Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Hand Feeding

Henrietta taking meal worms
Recently, Sheri called me all excited, because she had just gotten Henrietta to eat meal worms out of her hand.  None of the hens had ever done that before.  But, then again, we hadn't fed them meal worms before the weather started turning colder.  In an effort to help supplement their diet, since they can't scratch for bugs and such during the winter, we bought some dried meal worms.  We'll try other foods, such as table scraps as we have them, or cooked potatoes, or even hanging a cabbage for them to peck at, as we get time to do so.

Beulah
Beulah, on the other hand, would have no part of getting close enough for us to touch her.  She's always been much more stand-offish.  She'll come around when we're working in the garden, or in the back yard, but don't make a move towards touching her.  When we do catch her she clucks the entire time until we let her go again. She doesn't really seem to care much for meal worms, anyway.  They're really individual characters much like our cats.

Hens in run before being enclosed
I really suspect it's Henrietta that is laying the first egg each morning.  It just seems that Beulah goes into the nest box much later.  I don't know if that is part of the pecking order or not.  Of course, with only two hens there's not much of a pecking order.

Both hens seem to be quite content, though.  The temperatures are dipping into the single digits at night, but the enclosure seems to be doing a good job of keeping them protected from the weather.  The real test will come when the temps drop below zero for any length of time.

2 comments:

  1. Do you guys just have chickens? Sounds like a fun projet :) I keep telling my husband that one day I want to own a goat.

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  2. We have the two chickens and four cats. They're indoor cats - 3 Himalayans, and 1 Persian. Maybe one day we'll get a toy Pomeranian like yours. I doubt we'll have the patience to teach it to roll over and play dead, though.

    Why would you need to own your own goat when your dad has plenty at the ranch? Aren't they stinky enough for you?

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