This story has been a bit of a saga.

Remember back when I got Molly the leghorn to go broody and slipped some eggs under her? Well, none hatched. I think it was a combination of inexperienced first-time mother and low fertility rate of eggs. She was sitting on 6 eggs: three exploded in the nest [...]

I previously posted asking if anyone had any suggestions on how to make a hen go broody. I got some helpful answers, and did some research, and found a few suggestions:

leave eggs in the nest put golf balls in the nest, so she thinks they’re eggs set up a nice quiet nest in a darkened, sheltered corner [...]

So, after trying to stop a chicken from going broody several times throughout last year, now I want her to go broody and she won’t!

Late last year we got some new chickens – 4 brahma pullets and a rooster to match. We also acquired 3 unwanted ISA brown layers from a friend. So with the [...]

We had been planning to get a couple more chickens once we got our chook run finished. Molly is a bit of a sporadic layer, and the silkies are even less reliable. We figured a couple of good layers would shore up our egg supply so we’d never need to buy any more.

Sarah had seen [...]

After going broody since Christmas, Molly the leghorn then decided that it was time to molt.

When they molt, chickens lose lots of feathers, and new ones grow to replace them. The process requires lots of protein, so they normally stop laying during molting. They look pretty scruffy for a while too.

Finally last week, Molly started [...]

Would you eat escargot (i.e. snails) in a fancy French restaurant?

Would you buy prepared snails from a deli and cook them at home?

What about eating snails from your garden?

I was doing some research, trying to figure out how to get rid of snails in gardens, and discovered that the garden snails we get around here [...]

I’ve long watched other chicken-bloggers report their first eggs, and now it’s finally my turn!

When I came home from work today, I went out into the backyard to have a look at the garden and the chickens, as I normally do. On a whim, I opened up the door to the roost to check it [...]

We have three silkies at the moment, just about to come into lay. They’re named Seraphina, Luciana and Ro (yep, we’re big Barbie movie fans around here!).

We had a rooster named Molly as well (I know, my defense is that you can’t tell their gender as day-old chicks!), but we had to get rid of [...]