I STILL have a chicken!

I ran out to the farm this afternoon after work to check on my gopher traps and my little chicken. She's still there!  I was afraid that she'd leave or that some varmint would gobble her up, but she's still there.  I decided if she was, then I would go to the feed store and get some scratch. So I did!  When I got out to the farm today, I think she was glad to see me, OR more than likely, she recognized the scratch sack! Regardless, she came a'runnin' right up to me.  I scattered scratch for her and she started gobbling  it up.

Here she is again eating her scratch.  One of you posted yesterday that she needed a name. I know all of you chicken keepers have named your hens, so I decided she should have a name.  I thought and thought and here's what I came up with -

My niece, who's 16, makes fun of me all the time for my Texas country accent and country ways. She was teasing me mightily over the holidays at mom's house and she gets a real kick out of some of the stuff I say - the words, the phrases and the hick way I talk. SOOOO,  guess what I named my chicken?  JACI !  I think that's very appropriate to name my chicken after my niece after all the grief she gives me!  I sent her a message on her facebook & a picture of her namesake and I'm waiting for her to respond and see what she thinks!

I did get another gopher over the last couple of days - now the count is up to 16.  Found a couple of new mounds in the front yard, so I got my traps out again. I didn't think I'd see any more of them until the weather warmed up a little.  I guess this one was stupid. I told 'em all that they could stay out in the pasture, just don't come in the yard. He can't say I didn't warn him. Must've been a crazy teenage gopher.

I have lots of raking to do. The catalpa trees have finally dropped all their foot-long bean pods and there are thousands of them laying all over the yard. It's quite a job to get them all cleaned up especially when we have 7-8 of these giant trees around the yard at the farmhouse. Oh well - raking's good exercise.

Back to work this week. Been playin' catch-up. I'll probably get my tree down this weekend and get all the Christmas stuff put up.  Ya'll take now, ya hear?  And do keep those gowns down!