Soggy Saturday

So, it was dreary and only got up to the mid 50's and it was mizzling as my mother calls it. Sounds a little like something a puppy shouldn't do in the house, doesn't it?

Any day that you'd rather stay in your pj's and watch movies, well, the critters on the farm have the same inclination. When it's dreary and cool, the horses happily doze in their stalls. Well, other than Tug and Rosie, who have to learn to love a soggy spring day, because Tug jumps out of all the stalls and Rosie has kittens if she's not joined at his hip (I'm sure there will be several Tug stories another day). The dogs had to be forcibly kicked out the back door (we wouldn't want any indoor "mizzling"), and the chickens mostly sit on perches all day, apparently catching up on days of backlogged preening and hen gossip.

"Did you see that egg she laid? ugh. The color was SO last year..."

The only animals on the farm who are ecstatic about this weather are the ducks and geese! They play in mud puddles, splashing like a toddler that got out of mom's reach, and generally have enough fun to cover for all the other animals.

The day started off with a bit of a downer, as Carl found Big Mac dead in his apartment. Big Mac was a Partridge Cochin rooster, who unfortunately ended up looking like a feathered basketball. He was not named for the sandwich, but because he was the bigger version of the bantam Partridge Cochin that the kids named Mac. Of course, the name ended up being rather prophetic, since he had become shockingly fat (for a chicken).

It was bad enough that he pounced on the laying mash the hens need to lay eggs with good nutritional value, snarfing it so fast that he would choke, hardly letting them get any, but then we caught him eating said eggs...

This is an unforgivable offense around these parts, with a penalty of permanent exile to the back yard with all the other miscreants. 

Big Mac was doing an admirable job at losing weight, running far more than I ever do, eating fresh (...whatever it is they pick at in the yard,  I don't want to know) but he started a fight with one of the linebackers dressed as a rooster that we have here. So, a few days ago I rescued him from imminent demise, and chucked him into one of the newly constructed chicken apartments while I tried to figure out what to do with him. He was 6 years old, originally from McMurray hatchery, and he had a heart attack last night at some point. I can only assume that obesity and age put together were more than his inbred heart could handle. (I'll go into the vast problems with the chickens I've had from McMurray on another day)

So, RIP Big Mac, if there's a heaven for chickens, yours will have lots of buxom hens and all the laying mash you can choke down.

Today's Egg Count: 7

that's a slow day for eggs around here, I can only assume that 2 gloomy days in a row left the girls uninspired...