Trouble Brewing

I have my chicken, and I love these silly girls.  For the first couple of flocks I had Buff Orpingtons, they are a bigger chicken, more robust to handle the cold Michigan winters.  They are great layers, but only for about 2 years then after their first molt they kind of wax and wane with egg production.

I decided to get what they call Silver Laced Wyandottes this year to add to my flock.  Not quite as hefty, took a bit longer to lay than the Buff Orpingtons, but they are gorgeous chickens.  Downside is they are very stubborn.   I would compare dealing with them like being the mother to 13 fifteen year old girls at the same time.  We have had some misadventures due to our unwillingness to cooperate with curfew among a few things and met a very bad fate.

Now I know they all get a little rambunctious.  I mean I find eggs laying in the middle of the coop instead of the areas where they normally lay.  I hear tapping late at night from their coop, which sounds like Morse code.  Whenever I go outside during the day the noise level increases substantially.  The Wyandottes are very demanding for attention. 

In the mornings I feed them some bread, fresh veggies and the past couple of weeks they have got an apple or two diced up, sometimes they get a banana or an avocado--it gets thrown into the chicken run to make them scratch, they also get a couple small scoop of mealworms for protein.   When it is dry I will fling a handful of feed out there too.  It is good for them to scratch (the term used when chickens looking for food on the ground and/or forage).  I also feed them a huge scoop of a mix of cracked corn, and egg layer in their big feeder, which is about a foot away from the waterer. 

When it gets cold their water gets moved inside, it is heated.  My biggest problem is this waterer only holds 4 gallons so it gets filled every 3-4 days, sometimes every 2 days depending on how busy the girls have been during the day.  Today was a water day.  Imagine my surprise when I unplugged it and took it to the hydrant to fill.  Number one it stunk, and secondly I found it full of corn from their feed.   In fact it smelled like sour mash.  Now I know why they are so rowdy, and all the noise at night.  They are brewing moonshine in there, I am positive. 

And having parties.