Adding some fowl, subtracting a rooster, and multiplying eggs

We have eggs!

Our first egg

Some are brown and some are white (the color depends on the breed of chicken). We know that at least three of the hens are laying, and it might be all four. We're getting about two eggs a day, sometimes three. So far they're all small, probably smaller than medium eggs you'd get at the grocery. As the chickens get everything figured out, they'll become more normal sized. But we've done some testing, and even though they're small, they're perfect on the inside.

Cooking up our first homegrown breakfast

I'm also very happy to report that our annoying rooster, Charlie Murphy, is no longer our problem. On Sunday morning Mike cornered him in the chicken coop, wrapped him in a towel, and stuffed him into our cat carrier for transport to his new home: Mike's parents' house. They were in need of a new rooster, and we were happy to make it happen. They live in a more isolated area than we do and are used to hearing crowing (at one time I think they had three roosters), so the change suits all the people involved just fine. They also have a bigger flock of hens and more area for the birds to roam, so we're confident that Charlie will be very happy at his new home. 

But we didn't leave our hens lonely: The same day, we finally brought home two guinea fowl to add to our flock. Mike's mom raised a bunch of guineas from eggs earlier this year, and they've grown up at her house with the chickens. Unfortunately, our chickens have never seen guineas before, and since they're terrified of everything that moves, they've been in a state of alarm for the past day. When the guineas walk near them, they flee, sometimes attempting to crash through the chain link. And the guineas are afraid of me and Mike and aren't used to being penned up, so they've also had their share of panic. Hopefully everyone will calm down and get used to the new situation in a few days.

Our two guinea fowl. This is the best picture I could get, because they never stop running. 

Eventually we want to be able to let the guineas out to free range so they can eat ticks (reported to be their favorite snack), but the logistics are tricky. They're safer outside than the hens, because they can fly up high in trees. But if they sleep outside, they're still vulnerable to raccoons and owls, so we need to train them to take shelter at night. The coop is the obvious choice, but I don't know how to let the guineas in and out while keeping the chickens inside. The barn might work, but then we'd have to deal with guinea poop all over the barn, and some predators could still get at them. I have no idea how we're going to settle this.

She wants to be friends with the chickens, but they're strongly opposed to the idea.

Shower remodel

Although most of our posts have been about outside projects, we do work on the inside of the house here and there. My approach to home improvement is to dwell on something I dislike for 6 months or so, stewing about how ugly it is and how much better it could be, until one day I finally get motivated and tackle the project in a whirlwind. And a feature of this house that I've been stewing about since the day we moved in has been the shower doors.

The shower as it was. Not hideous, but not good.

I think shower doors can be fine, but the ones in our master bathroom were really gross along the edges and impossible to clean. They were also too low, so I had to duck or smash my head every time I got in and out of the shower and water sprayed over the top. I also kept imagining how annoying it was going to be to bathe a baby while leaning over the sharp edge at the bottom and having access to only half the tub at a time.

Grossness at the bottom -- and this only a few months after we'd already stripped and replaced the caulking.

I finally got motivated this week to remove the doors, and then I felt ridiculous for having procrastinated so long when the entire project only took an hour.

I started by taking off the doors and spraying all the caulk on the frame with Goo Gone Caulk Remover. Then after I took out the screws holding the frame to the edges of the shower, the four metal sides of the frame were pretty easy to pry off. What was left on the two sides of the shower was pretty scuzzy, but what was underneath the bottom piece was downright frightening.

The horror!

Miraculously, by using a scraping tool equipped with a razor blade and a bit more Goo Gone, it only took a little elbow grease to clean up all that old caulk and gunk. I scrubbed all the surfaces with a bleach solution and steel wool for good measure, and then they looked shiny and new!

The perfectly smooth, clean surfaces revealed after a bit of scrubbing.

The only remaining task is to fill the screw holes, visible in the picture above, with dabs of caulk. They'll still be noticeable, but the shower curtain will hide them most of the time.

In my humble opinion, a vast improvement.

I feel much better about the whole bathroom now. I always felt icky having something so dirty and uncleanable so close to where we wash ourselves. Now the bathroom is perfect . . . except for the rusty light fixture, the flimsy door, the ugly doorknob, the missing towel rod, and the mismatched light switches. One thing at a time, I guess.

Grown-up chickens

I thought I'd give an update on the chickens now that they're nearly grown up and their situation has settled down. Our final count after coyote attacks is five birds. Our rooster, Charlie Murphy, is turning into a very handsome fellow. He's noticeably bigger than the hens and has a nice greenish sheen to his feathers. He tends to favor the two hens of his own breed, Henrietta and Helena Bonham Carter. Henrietta was the one who hurt her foot a couple months back, but she seems healthy and happy now. Then we have small, spry Junebug, who's too nervous to hold still for a photo, and plump Marjorie Stuart Baxter. We check regularly for eggs, because the hens are now 5 months old and should start laying any day now, but so far no luck.

Charlie Murphy, crowing proudly -- much to our annoyance

The more unpleasant development that comes with chicken maturity is that Charlie has turned into a serious crower. What was at first charming has become incredibly annoying, because he starts every day with 20 minutes or more of repeated crowing. Usually that starts around 6:30 or 7, but he's clocked in before 6 a.m. a couple times. Then any time he hears people outside or we come near, he crows 10 or 15 times. And he can be counted on to give another half dozen crows at random throughout the day. The noise is really loud (and obnoxious), and our neighbors might be starting to hate us. I don't have any friendly feelings myself when I'm hoping to sleep til 8 on Saturday morning and he wakes me up before dawn.

Marjorie the hen

The crowing isn't the only strike against Charlie Murphy. He's proved himself worthless at keeping squirrels out of the pen and coop (they squeeze right through the chain link), so we've had a parade of rodents chowing down on chicken feed. He's starting to show signs of being aggressive towards people when we go in their enclosure, which is unwelcome now but will become dangerous when his spurs grow in. And we don't need him to protect the hens anymore since they aren't really free-range now and are well protected by their pen. The only purpose he serves for us at this point will be fertilizing eggs in case we want to hatch more chicks next spring. But Mike's mom has offered us a nice gentle rooster who never crows who could serve the same purpose, so Charlie is on thin ice with us. If he keeps up his current behavior, we'll be offering a free rooster on Craigslist to whoever wants him. Kind of funny how a month of bad behavior can totally negate all the affection I had for a bird we raised from a cute little chick.