Notes From Zone 4

Adding chickens to the morning chores hasn’t been much of a change yet, but I guess that’s because there are only five of them, four hens and a rooster. It’s been really cold at night this week, getting down to -15 degrees, and when I went out to check on eggs yesterday, I found three, all completely frozen solid and cracked. Their water was also frozen solid. I think that will get better when we have more chickens in the coop, but for now, we are just bringing them out new water, often, and checking for eggs more often as well. I managed to snag two yesterday afternoon that were still warm, and there were none this morning at all. They’ve done so well considering they were just kidnapped and moved someplace strange.

We’ve got two incubators going now, the fancy one with 26 eggs in it started yesterday, and a cheap Styrofoam one from Agway with 54 in it. We put the newest eggs in the good incubator. Theoretically, we could get 80 chicks, but somehow I doubt that’s going to happen. They should start hatching at the end of the month! It’s very exciting. I will try not to take lots of pictures of eggs in incubators.

Yesterday, we took 44 eggs to Elaine and David at Frelsi Farm, plus her two hens from Lyle. She has a great Icelandic rooster already, such a handsome, friendly boy. We had a great time, and hopefully absorbed all of the information about Icelandic sheep that they so generously gave. They shear really late, after the wool break, in late May, not before lambing like everyone else always recommends, and gave us a lot of other stuff to think about. I can’t wait to have as many sheep as they have!

Their pack of Icelandic sheepdogs was just amazing. So friendly, so cute, so smart, so much fun to be around. Our little guy is going to miss running with them all. I can see how they can become as much of an addiction as the sheep are. Elaine says they are great at rooting out rodents, which should come very much in handy. Boy did they keep all of the crows out of their yard, too! My garden will appreciate that.

We are, of course, smitten with our new little guy. I think I’m going to take Valerie’s suggestion and name him Bjarki, pronounced Byarrr-ki, with equal stress on both syllables. It means “little bear”, which seems to suit him. He is just precious, and so far, he’s been an incredibly easy puppy to have. (She says after not even one whole day!) We are going to crate train him, and even that wasn’t too bad for his first night away, and right now he’s taking a nap there. He woke up once at 4, needing to pee, so I took him out, where he piddled quickly and headed right back inside. Brrr. -10! He followed us around for morning chores, happy as can be. Did I mention that we really, really like him? A whole lot? We are signed up for Puppy Kindergarten classes, as he’s going to be a working dog and I really want to do this right.