The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[RMDupree]

Morning 2J!

When do your chickens arrive?

[RMDupree]

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Hey, when you were fishing yesterday, was it by any chance at Bixhoma Lake? I just wondered that when you said you didn't catch anything:)

Becky

[2Jedismom]

I don't know! The guy has been a bit vague...so I'm wondering if it will ever happen! But I went in yesterday and he was completely out of chickens and he said he was waiting for another batch and my chicks are going to be in with that batch...

He wasn't very talkative, so I proceeded to chatter at him for about 20 minutes forcing him to answer me all the time because I found it annoying that he just stood there. The less he interacted the more I chatted until I finally got bored with it and left.

[RMDupree]

You can always go with one of Becky's chicks! :)

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Where did you order them from?

Becky

[2Jedismom]

Ha! Now I don't want to tell you after I just talked bad about the guy! LOL

I ordered them from Lee's Feed, off County Line Road at 11th street.

Where did you get your eggs? I tried to get Ideal to send me a couple of Buff Orpi pullets but they wouldn't do it...unsafe to send just two apparently.

[2Jedismom]

Well, the main reason I want these is for pets and this particular breed seems to be known as being very docile. And I don't want a rooster! I want an egg now and then!

Hey, Becky...do you butcher them too?

[2Jedismom]

We went fishing at Lake Bixhoma day before yesterday and a snake bit the only fish we caught...a small panfish!

[Corin Stormhands]

Hey, Becky...do you butcher them too?

And now you know...the rest of the story...

[2Jedismom]

You can read about my fishing trip to Lake Bixhoma here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/807952/posts?page=32940#32940

All I want to do is catch catfish...I never get to catch catfish!!

[RMDupree]

LOL! I am going to enjoy reading 2J's posts on how cute the chicks are and how the boys love them and so on and so forth, to be followed a year later with "It was the best fried chicken EVER!".

LMAO!

[2Jedismom]

:-)

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

I thought that was odd, just two, you may not get them. So unless you are looking for a certain breed you can have two of mine:)

My flock started about 5 yrs ago, when a stray hen showed up in my barn pecking at horse feed. She hung around so long my husband thought I needed to get her some company. At that time I did not really want any more animals, because, of course, I would be taking care of them, and I had enough then with the kids still home. So neighbor gave me one rooster.

I hated that rooster. He was always running up behind me pecking me in the leg. Drew blood thru jeans. I could hear him coming but he was fast. One day I had a feed bucket in my hand, as soon as I heard him coming I swung around and clobbered him right in the head with the bucket. He never pecked me again:)

But you need 10 hens for every rooster (I did not know that then) or the roosters keep the poor hens wore out. I felt so bad for that hen. It was so funny, she would fly up and sit on the back of a horse and ride it around during the day. He couldn't get up there.

Make a long story short, when I found out that chickens do keep ticks down, I got some more chickens from anyone that would give them to me. The eggs I am hatching come from the chickens I have. The batch that got killed last week came from a neighbor because I wanted to refresh my gene pool:), but I have learned that I just need to get rid of the roosters from each batch. Don't want brothers and sisters together. My husbands', mothers', mother-in-law :) wants them for fryers, so that is where my extra roosters go.

Becky

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

We went fishing at Lake Bixhoma day before yesterday

As the crow flies you were 3 miles from my house. I can ride thru the woods to the lake. I don't do it often because the people that live around the lake are a bunch of city people living in the country and get grippy about horse poop in their street.

Becky

[RosieCotton]

How old are they when they start laying eggs? Do you know?

Man...if I didn't know Dad would flip at the suggestion, I would be soooo tempted to try to rig up a chicken coop and all at The House (to steal OT's term again). Some friends of ours used to keep chickens...really good eggs! They had quite a few chickens, though...maybe fifteen? THey used to sell the eggs by the dozen. They didn't charge much, but it helped with the upkeep for the chickens, I think!

[2Jedismom]

Oh for crying in your soup! If you rode your horse through my property and it pooped, I would consider myself one lucky gardener! ;-D

We wanted to move into the country but couldn't find a place that was livable 3 year ago.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Well if she gets pullets, you don't eat them, just their eggs. You eat roosters:)

Becky

[2Jedismom]

Rosie...check out this website:

http://www.thecitychicken.com/

The two chickens that we are getting only require a 2'x4' coop and a 4'x5' "run".

[2Jedismom]

Steve's going to build something like this for our chickens...