Young hen move-up day.

The first time I integrated new birds into my older flock of hens, it was a mess. "Just slip them in at night," an old farmer told me. "Chickens are so stupid, when they wake up in the morning, they'll think they were always there." 

Chickens aren't the brightest animals around. But they're not quite as slow as that. And besides, they have a very determined pecking order - literally. The youngest and smallest of the birds can become victims of some pretty heinous pecking of older, bully birds if they cross them and aren't able or willing to stand up for themselves. One of the young pullets in that first lot was pecked until she was bloody shreds. The only thing I could do at that point was to dispose of her mercifully. 

That was several years ago now, and fortunately, I've since learned a trick or two and we now have integration down to a pretty successful science. 

These young ladies moved in a couple of weeks ago - I bought a beautiful batch of pullets off of my nearby neighbor of Hencam.com fame. 

Preparation for integration begins by segregating the run. I split off a bit more than a third of the run for the young ones, and install temporary t-posts and fencing. The older hens are always curious, and several of them usually end up on the wrong side. I lift them back out a couple of times until I'm done, and install a waterer and feeder in the newly separate area, in readiness for its new inhabitants. 

One of the most useful small livestock accessories I have is the large, plastic dog crate. I haven't needed it for our St. Bernard since she was a (rather big) pup, and besides - she's outgrown it now. But I've used it for transporting the young piglets, a dozen or more chickens at a time, and every flock-integration season, it becomes temporary housing for the young pullets. 

I split the crate in half, and turn them both over to provide a small shelter for them outside. Chickens like to retreat to sheltered spaces - it's instinctual later when they start laying, and they're more comfortable having ready access to that kind of shelter as they mature, I've found. 

I also make sure the feeder has a cover, since it's outside. A small sheet of plywood or tin held to the fence on one side and tilted over the feeder works just fine to protect the feed from being ruined by rain. 

The pullets live in this area for two weeks., separated only slightly from the older hens. They can see each other, and interact with each other through the fence. This gives them the opportunity to get accustomed to one another and not feel threatened. I also make sure to give the older ones plenty of distractions to keep them content during this time. A couple of extra cabbages, juicy watermelon rinds, a spaghetti squash. That kind of thing. 

When I feel they're ready, I roll back the fence and let them start to mingle. 

Big hens and little get their first chance to walk around each other. But by this point, it's not really a big deal for either.  It's always fun to sit and watch them get their first chance to rub shoulder feathers, so to speak. My Bride is feeding them some fresh arugula from the garden here, picking out the more curious and friendly ones.  

I won't take out the extra waterer, feeder or shelters for another week or so. Again - this allows the individuals to mingle without threat, and shake themselves out in a new order.  The hay bales are leftover from the winter snow-shelters, and serve as shelters for grubs and bugs that the hens love to scatch and pick for. The timing of them turning from "hay" to "mulch" always works out perfectly for the incoming pullets. 

Until the young birds are fully grown and laying, we usually see them sort of congregate in their "young" and "old" cliques. But it happens without any bad feelings between the birds, and they mingle happily in the coop and run. 

It's still another 10 or 11weeks or so until they start laying and earning their keep. But I'm glad to have them well settled in. 

The leftover bucket

Growing up, I always thought of my mother as a fantastic cook. 

She worked full time as a nurse throughout my entire childhood, and still somehow always managed to have a meal on the table for us at night.  Not to mention the myriad of other things done to take care of the household. At some point in the early 1980's, she was a participant in the Mrs. Georgia pageant, right down to the swimsuit on the runway. My mother can kick June Cleaver's ass without breaking a sweat, is what I'm saying.

She has also always been extremely frugal. She was raised in the tiny little hamlet of Blue Ridge, Georgia, in the post World War II days. Her father worked in the copper mines, and her mom kept four kids and the house running. It would've been a sin to let anything go to waste that had a shred of usefulness left in it. 

In our freezer, my mother kept a big, empty ice cream tub. (I never knew where the ice cream went. I certainly never ate it. But we were never short on the big plastic tubs when we needed them). 

