Time to meet the crew

I thought it was about time for the gang to be introduced to the world. I realized that I had been talking about my birds as far as breeding them without bothering to introduce them as individual birds. I do have birds I retain for breeding, but that doesn't mean that's all there is to my chicken-keeping. So without further ado, here we go:

This is Jake, my son's backup rooster. He's handsome, but has to take a back seat to his brother this year!

This is Elroy, my son's top rooster and 85 and 88. This guy is has the ladies this year, lucky roo. For some unknown reason, the girls rarely get names at my house. Maybe because there are so many more of them? I don't know for sure. The numbers come from their legbands. In order to show, birds have to be banded and it is an easy way to keep track of birds that are very similar to each other. The green spiral legband on Elroys leg doesn't have a number. I just use spirals to keep track of good birds when they are growing up. Green is a keeper, yellow, a one to watch, and a red is to be sold.

Here are the our family's special birds. These ones are the charmers in the barnyard. From left to right: Mr. Moto, a Japanese. He is our pet rooster. Girler is a Millie Fleur, Belgian Bearded D'Uccle (what a mouthful!). Brahma girl is Mike's first big winner, a reserve best in show. Last is Double D, a reserve best in show at the State Fair, and an excellent hen to boot. 

Here are some of my birds, Ethan, 34 and 39. They are all year olds, full brother and sisters. I'll be hatching and showing these 3 this year. I still have to match up the girls with my older rooster and Ethan with the older hens.
Here are 127 and 65. They are the older Chantecler hens Ethan will be matched to later this year. Proud girls aren't they?
This is the the oldest Chantecler rooster, Buck. He has a lifetime pass at the house also. A good looking bird and a gentleman also.

And finally the babies!!! If you look back on the first post I made, you would see them as week old chicks in January. Look at them now, they got big fast! There is nothing I enjoy more than feeding the young ones and watching them develop. It's the best part of having birds, the time you take just to WATCH them. They are fascinating critters. 
Now you've met them all........... at least until I hatch more!

Made some real progress this weekend

Its amazing how bored you can get being sick. If you are used to being active and getting stuff done at home, having to slow down and rest can drive a person to desperation. 

I had a whole week off of work to rest my back and all I wanted to do was work on my coat. Only thing I could do, actually. So in small bites, separated by naps and pain pills, I worked on the applying the edge tape to the lapel and stitching the facings on. I got it done too! 

I do have to put the decorative saddle stitching on the edges and fix the upper collar. The pattern didn't give me enough room for "turn of cloth" of the upper collar. The edge that is supposed to be stitched to the lining is unfortunately now halfway up the collar on the inside. I will have to patch in a piece of wool and hope for the best. Maybe some decorative hand stitching over the seams of the patch to hide it?

I promise to take a picture when I get a moment to breath. Now that I'm better I have a lot of "ketchup" to do. It looks better than I had hoped, maybe in another 6 months it'll be done!

A lesson in patience

Have made still more progress on my coat. I just haven't had to time to talk about it until now. I managed to give my self whiplash! Betcha didn't know that was possible. Neither did I until I managed to pull it off. I was moving a half-built dog house through a too-small door to the kennel. It was quite heavy and awkward. We did manage to get it in the kennel, but at the cost of my neck.

2 weeks, 2 doctors, 3 prescriptions and a missed week of work and I am feeling better. Please remind me never to do that one again. Dumb, dumb and dumber..........

I did manage to do a little bit of work on the coat in between pain pills. Good thing I had lots of hand sewing to do. Its a lot harder to hurt yourself with a needle than with a whole sewing machine. And it was good for me to, to be patient and hand padstitch the lapels. I mean, you have to patient to get better and patient to get a nice lapel. Now I don't know if mine is good or not, but I sure was patient sewing it! I still have the edge tape and bridle stay to apply.

I am faithfully following my book, "Tailoring, traditional and contemporary". I feel sometimes like I study 1 hour to sew for 10 minutes. But it is paying off, the book is very complete and thorough. I would recommend it highly as a reference.

Seriously I think this kind of sewing is good for me, it is teaching me to value a good garment over a hastily constructed one. Oh yeah.............I was the one who made the dog kennel too big for the door. Like I said, dumb, dumb and dumber!

Meet the girls

Thought I would introduce my girls to the world. I have posted in the past about my Chantecler roosters and I thought it was time to let the ladies shine a little. Heres one:

The girls are very gentle. They are not flighty or unfriendly birds as a whole. If anything, they are timid and shy, not aloof. They are not hard to chase down and catch, they just give up and crouch after a while. I am not a good chicken-catcher, it doesn't take much to get away from me. So of course I like my ladies, they not too much for me to handle. 

