Chicken update, some bustin out,split head, and dog vomit

Well it's been another busy week here, I have a chicken update, some more plants have started bloming here, my cabbage crop is shredded, and I found some neat fungi.

Here's my girl Red 2, she has now made it a week since I had to cut an egg out of her,  she is eating, and foraging, but she still spends most of the day resting, and hanging out by herself. The other girls are all hanging out together and don't even seem to notice her. I'm still optimistic, but her size has diminished considerably, she is now much smaller than the rest of the girls, she used to be alot bigger than all but one of the girls (Red 1) hence the name Red 2.

This is my favorite time of year, Why? More bustin out.

 Sunshine Blue Blueberry bustin out.

 Florida Prince Almond bustin out.

 Desert Gold Peach bustin out.

Dorset Golden Applee bustin out.

Here's my first cabbage head of the year, it's 3 times as big as store bought cabbage and taste 10 times better, but the recent rains made it split(to much water makes cabbage split), splitting is fine except you can't store the heads as long, when they're split, and if you're growing heads for St. Patties Day they won't make it a month in the fridge. My cabbage crop this year only produced 3 good heads out of 6 transplants. No big deal there's still plenty of cabbage for everybody, until today, when I went outside and found another head split, (dammit). So now we have to eat cabbage for another week,(no big deal here comes a cabbage roll recipe) our corned beef and cabbage is starting to look pretty weak with only 1 cabbage head left.

 Finally some Slime Mold

Actually this is called dog vomit, you can see why, this patch of dog vomit showed up in my sheet mulching project. It's a great sign it means of soil decomposers (fungi). They have shown up and are doing there job(decomposing) . Soil building 101, it's amazing. This is soil being built out of newspaper and rabbit poop, all free.

What dog vomit looks like before it turns into dog vomit, AWESOME!!!

A dog gone tragedy, peach in full bloom, and chicken surgery

Well it's been a bad week around here, my dog killed a tree and I had to operate on one of my chickens today. At least the blooming Peach tree is looking great.

Here's my girl, while playing fetch today she ran over one of the newly planted plum trees and it broke off below the graft. 

Dead Jim

The good thing? I looked at the root structure real close when I pulled the broken tree out. Do you see that big root to the right that's the tap root. It had been in the pot so long it hit the bottom of the pot and started growing back up. I new these were trees were crappy trees when I bought them. There's a good chance this tree would never had made it IDK. But I planted 3 more just like it so we'll see.

Here's the replacement a Burgundy Plum that I spent 26 dollars on. It's a nice looking bare root plum I cut it down to 24 inches The stick on the right is the part I cut off and stuck in the ground. I have officially banned the game of fetch in the backyard.

This next part is tough, I'm just going to cut and paste what I posted on a forum for some answers.

Today when I came home from work I started working on my to do list. While I was cleaning out my fish tanks I noticed something hanging off the backside of one of RIR girls, at first I thought it was just a turd, then I looked closer and noticed she had half an egg sticking out of her vent. "WTF" I grabbed her and took her inside and started soaking her in warm water. My wife came out and couldn't believe what she was seeing. The egg was stuck half way out, and the lining of her vent was also coming out. More or less the whole egg was outside her body but half of the egg was still in the lining, I believe the term is she was prolaxed. While soaking our girl the wife and I bounced ideas off each other about what to do, at first we thought to just break the egg but noticed the lining of her vent was actually stuck to the egg shell. Finally after 20 minutes of of trying to massage the egg out I decided something had to be done. I pulled out my pocket knife and as my  wife held our girl I inserted the knife between the lining and the egg and gently worked the knife around the whole egg once this was done the egg popped right out and I pushed the lining back in. I was very careful with my knife and don't believe I cut any of her lining, I also pushed the lining of her vent back in, her vent lining is staying inside of her as of right now. I let her go back with the flock and they didn't even seem to notice, she walked around for about 30 minutes and then jumped into one of the nest boxes and is sleeping in the box as of right now. I don't know if I did the right thing but feel I did the best I could in the moment our girl was in alot of pain when I found her. If things don't work out I know what to do. Has this happened to any of you? And what should I do for her future care? She seems to be resting peacefully for now but I know there's another egg coming and there is know way that can be good for her. In the moment I didn't even think to take a pic but I found one on the internet I'll post in an attachment. Here's a pic of her resting the whole event was emotionally draining for my wife and I and it brought into focus that with chickens(or any animal) anything can happen at anytime.

Red 2

DON'T LOOK AT THE NEXT PIC IF YOU ARE SQUEEMISH

I'm optimistic about her future but I am thankful Deb was here as we worked through this ordeal together. 

Finally some good stuff my Florida Prince Peach is in full bloom and it is amazing the peach crop is looking good this year, so far.