconds. But it's kinda the funniest cockadoodledo ever.
You can see him crowing here.
Saturday Jan let us go with her to feed Sheryl and his chickens and to check their house for new eggs. She threw down the bag of food she'd been collecting and they came and gobbled it up.
While they pigged out, we snuck in to take their eggs. Here's a picture of Doc with their house so you can get a feel for the size of it.
Allison and I went in first; it was like a grown-up Easter egg hunt!
Found one!
Their nests in the house are set up like bunk beds. Can you see the other egg we found over to the far left?
We searched all over but only found those two eggs. We were still proud of them. Look at their pretty blue and green colors!
Doc wanted to check out the inside so we sent him in while we admired our eggs. Good luck, we told him.
And whattaya know, he stepped out with three more eggs! Show off.
According to Jan, after the chickens lay an egg, they sing a little "I just laid an egg" song. Actually, I know it's true because she showed us a video of it, and its pretty hysterical. Between Sheryl crowing all the time and the chickens bragging about laying eggs, the chicken pen can be pretty entertaining! Who knew?
There are ducks, too. Did I already mention that? In with the chicken are a handful of pretty ducks - mallards, maybe?
Some of them know how to fly, but so far, they seem just fine staying put at the farm. They have no desire to fly south or anywhere else.
The sunlight here is long gone so, like the chickens, I'm going to rest. We'll have another edition tomorrow. Goodnight!