i agree grownut
Chickenstock at Jacob's Cave - Number 2
Wasn't I waiting for you to post pics too? Come to think of it...gotta get my gratification where I can, after all...lol
yes, i will go get pics. of my new frizzles now
I AM HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will not spoil Claire's surprise of what she came home with, but will tell you it didn't fit in the 2 cages she brought (I TOLD HER) He He He!
We had a wonderful time. Claire and Kelly are the salt of the earth. Around here that means very very great people. I was talking to her about feeling a little nerves about them not liking us and us not liking them, but we all had a grand time.
Claire does have the pics and should be home later tonight! I have to run and unload the new birds.
OH Oh OH! did I forget to tell you what I came home with???????????? Shame on me. I came home with a huge beautiful Buff Orpington Roo, and a Beautiful New Hampshire Roo for our breeding program. Both of these guys have built in girlfriends already here. Will have to wait for intros till they get out of quarentine (sp?). I also came home with 4 of the biggest most beautiful Partridge Cochin Hens. They are about a year old. I also seemed to be guilted into buying a silkie, but will have to wait for Claire to explain that. I have to go help unload or I may be raising these chickies without a hubby.
TTYS
Sheila
AWWWWWWWW how nice. Sounds likes lots of nice birds. Claire was NOT suppose to get many. For shame.
I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous......Where's my eBay hatching egg button!
Where is Moxon? I thought sure that she would have been on here before I got in from unloading and feeding and watering. BUT then of course she had SEVERAL things to unload and feed also.
Hope to see some pics soon.
Sheila
OK, I'm home! We took longer at Kelly's moms and there are so many stories, but one thing at a time. Downloading pics.
Before any pics, I want to say how much we enjoyed our time with Sheila and her husband Keith, and their two beautiful children. I'm not even a big fan of children as a rule, but hers are adorable and so well behaved. Sheila and her family are such warm, friendly, and fun people. They made us feel right at home with them immediately. Keith is a grill master and made a great supper for us which was so kind, and then we were able to sit around their fire pit and talk about a hundred and one things while enjoying their company. It was an awesome weekend and Sheila and her family were definitely the highlight - and when you're surrounded by thousands of chickens, that's really saying something!
Pictures forthcoming...
First, just for Harmony, a picture of some pigeons that were for sale. There were SO many pigeons it was amazing.
More pigeons - I really liked these. There were also some owl pigeons. I was very tempted but Kelly says we have to finish our chicken coops and goat barns before we can get into pigeons...
Oops forgot pic
(wee bit tired)
There were, of course, people like Harmony's "tobacco man" experience. This guy (in the hat) came over after I snapped this pic, and the next one, to say that I shouldn't take pictures because even though he treats his birds right, and gives them all food and water, not everybody does, and if I take pictures, it could lead to the swap being shut down, etc, etc.
Creepy--were there any men in black?
Yah, it was kinda crazy! He stutter of into problems of people taking pictures and then turning the pics in to animal rights activists. He repeated that he treated his birds right but just one wrong pic and someone could be on his butt! Kinda fishy don'tcha think???
Sheila
I snapped this pic of some birds that sort of looked like self blues and which I thought were quite pretty, until I got up close....
That's when I realized there was a dead bird under the straw that all the other birds were walking on. Sheila informed him, extremely diplomatically, that there was a dead bird in his cage (this while he is going on about how he treats his birds the way he would want to be treated). He opened it and pulled one out, and it wasn't the one that I had noticed! So there were TWO dead birds in there. He said "Oh, they must have piled up on them" and I'm thinking yes...they did...because you have way too many birds in there.
We moved on.
On to happier topics, here is Sheila's very handsome new roo, Sam.
And here is one of my new pairs - a frizzle cochin hen and her beau! He isn't frizzled but carries the gene.
A new young ameraucana (or EE) and my new silkie, about which there is a story that Sheila alluded to, and I will tell it now!
