Chicken myths and old wives' tales, please!

[Miss Lydia]

Oh my gosh parrotchick, I would hate to have one of them coming at me, And to think our chickens use to be that big. My roos are such gentlemen they always wait till we're out of sight before they go after the girls.

 

[tammyd57]

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My roo, Vern, won't mate the girls when I'm within eyesight. He understood from his first day here that I am the flock leader and he's second in command. He doesn't eat, sleep or mate while he can see me. BUT, he loves to show off in front of my husband! Hubby came in this morning and said "That Vern's gonna hurt himself, he jumped 4 of the girls before I could get the feeder filled!"

 

[Rathbone]

My current favorite:
We hatched a bunch of eggs here for the students to see. I put in varied colors and sizes of eggs because I anticipated that the students had never seen anything other than a store-bought white egg.
#1 question of the day: "So, those little ones are going to grow bigger and then they will hatch?" (ladies and gentlemen, this question repeatedly came from the adults - not the children)

 

[Miss Lydia]

We are covered with ice on the patio and walkway around our house so when my chickens see me coming with treats the ice skate up to me. It's very funny, I just hope they don't hurt themselves.

 

[Yazzo]

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I call that the Woo Dance.

Ahhhh, the Rooster Circle, Drop Wing, Dance of Love!

Now, back to The Egg Song... It Is the same series of syllables as a warning cry, but like Cantonese and Mandarin languages, the TONE of the syllables signifies the meaning. Any experienced chicken keeper can tell the difference between The Egg Song and All Heck is Breaking Loose.

Humph.

Yep, of course it varies. I think it's not so much the tone though, but the pitch and frequency that's significant. But even when they do it after laying an egg, it's not a 'song'. It's still a warning call. The most likely and agreed upon theory for this is that they do it to scare predators away that might be lurking around the nest. Even notice how they do it more when they are in a more open and/or 'less safe' nesting spot? Trust me, I have spent a LOT of time (probably too much time) thinking about that and trying to analyze it.....there are several theories, but I am pretty much certain it IS a warning call. There's so much more to it that I could talk about, but as I said, another time, another place.

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I'll make sure to!

I think most roosters have gotten the wardance down pretty well, although mine just totally spaz out and almost fall over when they do it!

Hmmm.....more myths....this isn't much of one, but it's kind of funny how some people who don't have chickens get scared that the chicken is going to peck them, hard, even with little chicks!

I have a friend who was scared of tiny baby pigeons too though, so.....

 

[sourland]

Yazzo, what is your source for this theory?

 

[undercoverchickenlover]

Here's one. My aunt told me never feed my chickens watermelon because it breaks their skin out and makes the eggs watery. She says growing up in Oklahoma she saw what happened when a chicken ate watermelon and it was horrible. I didn't tell her my Rhode Island Red absolutely loves watermelon in the summer!

 

[spartacus_63]

I think we should do a poll of BYCers...who thinks it's a song & who thinks it's a warning call?

 

[krazeepolack]

"Now, y'all better listen here, young'un"!!!

"Thet thar chicken, the one w/the red ears, she's a'gonna lay you a brown egg, yessir."

"Now thet one o'er thar, she gonna give y'all white eggs, 'cause she's a'got white ears."

This was the story(theory-?) I got from my neighbor three days ago. He claimed he raised chickens years ago.

 

[maizey]

My husband grew up in Ireland, and his family is still there with oodles of chickens. My irish mother in law told me that there was an old saying that if your rooster crowed after noon, it was bad luck and a lot of the older folks would encourage you to make stew out of any rooster who did it. She had one that did and all the old folks in the village wanted it for the stew pot! As far as i know, Charlie lived to be a ripe old rooster anyway.