Xena: Warrior Princess

On Friday the King went to see Mayor Tom and came home with another chicken.

This one was emaciated, most likely bullied away from the feeder by the other chickens. By all rights she should have died, but she's a fighter. And that's why I named her Xena.

She has a beautiful trill and whistle combo that she does when you pet her. And she wants to live. Since we got her and put her in a box to herself, she has been eating a lot. Compared to the chickens we got from the same brooder at Tractor Supply, she's half to a third of their size and you can see and feel her breastbone... She reminds me of Mr. Bo-Bo when he came home.

Just a bag of bones and a strong will to live. So as long as she's willing to try, so am I.

It's hard to tell the size difference, but this is one of our original flock, same breed, same age.

I put a heater by the box so she doesn't have to use what little energy she has trying to stay warm. Then I put electrolytes and probiotics in her water and tried to get her to eat some scrambled egg. People think it's weird to feed a chicken eggs. And I guess I would too, but chicks come from eggs and the yolk is actually nourishment for them. They were store bought eggs, not fertilized. She's not eating her kinfolk.

She didn't eat the eggs anyway. But she has been eating the chicken feed like it's going out of style. Today she was a hundred times better. She was moving around more and once she even climbed on top of the feeder to get me to pick her up. She's a sweetie.

So assuming she continues to improve, Xena will be put into the brooder with the chicks that will be hatching any day now. And she'll become part of that flock so when we introduce them into the coop she should do fine.

Tomorrow I should be able to finish enough of the coop that I can put the ducks out, and hopefully the day after that the tween chickens can go out to make room for the new fluffy butts. All that's really left is dig guard in the back and netting across the top of one side. We still have work to do on the inside of the coop, but as far as safety and basic needs, it's almost there.

THANK GOODNESS THE DUCKS CAN GO OUTSIDE!!!!

In other news, the prints I ordered of two of my photographs turned out amazing. I looooove them. And I know I can go forward with my business plan now. I need to order some postcard and folding card paper to see if I can print those myself, but what I expect to comprise most of my sales will be the prints.

This weekend the King and I went to a friend's house to pick up some concrete blocks we can use to put up the greenhouse, and the roads leading to her house... I'll be revisiting them tomorrow with my camera. I look at everything through a camera lens even when I don't have my camera with me and I saw soooo many good shots just waiting for a sunny day...