So I bought this little black silkie hen who caught my eye, and I began just carrying her around because I didn't have a carrier from the truck with me at that point. I noticed she was really comfortable being carried, and eventually we made our way back to Sheila's camper, and I sat down with the silkie and stroked her. She began to fall asleep on my lap. So, I turned her over and started to give her belly rubs, just to see how sweet she really was...
...and sure enough, she fell asleep during belly rubs.
Sheila's daughter (I won't use her name just for safety reasons because there can be weirdos on the internet) had her eye on this, and came over to sit with me for a spell. She asked if she could pet the silkie, and she loved the feel of its soft feathers. She helped me decide to name her "Bunny" because she is soft like a bunny. After a while, she asked me if she could hold the silkie. I didn't see a problem because Bunny was so calm, but I kept my hand close just in case. Bunny sat on her lap so gently and peacefully, and as she stroked her feathers, Bunny fell asleep. That chicken was on her lap for about 45 minutes like that. Sheila's daughter is very sweet and gentle and I could see she was just falling in love with that chicken. Unfortunately, Bunny eventually decided to stretch her legs and promptly pooped on her holder. Oops. I felt bad because I thought she would be really upset but she just said "That's yukky" and went to get cleaned up. Sheila will tell you what she said when she was getting cleaned up.
Anyway, she held her again later in the evening for a while and just loved Bunny so much - I offered to give her to Sheila and Keith for their daughter's birthday. They said instead that they would look for one tomorrow (i.e. today). I was a little bit naughty and encouraged her to tell her Daddy that she would like to have a silkie. She's so quiet and sweet, and I could just see her sitting with her own silkie and having a great time with it, so I figured she needed her own special chicken.
Seems like it worked?!
Here is Sheila's other beautiful roo, whose name I have forgotten (sorry Sheila!)
It might be Jake, but I'm not sure.
So as the evening wore on, we decided to start getting ready for supper. Kelly and Keith went to get some things for supper and came back fully stocked with burgers and buns and chips and all the good things we needed. We had brought a bottle of wine to share (Moscato - sweet but light and bubbly) and then realized we had not brought a corkscrew. Oops. Sheila generously went on a mission and bought one for a dollar from one of the other stands selling various items. Unfortunately, it was a bit small.
Kelly gave it a try....
Meanwhile, Keith got the grill going. He was the grill master all evening.
Geepers Kelly, are you still working on that cork?
Kelly had to give up on the corkscrew after it pulled out some chunks of cork but not the whole thing. He got busy with the knife next, chopping little bits out of the cork. Our new purchases were very interested in the activity!
Yes, we got more goats - those are 2 of 3 dwarf goats we purchased, all of which are bred. :-)
Here's Sheila taking good care of the 3rd one.
Later on, after Kelly had dealt with the cork and we'd all had a great meal and lots of laughter, we were visited by an unlikely trio - a man in a housecoat on a motorcycle and two other funny guys on a very interesting contraption that I'm sure Sheila knows more about than I, so she can tell that part of the story!
Okay so when daughter and I went inside to get cleaned up from the poo incident, daughter said "I really liked the chicken 'til it pooped on me". I really don't know why she was to worried about it since she runs around in it all day, barefooted in the yard.
So. yes we now have a silkie due to Mox's suggestion. Actually, the first words out of daughter's mouth this morning was "Do we get to go pick out MY chicken today?". I will say that this task was harder than I thought. A lot of people pulled out last night and we had combed all the roads and not a silkie in sight. The last little portion of road before we got back to the camp site there was a "tobaco man" with a trailer load of birds. And yes he had silkies. He said he had 2 hens but one had a limp. I asked to see the one without the limp. She is not nearly as fluffy as "Bunny", she was missing feathers around the bottom side of her neck. "Bird Man told me it was from her Molt" Well okay I don't know that much about Silkies, so maybe that was true, but then he tried to tell me that she was only about 4 -5 months old. Duh, don't they have to be a little older to molt?? I think she had just had a hard life. So maybe we rescued a bird, maybe we adopted a problem, but daughter was in love. She named her Suzie Q. And she is definately in love with her.
