Productive? What’s Your Price?

A nice surprise this morning prompted me to take a little look back at how productive things have been around The Fruity Chicken.

 

These 11 fluffy butts were hatched out over the course of the weekend. I had set 20 eggs 3 weeks ago as a test to see if my new BCM roo was doin his business. Eleven out of twenty ain’t bad for a youngster that just started crowing a month ago! These babies mamas could be Easter Eggers, Barred Rocks, Black Sex Link, Cochin, Rhode Island Red, or maybe even a mystery hen but those Black Copper Marans genes must be pretty strong seeing as how they all look alike no matter what color egg they came out of.

My Sweety, Karen, has been working on developing her Exotic Bird business.

She has a website at www.gotbirdslasvegas.com but don’t bother clicking on it yet. Karen, Cammie, and Oscar were basically comatose on the day they planned on building the site.  Karen is focusing on mobile services for owners of Exotic Birds in the Las Vegas valley. These services currently include; grooming, feed, handmade toys, and custom order cages. Now that I have inserted the obligatory plug I can go back to what this post is about, productivity.

Karen has a very strong creative side and wants to do more with her business than just be a mobile pet shop. Thats where productivity comes in, she had this idea for making birdhouses out of license plates and in preparation has been hoarding plates now for about 5 years. We went into full production last Sunday.

We have our system down now, I fabricate the wooden carcass; cut, bend, and attach the license plates; then drill the entry holes. Karen takes care of decorating stuff such as painting, installing perches and chimneys and all the other little fur-fru involved in making kitschy craft stuff.

All of this was very relaxing (at least for me) and has me almost looking forward to the Pomona Bird Mart later this month. But still I think I would rather spend that weekend puttering around my chickens and orchard in the 110 heat we have been having. And just in case any of you are join “awe isn’t Max sweet to help Karen out like that” forget it! She’s bribing me, she thinks she’s being subtle but I got it. One of her customers from southern Utah was supposed to drop off a couple dozen hatching eggs of Barnevelders, Spanish, and Basque chickens but they kept “forgetting”, now that her birdhouses are done she has time to make a “special” trip just to pick up my eggs. Isn’t she sweet?!