This is the Mrs.

No more red tomatoes for Dolly.

Dolly gave up her job as the reporter for The Hen House Journal due to an illness that was incurable.

Camden and I took her to Dr. Jennifer today at Rock and Country (Hatcher) Veternary, with the idea that she was pretty bad and hoping she could be helped. After an examination from Pam and Jennifer we were all in agreement that she was suffering due to internal problems and it was time to help her not suffer any longer.

Needless to say, the other hens have learned to eat the red tomatoes and they will miss Dolly calling them to roost, danger and especially food!

Now we will see who is going to take over the Queen's place...not sure anyone can!
Good bye Dolly.....but we all will remember you with fondness.

The MRS.and MR., Camden, Garrett, Sally Kaye, Logan, Morgan, John, Cyn, Hank, Marni,
Kim, Gary and Shuggie and all the friends who came to hear Dolly sing!

A New Day

Daily Hen report:
Today our hens had a meeting and we decided to go on with things as usual and mourn no more. I decided to do that by sitting on 3 freshly laid eggs as I had always sat on Mary's after she laid them! I was accused of eating them, in which I will never tell!!! I will also continue to sit upon eggs until I am too old to get up into the next or I am to fat to fit, which ever comes first. The Mrs. caught me again and quietly took the eggs out from under me and let me still sit and think!
The editor (the Mrs) found out I has spelled especially wrong in my last post, and it should have been Eggspecially! I hope she does not terminate me from my report position for that mistake!
Thought for the day in honor of Mary: Eat the ripe tomatoes now b/c you may not be there to enjoy them tomorrow!

Red Tomatoes

My good best friend, Mary, expired last night. I have been by her side most of my life and expecially the last week. The Mrs. tried her best to cure what ailed Mary, but she must have been pretty far gone when she realized Mary was not doing well.
I learned a lot from Mary and will miss how she taught us to look for the brightest spot a day could bring, red tomatoes! I'm going to try to like red tomatoes!

My do days go fast when you are having fun. I have watched the babies grow and now can you believe it, Princess's Sister, Jin is now an official setting hen! You know this generation of hens are not what we were like. While I'm talking about this, Mary, the other Queen of the hen house (Moi is the first queenie) has decided that she wants to be a mommy also...so she's sitting too. I heard the Mrs. talk about these teens wanting to have babies just to have babies, well that word must have gotten around in the hen house....everyone is wanting to set or sit, oh, my what is it! .. I think I need to do an article on this in the Henhouse daily newspaper! They will disagree with me, but it's true! Today the Mrs. found April on a nest...she came to live with us and her sister, Mae in May. The Mrs. went back and there it was...a tiny green egg...It is so small the egg market probably could not rate it as a small, but an extra small. The longer hens lay the bigger eggs they give....So officially we have 10 laying hens, but those darn girls are "laying" off work to set so we don't really have that many a day. With the hot weather we are getting about 3-6 a day. That won't keep feed in our craw if the Mrs. were to sell them. I hear that she just gives them away and her daughter is her best customer. That husband of her daughter eats 3 eggs every day and that will keep 3 of our hens busy every morning to meet his needs.We gladly do it just for the Mrs. favorite
son-in-law! Her daughter does lots of cooking for other people so she really goes through those babies!!! whoops, I mean those non-fertile eggs we produce. Speaking of babies, the Mrs. has a baby at her house. Bryan and Li Weaver are staying with her and their daughter Sarah and their baby who is 15 months old. So far I have not heard much about their stay but that Madilynn is keeping Elizabeth for them some of the time. The Mrs. husband left for NY for a mission trip. I told the girls what a mission trip was and they could not believe people would do that just for this God who loves them. They are working in two churches in NYC. They pulled off in this big coach that was loaded with people and will return on Saturday. They are doing a family trip and teaching two day camps and upward basketball. I wonder if they could use some hens next year! I have heard the Mrs.husband say they had enough old hens so guess they could use some of the younger ones from the hen house! Well, must go before I get the Mr. in trouble!....just writing what I have heard...you know Elaine and Debbie are no spring chicks!

The Daily Hen has just posted that Princess is no longer the Princess...but is the Queen! Of course this does not mean she takes Moi's place, but this means she has two chicks hatched Sunday.
The Mrs. has asked me to publish a contest naming the two chicks.
Submit a name for a Rooster and and name for a Hen.
The winner will win time at the Ritz as well as their picture in the Daily Hen!

