The past few weeks have been really BUSY here on the farm. I’m not sure what was making several of the hens go “broody” but 3 of them got transferred to rehab.
What’s rehab for a broody hen, you might ask? Well, in the empire of the Happy Hens there are two sides to the main coop plus a separate pen for baby chicks OR broody hens. When a hen starts sitting on eggs and she spreads herself out over the entire box–a hen can cover a lot of ground with her body–and growls and pecks and sounds like Chewbacca, that means she’s “broody” and wants to hatch eggs.
I don’t want babies right now.
So, after taking her off the nest for about 2 weeks, I decided to put her in the baby chick pen, aka “Broody Rehab”. Two barred rocks and one Amerecauna all became broody about the same time, so they weren’t lonely in the pen. It took about 3 weeks in isolation and they all started laying eggs again….now they are back in the general population with the other Happy Hens.
There’s a pond in the flower bed right at the front door to the house and it has become its own little frog haven. There’s a giant heron who guards the pond, but since it’s made of bronze the frogs aren’t very afraid…..
Now, for the big bug. I was walking along the back porch a couple of days ago and noticed what looked like a wad of black electrical tape on the hot tub. I hadn’t done anything with electrical tape in a while so I stopped to investigate–it moved! I got to looking closer and it was a giant beetle-type bug laying on its back with legs flailing in the air…….
I ran to get a camera, flipped it over, and I put a quarter beside it just to show the size of the bug–I think it’s the biggest bug-type creature I’ve ever seen! It fell off behind the tub but I did get a shot just before it tumbled off the edge (yes, my hot tub cover needs a good cleaning).
After the thunderstorms yesterday, today is going to be an awesomely gorgeous day to do some serious weeding in the gardens 🙂
Wild Things Farm 