Another kitchen experiment goes to the birds

This was my first try at injera - the Ethiopian staple flat bread. It's like sourdough crepes, kind of, but even more delicious. Unless I'm making it. My first try was not a success, but the chickens liked it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyzpgOWNQ0

The promise of spring

There's snow on the ground & the thermometer reads something so low it hurts. But the chickens must know that spring is around the corner -- they just layed their first eggs of the season!

Drunken Chicken

It seems the chickens really love fermented kasha (a kitchen experiment gone wrong). They've gone a little crazy for it! It's nice to give them something fun to do on such a cold, icy, dreary day.

Another attack

This time the attacked chickens weren't ours, but another Bexley family's. The think the perpetrator was a cat. The chickens are convalescing on our breezeway while their family is out of town. One of them seems pretty beat up, but they're both hanging in there. If Peggy taught us anything it's not to count a chicken out too early.

Sprucing up the coop

We've been thinking that we should replace the shingles on the coop roof (actually, it's just one piece of asphalt shingle material).  But now I'm thinking we might as well just do this:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/a-hedge-fund-highflier-comes-back-to-earth/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Why cheap-out, right?

Coup tour pics, several weeks later

I'd intended to take a bunch of pictures of all our visitors from the coup tour. It was such a lovely, perfect day, weather wise, that we had a ton of people come through. Of course I took zero photos, but I did get these of the driveway (above), and the coop complete with the poop on the roof that we forgot to rake off.

Wild goose chase? Searching for a way to test our eggs for lead. Is it important?

Miss L is 5 months old now.  Pretty soon she'll start eating solid food and we're hoping that Tami Taylor & Tyra's eggs will be on the menu.  A few years ago I read about lead contamination in backyard chicken eggs.  It makes sense that chickens in the backyard of an older house might have gotten their beaks on some lead paint chips, for example.  And we don't want to mess with lead and a developing brain.  BUT... Finding someone who can test our eggs for lead has been tough.  Well, impossible, actually.

I called the OSU Extension office who sent me to another extension office who sent me to the Ohio Department of Agriculture who sent me to Food Safety at ODA who sent me to Animal Health at ODA who sent me to the OSU Vet Clinic who tried to send me back to ODA but instead sent me to the Avian Health Clinic, a private practice vet in Columbus.

It seems nobody tests eggs for lead.  They can test a chicken (preferably dead) for lead poisoning, but not the eggs.  The very nice vet at the Avian Health Clinic said that a chicken who was passing lead in her eggs would be very sick -- sick enough that we'd notice.

So, should I drop it and just trust that everything is a-okay?

This is not our baby.  I don't even think she's eating eggs.  But she is cute, so...