Contest will end August 1st. (By then we might know what sex we have!!!
"I'm still the fairest of the all"...Dolly

A New Day

Life is wonderful here at "The Ritz"...., actually I thought it could not get any better until I woke up this morning to a strange noise in our hen house! I knew that Princess was up to something when she stayed out late one night, but what could I say. Not only did she loose her glass slipper, she lost her mind!!!

About a 3 weeks ago she absolutely would not get off that nest for the "working" girls to lay their eggs. We had to just push her off and then she would climb back on as soon as they got off. You remember, I don't lay, and I have a new job now and it's the anchor woman for "The Ritz" and I have my wings full with that. These girls started quite a ruckus about that "Princess". They really had her "pecked" as a "you know what"! Well, I didn't report what they were saying b/c I had more trust in princess than they did. You should have heard their cackling about her!!!

After a few days of just sitting, the Mrs. realized that sweet "Princess" was wanting to NEST!!! Oh, my! I overheard an conversation with her friend, Lois and she said might get some fertile eggs for "The PRINCESS". Well that was a good story in itself. The Mrs. has some friends who are the in-laws of her daughter and low and behold they had some relatives (Sissy and Leon) who had some neighbors WHO had some fertile eggs! The Mrs. got a call from these relatives that their neighbors had some eggstra eggs they had not put in the frig....so Lois jumped in the car with The Mrs. and took off to I'm not sure where, and got the eggs from those lucky hens who have a rooster in their house! Oh, MY!!!

After that little trip we just hid and watched as Princess turned into a Mean Ole Queen!.

I am not sure this story can end, but The Mrs. has company coming for G-man's BD and she is not worth plucking when she has things to do....so tune in tomorrow and I will tell you what happened!

There has been a lot of water under the bridge since I have clucked last. My first cluck is to the book "Henny, pen-pen"...if anyone has not read this then you don't know about "the sky is falling". Chick that out and you will know what a real"chicken", chickens are! Well, the sky fell here but not the way it was in the book...my,my what a weekend of that awful stuff. I thought us girls were going to have to get new waders like our feathered cousins, the ducks! We were ready to fly the coop if we needed, but all in all we were safe. The Mrs. saw to that, thanks to her son Hank who dilligently came over to check on us while the Mrs. and her man were in a place of serenity called OKC. I think that means O.K. meaning in O.K. Feeds out of Ft. Smith, but not sure of that. Anyway, in OKC I heard the Mrs. say that it blew so much that it blew all the rain over here and their weekend was eggsolutely beautiful! Well, we had a "henn" of a time over here. The sky actually fell all around us! No chickin! I mean it "litterly"!!! Our litter in out pen was as wet as it could be and our feet got so wet we had to roost all day!!! The Mrs. came home to this and immediately turned the fans on in our pen to dry things out. She even turned the "litter" several times a day to get it to drying more. Our "girls" house was o.k. We saw Betsy several times come in and clean our poop up so it would not smell too bad in this damp weather. The Mrs. even put out a new "atomizer" with a new eggroma! It's smells a bit weird for our hen house, but we gets lots of comments on what kind of perfume we use!

Now, today the Mrs. had her grand daughter, Sally Kaye and a sweet friend, Emma, over to play a while. In the middle of their play time they brought us all a treat! The Mrs. doesn't like for us to have too much processed stuff so I'm sure they didn't ask her when they brought us a whole grain bagel! Rooster!(That's "man" in hen language) That was really good! Speaking of rooster, we have two cute chicks in here that have grown up now and I heard the Mrs. say she thought one of them was a rooster! Wouldn't that be great! I can't wait to tell the girls about that! The Mrs. bought two supposed to be pullets for me hoping I would adopt them. I have too much to do already to adopt chicken tots! You know how much time that would take away from my vocalizing and practicing. BUT, on TV I saw where the one and only place I wanted to ever perform was flooded! My life is too short for this wait! I must get busy and get myself recognized by Josh Turner or someone as famous so I can get myself on the Grand Ole Opry like Barbara Mandrell did. I would have to sing "You Can Eat Crow in My Bed Anytime"...of course Barbara really liked her man to eat crackers! I would not care if he ate anything, just come on in! The hens would love that!! I'm not telling that I think "she is a he" and maybe we will keep that cock after all! We will tell him not to crow about things and give his secret away! Well, enough of that. After all, we are a bunch of good ole girls and are "GRITS". If you don't know what that means then here is a clue!
Girls Raised in the South...and that we are!
Thought for the day: A grit each day keeps the dr. away! Go for it!