FRANCIS'S BLOG 04/22/2026
Everybody needs to treat themselves now and then. 🐔
Here’s a video of the hens enjoying some girl time at the spa. They deserve it: they upped the C:D egg ratio to 9:7.
It says “Poultry Favorites” for a reason
Evil Cat discovers that he too must tolerate the chickens at meal time (and that they must never be the meal):
The ducks like cat food too:
We’ve discovered why the birds can’t keep their beaks and bills out of it:
It’s “Poultry Favorites!” (Today’s C:D egg count is 7:7 — Daisy had one in the morning and one this evening!)
Nice morning 🐎
It’s rained mercilessly for the past two days, so this morning felt especially nice:
Egg count is 7:5 — Daisy laid a gargantuan egg this morning and one of our little browns had a mini-clutch this evening:
Daisy makes egg magic.
The two largest eggs are duck eggs, but you’ll notice one has about twice the volume as the other, because. .
. .it has two yolks! Daisy is a genius!
She also upped her egg count by 1 normal-sizer this morning, so the chickens:duck score is now 5:4. But please don’t tell her that we broke her egg, or that we—
Yummy! 🐴
Today’s egg count
This evening, one of the brown hens upped the chicken egg count to 5. The duck egg count became 3 this morning. Since the hens outnumber Daisy 4:1, she’s still the laying champion!
Guess which is the duck egg?
Two things lead us to believe that the middle egg belongs to our Daisy: (1) it was found in the duck house, and (2) all the chickens could still walk. 🐴
3 eggs and counting! 🐔
One in the morning and this one this evening:
Here’s the nesting box we improvised from an old cat carrier:
In other news, Stormy and Mary went back to school today (Sunday). 🐎 And Bill starts his first day at University of Iowa tomorrow! 🐴
Look what we found!
Our first egg! It was found on the grate on top of the pet carrier where the hens roost! See how small it is next to the door key! We are so excited, even though it has no chance of being fertile (unless we’re having a chicken-duck mutant). 🐴
The roosters like cat food too! 🙀
Their favorite appears to be “Poultry Platter.” 🐓
These buzzards are freak-a-zoids. 🐴
Schrödinger 😺 likes hanging out with the roosters 🐓.
But right now he wishes they’d get out of the way:
He has a hole to dig.
Hey, remember us? 🐎
We’d like
to take some time to remind the management that—among all the posts
about carnivorous chickens, aggressive ducks, and killer cats—the name
of this site is still annsHORSEfarm! 🐴
Just like the wizard in the musical Wicked—
—Schroeder believes everyone deserves the chance to fly! 🐓
Another video to file under. .
. .being a cat just isn’t what it used to be.
(Don’t miss Schroeder trying cracked corn at the end—what is the world coming to? 😿)
Pumpkin says,
“If we’d known we didn’t like frog, we’d never had bothered to catch it.”
”You can clean this up anytime you want."
Poor Charlie has an infected hoof—
—and she’s really moving slowly. But the vet has seen her, she’s had her foot (right front) soaked and wrapped, and she’s taking her antibiotics. Tonight Mary soaked her foot (in Epsom salts) and changed the wrap.
Lucky RC and Misty! 🐎
They spent the day munching down the grass in the riding circle.
When’s my turn? 🐴
Compliments to the chef! 🐎
Our farmer friends delivered a load of alfalfa hay that is haute cuisine!—fresh, green, and laced with light purple blossoms.
Recently we’ve had no trouble leaving the paddock clean (if you don’t count poopies).
Kanna tries cracked corn. 😾
She really did—I heard her little teeth trying to crunch the kernels.
She won’t do that again. 🐴
It’s Chicken Freedom Day at AHF! 🐔
Chicken Freedom Day was made possible by the fact that Uki 🐕 was 10 miles away in East Moline.
Swallow Quintuplets!
Here are two babies just about ready to fledge:
If we pull back a little, we can see they have 3 other siblings!
Here we do an eye-count to prove it:
We didn’t stay too long because their parents were not happy about the attention:
Here’s another good reason not to stay—look at the lice! 🙀
