A year ago, when I shared here that Starla had flown over the electric fence and been taken by a predator, you remarked that, as a silver lining, at least the others might learn from Starla's mistake. It was true.
Our other fence flyer, Peck, didn't fly out for months afterward.
When she...
Astute observation! I wondered if anyone would notice that at the end. Whatever Stilton's communicating, it's different than what Merle and Andre are getting into.
Stilton also doesn't play this game with either Andre or Merle, and Andre doesn't taunt Merle this way. Instigation via crowing is...
I may have shared this before: Peck's impulsiveness tends to get her into trouble. One day I watched her accidentally march into a pack of elder hens.
Instead of ducking and retreating while being pecked mercilessly like a junior hen should, she suddenly started preening enthusiastically...
Love those first crows.
You could knock me over with a feather when Merle started: he was 3 weeks old, waking us up from the brooder! Hard to believe a tiny little thing could make that noise.
Walk down memory lane tax: Merle in his salad days, including the season he lived peacefully as a...
Andre crows when his preferred feeder doesn't have enough of his favorite pellets in it 😂 Stilton crows when I'm talking on the cellphone around him. Back when he was still a young stinker, he used to kick me for talking on the phone. He has strong opinions.
Evidently wild birds may be...
Echoing that yes, skunks, raccoons, foxes, etc. all forage during the day. No disease necessary. We see them out all the time.
We even saw a skunk slap a raccoon the other day without resorting to spraying, which was fascinating! The raccoon ran away quickly, possibly realizing that spraying...
Interesting! I wonder if there's a shared, neutral space for crowing, or perhaps an established culture that crowing is for the common good.
I've seen crowing weaponized. It's how Merle instigates arguments when his brother Andre's trying to ignore him. They'll do this over and over: Andre...
This is certainly my experience, which is why that situation stuck with me. So many roosters confined together, with hens. Conspicuously harmonious but with nowhere to hide. I'd be worried all the time that something would happen when I wasn't there.
Further on the "it's fine until it isn't"...
While visiting family in north Florida a few years ago, I was mesmerized by the chicken setup on the small farm behind a local farm-to-table restaurant. They had 30-40 chickens in a 40'x15' run/open coop, including a dozen males of varying breeds, sizes, and ages (according to spurs). None of...
Pleasantly rainy here, on the anniversary of a much more rainy, traumatic event, Hurricane Helene. Thoughts to anyone else who went through it. This week has brought up a lot of heavy feelings.
On a lighter note, I decided some waterers needed a scrub this morning. It didn't start raining until...
Tax: Fall colors and molting.
Stilton always has a couple weeks where he sports a Bruce Willis widow's peak.
Patchy looking, mostly tail-less molters in a favorite dustbathing area.
I ate plenty of chocolate sandwiches in Denmark as a kid (didn't grow up there but visited family regularly). Danish sandwich chocolate/pålægschokolade is in sheets, not shavings, and served over a layer of butter, open faced...
I know I'm not the only one on the thread with super duper tame chickens, but I figured I'd go ahead and represent (acknowledging that Shad's probably shaking his head at this level of chicken-human mingling).
Tame chickens can happen unintentionally and unexpectedly. Merle was a mean...
We were discussing egg cost on this thread earlier in the summer, and I remember sharing that I prorate housing costs over 10 years. (Not that you're actually calculating costs in this case--just sharing in case it's germane for those who are!)...
This looks like a lot of hens' bums at the end of the laying season. We have a few who always end up with bare bums and dried poop on feathers. By mid-winter, they have bodacious fluffy butts again.
If her butt wasn't a ton worse than this photo prior to the bath, I'd leave her be. No need to...
Exactly. Molting seems to be one of the times when they need to forage more than ever. Their tastes in the first weeks of molt shift every few days. Sometimes they go bonkers for grass, then for something microscopic in the dirt, then for this or that plant.
They can't order off a menu, so...
It'll be fine. They know the difference. You're just a stand-in.
I've been an accidental rooster for hens and an accidental hen for bachelor Andre. The second the real thing appeared, I was like a teenager's mom at the mall: invisible 🫥
Also, for a long time after reading your threads, I...
Entry 4: Peck, 2-year-old Speckled Sussex hen, headed off on her daily – or hourly – adventure. She's always on the move.
Judges, please advise if the text on the flags disqualifies this photo. If so, I'll swap it with another I was thinking of entering. Thank you!