Fluff and Puff get a nest box
posted in Livestock and Pets, OmegaDotter |Doesn’t that sound like something out of a first-grade reader?
Our silky girls, Fluff and Puff, have been subsisting in a substandard housing arrangement, to wit: no nesting box. They have had to deal with (o the horror!) a bunch of straw on the floor of le petit coop. So OmegaDad finally got with the program, sanded the (previously built) nesting box, painted it white, and then set OmegaDotter loose upon it with pink and purple paint and the instructions “do whatever you want”.
“Do whatever you want” ended up including painting a big pink heart on the plastic drop cloth, then walking on the wet paint. So OmegaDad–quick thinker, he–grabbed some of his hand condoms (disposable plastic gloves) and outfitted the girl with gloves on her feet and hands, then herded her into the house from the garage, up the stairs, and directly into the bathtub.
I got the pleasure of washing pink paint out of the dotter’s hair, which left an inordinate amount of pink paint flakes in the bathtub. Ugh.
Anyway, this evening the paint had all dried, and dad and dotter forthwith took the new nesting box and placed it in with the silkies. The idea being that at some point in time the silkies will actually consider laying eggs. Word has it that silkies don’t do much egg laying; they’re too busy being pretty and fluffy for such shenanigans. (This is The Kozmik All’s honest truth: silkies were bred to be pets, sort of the Pomeranians or Shih-tzus of the chicken world. They also, apparently, are “broody” and will happily hatch any eggs in their nests and raise the youngsters up. Chicken fostering…)
The dotter with her newly decorated nesting box:
Nesting box in place, filled with straw, and being investigated:
The silkies at the feed container:
The dotter with three of the other chickens (Comet, Angie, and Buffy, l. to r.; Winnie was being shy, as usual):
We’re swimming in eggs. We get four eggs per day. The dotter happily collects them and takes a dozen over to the next door neighbors every so often, getting $2 per dozen. So we don’t really need any eggs from the silkies; it just seems that they might need to lay some. Some day. Once in a while, when they’re feeling like it.
You will notice that the dotter is growing out her bangs; they now are almost long enough to be tucked behind her ears, but not long enough that the hair stays behind the ears for more than a few seconds. There is, behind that head, a ponytail; the stuff on either side of her face was in that ponytail this morning, but, of course, out by the time she got off the schoolbus this afternoon…