Whatever she cooked, she cooked a lot of it. Often, there was a crockpot involved. Or one of those big electric skillets that you could set to "low" and walk away from. There were three kids in the house, and she had a busy schedule. We probably ate more than our fair share of lasagna, stroganoff, pot roasts or bean soup. It was also the 70's, so there were a lot of food that entered our kitchen in small, colorful boxes, or things that ended in "Helper". 

Whatever we didn't eat after the second night re-heat went into the big empty ice cream tub, and back into the freezer. It might be the leftover green beans. Or some spaghetti sauce. Or a crusty end of meat loaf. Or maybe some of that bean soup.  Over the course of a month or two, you could pull the tub out and look at the strata of leftovers of different colors and textures, like some sort of geological artifact in miniature. 

When it approached the handle of the tub, my mother would declare that the next day we would be eating leftover soup. 

I hate leftover soup. 

The tub would sit out on the counter, lumpy & covered in a little layer of hoarfrost with an occasional English pea or browned crusty onion (was that an onion? I think that was an onion) breaking the surface.  This would be dumped into the crock pot once it had loosened up a bit. She'd add a can of something from the pantry - this also varied. Sometimes diced tomatoes. Maybe cream of chicken/mushroom/celery. If there hadn't been enough solids in the leftover tub that month, she'd toss in a half bag of frozen mixed vegetables. (not the good kind. The ones that all tasted like penguin ass for having been left in the deep freeze section of Sav-a-lot for 6 years before being marked down as a 'must sale' item).  Whatever it "looked like it needed".  

A couple of cans of water to leven things off at the brim, and it would slowly meld together into soup while we were all out at school or work or wherever 

Remarkably - whatever had gone into the leftover tub all month, the soup always looked and tasted the same.  

And it wasn't good.

It was too thick to be a soup. Too thin to be a stew. It was always reddish. It always had things you didn't expect to find in it. Like kidney beans with your peas. Or corn with your stroganoff noodle. Or a hint of what I can only assume was the original rainbow sherbert that had been in the bucket. 

My brother still swears he liked this soup. My brother has always been a little off. 

Years later, I was in my parent's house over a long weekend, and they were headed out to some other prior engagement. (Which was odd in itself. They pretty much swore off of "prior engagements" when they retired and moved to the hills of Tennessee a few years back).  Despite the fact that I had lived and fed myself successfully as an adult for a couple of decades, my mother was worried that I wouldn't be able to find and create some form of sustenance out of whatever groceries were in the kitchen. 

"There's a leftover bucket in the freezer," she called as they backed out of the garage. "Make yourself some soup."

*shudder*

No thanks, Mom.  I'll find something else to tide me over.  

On reflection, she's never really been a Barbie Dreamhouse kind of kid

The Critter is about to turn 11.  The only thing she asked for this year was a recurve bow of her very own. 

You can see that she is happy. 

She has read all of The Hunger Games novels (a couple of times). And she watched Brave. But it wasn't either of those things that pushed her over the edge. She went to camp last year, and they had archery lessons. 

Ever since then, she's wanted a bow to call her own. 

You know. Like every other little 5th grade girl has. Right?

I've never had a bow, but I did take a lesson with her over at our nearby archery store (who even knew we had one of those? For the local folks - they are incredibly nice and helpful over there. Highly recommended). 

The Critter is zen-like when she picks up a bow. We took this one home and she spent an hour and a half in the back yard with a target, steadily working on her aim. (Well, she spent the first half of that time chasing arrows into the woods behind our house). But she was so thrilled when she got it down to the yellow circle consistently at 20 yards that she came running in the house to tell me. 

We've established some ground rules. 

1. Always use good range safety practices. 
2. Neither her friends, her brother the Boy or the Boy's friends are to play with her bow or arrows. 
3. No shooting at the livestock. 
4. In the case of a zombie apocalypse, she is responsible for at least 1/3 of all undead takedowns. 

Knowing that my little princess can fire a pointy stick with increasing accuracy and force makes me feel a little bit better about the eventual inevitabilty of her wanting to date. 

Plus. You know. Zombies.