Not everyone is enamored with my chickens, or any chickens, so I'll try to keep this update as compact as an egg. I've already recounted, to family and friends, the tale of how Bess, my Barred Plymouth Rock, got us all in trouble in March, so I believe I can stick to the condensed version:
Early March: Cinnamon and Vita resumed laying eggs after taking the winter off (not unusual for the wintertime, but I didn't expect them to take three months' vacation after molting). Bess, who didn't molt and didn't take time off, announced impending egg arrivals loudly each time the other two went up the ramp to the nest box to lay. Granted, Bess can be vociferous, but the announcements generally do not last long.
Mid-March: A neighbor living behind our house, someone I don't know well, called to complain about the chicken racket. Eek. No one has ever complained about the girls! Quite the contrary. In response I promised to move the coop and do what I could to simmer Bess down. He mentioned chicken stew, thinking I would laugh. So I knew he was serious. He stated that the chickens had awakened him that day at 7 a.m. I doubted this, because I had been up at 7:10 and the chix were silent. I started keeping a record, just in case I was reported to the city of Shoreline:
March 20 chicken journal entry:
6:45 AM: Vita up. 6:50 AM: Cinnamon up, pecking moss. 7:50 AM: 3 up, all eating. 7:10 AM: all three on perch. 7:27 AM: one hen clucks softly. 7:40 AM: all eating. 7:50 AM: pecking on ground. 8:00 AM: Vita clucks at seeing me in the window. 8:30 AM: I take morning snack to chickens. 8:30 AM: Bess goes up the ramp to lay. 8:41 AM: 10 second egg announcement from Bess. I release chix to help quiet Bess down. 9:05 AM: Vita goes up ramp to lay. Bess announces loudly for 15 sec. I toss lettuce out the window to distract her. Etc. [On this day, therefore, there were exactly 25 seconds of Bess vocalizations. The rest of the day, they were essentially quiet. This was the noisiest day of the two week period of recording morning chicken activity.]
Fast forward: Neighbor called a couple of weeks ago to say that it helped a lot that I moved the coop away from his property. I knew that the main problem was actually Bess' temporary excitement that I knew would wane with time, and it has. Nonetheless, peace in the 'hood was the goal. By the way, this blog has a new banner (above). The banner, an oil painting, features a portrait of plucky Bess.
Chapter Two: Cinnamon and the Duck Eggs
You may ask: Why not give an "olive branch" of fresh eggs to our neighbor? Well, the reason is we simply don't have extras right now. Cinnamon went broody shortly after Bess' egg production finally dropped (coincidental, I hope) after the neighbor episode. Being broody means that Cinnamon only wants to sit on eggs – any eggs – and she stops laying her own. This happened twice last summer. This spring, my son has been working at hatching his fertile Khaki Campbell duck eggs in an incubator at his small farm in Castle Rock, WA. He has plenty of fertile duck eggs, so I thought: why not see if Cinnamon would hatch some ducklings?
She has been on the eggs for two weeks. She is thoroughly dedicated to her work. The incubation period for ducks is 28 days. For chicks: 21 days. So this is a long haul for little Cinnamon. If you think, as we did, that this is a far-fetched task for a Welsummer hen, view this YouTube video:
If Cinnamon succeeds, I will have my own YouTube clip to share. And then, the ducklings will be sold from our "farm" here in Shoreline, or taken to Eli's farm in Castle Rock. By all means, stay tuned!
Jocelyn Curry 
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