I just encountered a beautiful garter snake in my backyard, inside the wire fence that keeps our chickens out of the raised beds. I hope it stays safe and avoids the six ravenous murder birds out there. #chickens
Today in the garden: irises and chickens. Who doesn't love irises and chickens? The chickens are four years old this week (they are all sisters, or half sisters). The irises are at least 20 years old. They came with the house and I've moved them several times before settling on this spot. They're finally doing well here--maybe they like being near the chickens. #gardening #gardeningMastodon #bloomScrolling #PNW #chickens
These chickens are giving me the side-eye. The closest ones look at me with their right eye, the ones further away with their left eye.
This is because the right eye is nearsighted and the left eye is far-sighted - so when they get closer, the head switches sides.
Chickens can also see UV light, so they perceive more of the spectrum than humans, but they have extremely poor nightvision and thus go to bed (roost) early.
The mother hen on the allotment field now has only three babies. I'm sure there were around 9 or 10 a couple of weeks ago.
Stigg lets the birds roam free, he let the cockerel breed, he doesn't care if the birds or chicks live or die, he only got them to piss the council off. A dog killed a hen a few days ago, he laughed. He feeds them stale white bread and they have no shelter.
The council have told him to get rid of them, especially the cockerel but he won't. #gardening#allotment#chickens
Chickens love scratching. When you dump some stuff in the chicken coop, you don't need to worry about spreading it out, the chickens will do it for you.
That's why its good to have the #compost pile in there. Also because they love pecking through the vegetable scraps.
Here they've got some dry raspberry stems that went through #HerrSchröder (our branch shredder), turning them into mulch.
12 eggs started under two broody hens. 1 hen wasn't reliable so her 4 got tossed.
The other stayed on the eggs but when I candled the other day there were only 4 maybes and 4 nothings.
There's a rooster shooting blanks or missing the target.
The hen was off the eggs this evening and they were pretty cold. Candled and they looked good, no movement. Put her back on them, checked tonight and saw some life. Now safe in the incubator. Day 19.
This is a #watercolor painting I did a few months ago but hadn't share, until we bought a scanner here in #Greece. It arrived today, I scanned the painting under #Debian#Linux without any issues (or additional drivers), and I fixed the colors with #Gimp. It's the first time I use The Gimp for my paintings (I've used The Gimp on and off since its inception, but not for my artworks). I've been using #Photoshop instead for my collages and paintings, but I stopped my #Adobe subscription a few months ago. It's all #Foss now.
I'm thinking it's bad to be a chicken right now. (not that being turned into chicken wings and chicken sandwiches would be GOOD, but... 90M chickens have been summarily executed and landfilled due to H5N1). #h5n1#chickenshttps://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-flu-summary.htm