They don't show as well as the boys, due to their shyness. You need a feistier bird to show off for the judge. I have had some success with the bolder ones, don't get me wrong. I received a reserve AOCCL at poultry show last fall on a pullet. In fact she is the lady pictured here today. The boys do better though :(.  (I hate it when that happens!) I have a little more work to do with these girls, but they are coming along. I need a more upright tail carriage; 30 degrees from horizontal is ideal. Also, a little better tail spread would be nice.  The good news is the younger ones look better than my older stock. I am slowly making progress. 

I'll have to take pictures now that the snow is off the ground (these are older photos) and everybody gets to go outside. They are so HAPPY now. Even the older guys and girls were flying and bouncing off the fencing. I love springtime!

Just holding my breath........

Sunday was just an awful day here. Weather-wise, I mean. March is such a changeable month here in Wisconsin. You can go from zero to 60 within 24 hours. And back again unfortunately. 

My flock had been enjoying the mild weather for days last week after being cooped up (chicken joke!) all winter. I had the bright idea to build their pens at the bottom of a slope, so they did have to deal with the run off from the melting snow as the ground was still frozen, but it didn't seem to bother them. Anything to be outside! Then the weekend arrived.

Nothing but rain on Saturday. Lots of it to add to the run-off problem. The pens are now standing in water at their ends. I can live with this as they are very large. Then Sunday came. First rain, then ice, then sleet, then snow. It was a meteorological smorgasbord. Still not a problem except for all the dead elm trees in my back yard. I forgot to look up when installing all the chicken fencing. Otherwise I would have seen them all, right?  It was raining branches on the netting I put over the pens to keep the hawks out, the fence is sagging and bending from the stress. You can see that below beyond the coop on the left:

I don''t know if any trees came down. I am into my work week now and haven't looked for myself. My son says its all fine. I'm not sure though, sometimes he looks but he doesn't see. Do you know what I mean? Today, we have had sustained 50 mph winds. Perhaps the trees, already weakened, are down now? I'll find out tonight. My husband will take down the trees this spring, its time for him to do that now. Well, actually that would have been last year..........

Finally started sewing

I finally got the sewing machine going this weekend! The lining and interfacing were ordered and have arrived. I did end up ordering from Ely E Yawitz. As soon as I posted that I was considering another company, their answer to my email arrived. Figures....

I got the hymo, fleece backed lining and silk topstitching thread on Thursday. It's very nice. Being used to the type of lining you get at JoAnnes or that is put in a coat you buy at the store, I was thrilled with how substantial the material I ordered is. My lining (if I sew it right!), will not rip out of this coat. I did end up getting black. Not very original, but black does go with everything, right? I used it in the pocket above. I will be using the topstitching thread for handwork, saddlestitching the front edges of the coat and the yoke in back.

So yes, I put the back of the pocket on. Twice so far as a matter of fact. Soon to be three times, seeing as I sewed tape to the back of the pocket for reinforcing instead the front, where it should be. At this rate I will be done by Christmas. The instructions on this pattern, being older, are vague. Women just KNEW how to sew 50 years ago. Didn't need detailed instructions. So the modern woman, of course got it wrong. 

I do have a book I am following, "Tailoring: Traditional and Contemporary Techniques", by N. Marie Ledbetter. A little dry, but very comprehensive. Well worth buying if you want to tailor, it'll be well worth it. I just need to read it before I start a section of the coat like I had planned. I just got excited and dove into sewing, so I will have to restrain myself for the rest of this project.  Good thing it was just the pockets :).

My son's Brahma roosters

Today seems to be a good day to show off a few photos of my son's 2 Brahma roosters, Jake and Elroy. Yes, he is a fan of the "Blues Brothers" movie. Elroy is in front and Jake is behind and to the left. They are both year-olds, so we haven't seen how they perform in the breed pen yet. Mike has had poor luck keeping his Brahma roosters around. They keep getting sick and dying, so he is looking to these two young ones to be his foundation roosters. Elroy does have about 20 chicks in my house right now.

Elroy is the better of the two. He is just a little taller and skinnier. Current fashion from what I have seen, is to have a bantam that is very short and wide, with barely any back. The hackles merge into the saddle, without any back showing, almost like a "V". A bantam should look like the larger counterpart. The standard version is a tall bird with hackles, then a back, then the saddle, like a "U". Elroy looks like that to me. Part of breeding is sticking to the Standard descriptions, not just to what is winning in the showroom. Elroy does win because he also has other good qualities, his head and his coloring. I'll deal with the coloring in a separate post, thats a subject unto itself.

A brahma head should look "worried". Lots of loose flesh in the wattles and eye area. Look at his eyebrow, it should extend over his eye. Eyes should look sunken. The comb is a pea comb. An ideal pea comb has 3 rows with bumps going down them. Brahmas don't have ideal combs, but what Elroy has here is normal for a Brahma.

He has a good head for a Brahma, they should look like this when you are looking for one for yourself. The roosters also have a good temperament, very gentle in most cases. I'm not afraid of them. 

Wish them both luck! If their chicks are good, they get to live here another year. If you're a chicken, you want to live at my house, you get treated like the special birds you are.