Sheila
Another view of the contraption.
Ah, wonderful to hear the update on Suzie Q. I hope she is as docile and friendly as Bunny. Hopefully her feathers will come in better soon.
Of course we all got very jolly as the evening wore on. Bunny joined in of course. Here are Sheila and I basically showing you what a good time you all missed and how much fun we had - you can read it on our faces!
There was a rather persistent man who kept trying to sell us a puppy for $30 that he claimed was part airedale. Doesn't look like it to me. Probably younger than the 8 weeks that he claimed, too.
Oh, and just so as you all know we were thinking about you, we did the special hatching dance followed by the necessary silkie kissing ritual.
Apparently it worked because when I got home, I had a hatched buff orpington, a hatched frizzle, and this evening another frizzle hatched. Yay!
Proof of the hatching ritual. Bunny was very cooperative.
All in all, those who didn't attend missed a fabulous time, and I wish we could've all been there, but even with just 2 chicken lovin' families, we had a fabulous time. We are going to go again in the spring and get a spot next to Sheila.
Who's in??? I hope we can get more participants! Especially now that you've seen what fun it was.
Overall weekend haul:
A breeding pair of birchen cochins
A breeding pair of gold laced cochins
Bunny the silkie
The young Ameraucana
The frizzle and her flat feathered roo
5 rescued red stars (from a lady near Kelly's mom's where we went for lunch on the way home)
3 pregnant pygmy goats
2 six-month-old nubians (from the same lady near Kelly's mom)
A fabulous new feeder from Keith - he's very creative!
and a whole lot of milled walnut that Kelly is so excited about that he bought from Sheila's friend Russ.
But now I must dash off to the goat thread, because we think one of the goats we got last week might be preggers and we didn't know it....
I told you guys this was redneck heaven. I laughed til I almost peed. This Guy was in a pink housecoat with clouds on it, riding a mini bike from the 70's and was drinking a beer. What a redneck combo.
The other 2 guys on the strange contraption live about a mile from me. Like many around here, old junk always provide new inspirations and ideas. I am not very good a identifying junk but will try to explain.
1. did I mention this place is about 37 acres (so I told) not something you want to walk for 4 days!
2. do you have an old junk self-propelled tiller?
3. How about 2 bench seats out of an old car or truck.
Another words these guys built this to get around. I think it is an old self propelled tiller and was originally re-junked to push snow i.e. the blade on the front, but then rejunked again with a bench seat out of a car and another axle. Then of course, you have fam and friends that always need a ride, so they built another seat that will hook on to carry extra passengers AND THEN of course what is a redneck with out his beer? They also have a wagon they hook on behind that will carry a cooler and a chicken cage(a necessity at chickenstock!). It is quite a contraption! And also decked out with a ooooga horn.
OMG I laughed until I cried. This was to much fun for just the 6 of you to have. I am so glad you all got to get together. Looks like you did have a great time. You can bank on it I WILL be there next spring.
I would like to know how much maybe like a price range the animals were in. What did the 3-6 month old birds go for?
I bet Sheila's children ( I did say kids at 1st but I heard in my head my oldest daughter say, mom we are not goats) were adorable and well behaved. She is a super woman. As well as you also Claire, that is why daughter took to you so well.
I sure did miss a great time. It wont happen again.
It better not, Tia. I will be down to pick you up if you even mention not coming in the spring.
Sheila
CALGON is taking care of me tonight thanks to the CF. I am finally going to settle down and use it. Tomorrow is a new day, lost internet today so couldnt post earlier.
There will be nothing to stop me except maybe a birth of a granchild, but none are due so I WILL be there.
Glad to hear it Tia - we will love to have your company next time. It will be a blast!
I'm sooo going in the spring.