The early birds get the top row!

The protector

Chickens watching horses watching goats watching the sunset!

For some reason, the horses like to hang out with the chickens. Many of the chickens also like to watch the horses. In this picture there are also two black goats hanging out between the two horses.

Time for tonight's sunset!

"Queen of the Hill."

The hens in the middle of the photo appear to be playing "Queen of the Hill."

The tall tree in the backgound is a pinon pine. In the fall it is loaded with pinon nuts.

Standing out in a crowd

"Are you going to feed us now, or do you think we're just partying?"

Please move! Some of us would like to go inside to get warm!

Do you see who is eating all the hay?

Is it early Thanksgiving or late Halloween?

The pumpkins with imperfections go to the chickens, who know what to do with them!

See, I am not the only one who likes dead juniper trunks!

Rush hour

The chickens all rush toward me, but they don't know that I am coming for their eggs, and have nothing to feed them. Someone else will do that later in the morning.

Learning to adapt to your surroundings

Time to get the eggs. Oh, there's mama and papa goat, still hanging out with the chickens. Where's your baby goat? Oh, there he is, hiding from those weird chickens in a little tree. Let me tell you a secret, junior. You will soon discover that it is really fun to chase those chickens, instead of being intimidated by them!

Coming out party

Sure enough, by the end of the day, the chickens decided to check out the sunshine, water, grass, and weeds.

Eggs and baskets

The best news of the day here was we finally got the basketball hoop up, after days of putting it together.

First things first, though. Let's see if those very much free range chickens laid any eggs.

Greg and Sarah gathered lots of eggs while the roosters and hens came outside to see who this new guy in town was.


Then Greg and Jon christened the new hoop.

Another son to be proud of

Free range chickens. Over one thousand of them.



I couldn't figure out how to upload these photos to my blog. So I woke up that kid who loves to browse social media on his phone.

Within a few minutes Greg figured it out and did his best to explain to me how I could do it myself next time. We'll see.

Why are chicken prices going down, while egg prices are skyrocketing?

Dan Nosowitz reports in Modern Farmer that

restaurateurs interviewed by the Chicago Tribune said that the price of a case of 12 dozen eggs has doubled in the past few months. And yet the price of chicken meat is down as much as 33 percent over last year. What’s going on here?


...It’s all about avian flu. Avian flu is the pebble tossed into the pond, except the ripples that emanate are anything but symmetrical. Since December 2014, says the USDA, avian flu has been tracked all over the country, striking not just wild, migratory birds but also livestock birds, especially chickens, turkeys and ducks.

The reason Chicago chefs are feeling the biggest crunch is that the vast majority of avian flu cases have been in Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan, and while the tide of new cases seems to be ebbing—at the time of writing, Minnesota is celebrating 13 days without a new outbreak—it’s having lasting effects on the supply of eggs. In Iowa, 25 million egg-laying hens had to be euthanized due to avian flu, and it’s estimated that the U.S. will produce about 5.3 percent fewer eggs this year than last.

Here’s where it gets weird: Avian flu appears to disproportionately affect egg-laying hens, rather than the chickens raised for meat (commonly called broiler chickens). These two types of chickens are kept in completely separate facilities for completely separate amounts of time (an egg-laying hen in the agribusiness system usually lives for about a year, while a broiler goes to market in about six weeks). There are theories that the longer lifespan of the egg-laying chickens puts them more at risk for avian flu to develop than in broiler chickens, but nobody’s really sure.

Regardless, the supply of eggs is down, but the supply of broiler chickens, and thus chicken meat, is fairly constant. The reason chicken prices are going down is because the demand outside the country has plummeted. Other countries, most notably China and South Korea, have enacted total bans on all poultry products from the United States, even though broiler chickens are not really at risk. The same supply with less demand means cheaper chicken.

Maybe restaurateurs will have to start coming up with creative chicken-based breakfasts to replace their omelettes and pancakes.

Read more here.

Bird flu spreading

The Associated Press reports in the New York Times,

Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa declared a state of emergency as bird flu continued to spread around the state, including possible cases at four poultry farms announced on Friday. Nearly 17 million chickens and turkeys in the state are dead, dying or scheduled to be killed because of the disease. The proclamation, in effect until May 31, activates disaster response procedures and allows state agencies to help dispose of dead birds, an increasing problem in the state, where 27 percent of its 60 million egg-laying chickens will be wiped out. Iowa is the nation’s leading egg producer, providing one of every five eggs eaten in the country, and ninth in turkey production. “This is a magnitude much greater than anything we’ve dealt with in recent modern times,” Governor Branstad said. Over all, chicken and turkey producers in the Midwest could lose more than 21 million birds because of the disease.