Forgive me if I ramble or if it's wordy. I've been writing the very first outline of my book and my mind is kind of in that zone still. (I figure it's a great way to actually learn writing since I've never been to school!)
I deal with depression/anxiety, and my stress relief is animals. And baby animals. Lots of baby animals. My cats are all older, and fixed, my birds don't lay, and I got The Itch. Instead of adopting another cat - or the cute baby goat I saw for sale - I was gifted an incubator for Christmas. I quickly bought some hatching eggs off Ebay, and set to work.
Hatching didn't go well. Out of the 17 I set 3 ended up hatching. Angry Baby, Invi, and Oogity Boogity. Angry Baby is a barred rock. From day 1 all he did was sit on top of this heating cave and scream. For hours. And hours. And then more. Asking around on this site and others revealed that 70-80 percent of the time that means rooster. Cool.
Angry Baby began acting more like a rooster. The head of the flock, ALWAYS in front of the line for treats, HUGE, but most importantly... His comb. Every time I showed a picture of him I'd get five or six comments going "Yeah, that's going to be a male." EVERYONE said he was a male. Time was coming when he would begin crowing, so I set out to find him a home.
I casually asked in a local chicken facebook group how hard it is to rehome a rooster. I knew he would be dinner, but I wasn't sure how hard it would be to get him to his dinner plate. A lady three hours away happened to see it and offered to take him. She has a huge farm and likes them for bugs. And wouldn't kill him. He would live out a happy chicken life.
Sweet! By now I had six chickens - Angry Baby, Ava, Oogity Boogity, Invi, Ellywe and Tallis. She agreed to take all of them when she made the trip down south for feed. She wanted friendly chickens for her kid anyway.
I hand tamed the cute little demons for her. Angry Baby was still twice as big as everyone else. He was very outgoing, the main man rooster. Nobody challenged him. And his comb was HUGE. There was NO DOUBT he was a big rooster. A week before she came I'm positive I heard someone crow. I came in and Angry Baby looked horrified. I assumed it was him from the way everyone was looking surprised. Time to go, Angry Baby!
She took them home, and I got new babies. Killian, Azrath, Morath, Zinthos, and Polaris. I needed baby chickens. I kept her updated on the new babies, and she sent me pics of mine sometimes. Time passed and she picked up the new set. She's thrilled because her son is SO HAPPY to have trained chickens that are friendly. Her autistic brother in law is happy because he can pet them. She likes them for bug control. The chickens are happy that they're not dinner, and I'm happy they have a home, I can keep in contact, and they're well taken care of. My rooster helped me find forever homes for all my awesome babies! I can keep getting chicks, then when they're too old I can rehome and get more. (It's great for my anxiety).
She just messaged me today. She's pretty sure Angry Baby laid an egg.
(My current theory is that she knew she would be dinner - she's HUGE! - and she knew my chicken lady would see my post. So she faked it, set us both up, and then revealed she planned it all along.)
----------------------------
My chicken lady loves the chickens I've sent her. But I hear about Killian the most. She's a TINY little silkie. She's the same age as her group, but half their size. There's another silkie that's a week older than her. She's less than half the size of that one. Killian was younger than my other flock, so she got stuck a lot. I ended up carrying her around when she got 'lost' (The babies jumped too high and she couldn't figure it out. She was too busy pecking at bugs to realize they moved to a new area, etc). She's pretty much trained to do her own thing, and eventually a human will rescue her.
Problem is, she's now on a 40+ acre farm. And the other chickens are much bigger. They can't fit through the chicken wire like she can. She tends to forget that. The following is a usual day for her.
Killian: Heeeey, the other stupid babies can't follow me through this wire. I'm going to go eat all that fresh grass while they watch. >
(Or, "Heeey, there's fresh grass out there. I'm going to go eat it.")
*Ten minutes later*
Killian: Heeeeey, there's more grass over there. The other chickens will follow me eventually. (Remember how she was smirking that they couldn't follow her? She forgot.)
*A while later*
Killian: Wait... Where's the other babies? :-O HELP!!!! I AM LOST!!!!!
SOMEONE SAVE ME!!!!
*Hours later*
Chicken owner: Where's Killian? Did a snake get to her? everyone else is here.
Killian: HEEEELLLPPPP!!!!! I AM LOST!!!
Chicken Owner: Oh you poor thing. How long have you been here? Come on, let's go put you back. You know you need to stay in the coop, Killian.
Killian: OH THANK YOU KIND HUMAN!!!! <3 I LOVE YOU! I PROMISE TO NEVER LEAVE AGAIN!
*Five minutes later*
Killian: Heeeeeyy, there's grass over there.
My chicken lady now calls Killian the bane of her existence. She has a love/hate relationship with her. She's the friendliest due to always having to be saved, which is good. But she's clueless and doesn't like staying put, which is bad. They find her lost or stuck at least twice a day. You would think that after a month Killian would learn to stay in the coop with the other babies. Nope. She needs that grass.
------------
I feel very lucky to have such strange chickens! The other ones turned out to be 'just chickens' without much of a personality. But these two take the cake. Angry Baby saved the herd from being dinner, and Killian is the terror nobody knew they needed. I'm a little miffed that my clearly male rooster turned out to be a hen, but she's hilarious.
(Purple arrow is Angry Baby, red is Killian)
I deal with depression/anxiety, and my stress relief is animals. And baby animals. Lots of baby animals. My cats are all older, and fixed, my birds don't lay, and I got The Itch. Instead of adopting another cat - or the cute baby goat I saw for sale - I was gifted an incubator for Christmas. I quickly bought some hatching eggs off Ebay, and set to work.
Hatching didn't go well. Out of the 17 I set 3 ended up hatching. Angry Baby, Invi, and Oogity Boogity. Angry Baby is a barred rock. From day 1 all he did was sit on top of this heating cave and scream. For hours. And hours. And then more. Asking around on this site and others revealed that 70-80 percent of the time that means rooster. Cool.
Angry Baby began acting more like a rooster. The head of the flock, ALWAYS in front of the line for treats, HUGE, but most importantly... His comb. Every time I showed a picture of him I'd get five or six comments going "Yeah, that's going to be a male." EVERYONE said he was a male. Time was coming when he would begin crowing, so I set out to find him a home.
I casually asked in a local chicken facebook group how hard it is to rehome a rooster. I knew he would be dinner, but I wasn't sure how hard it would be to get him to his dinner plate. A lady three hours away happened to see it and offered to take him. She has a huge farm and likes them for bugs. And wouldn't kill him. He would live out a happy chicken life.
Sweet! By now I had six chickens - Angry Baby, Ava, Oogity Boogity, Invi, Ellywe and Tallis. She agreed to take all of them when she made the trip down south for feed. She wanted friendly chickens for her kid anyway.
I hand tamed the cute little demons for her. Angry Baby was still twice as big as everyone else. He was very outgoing, the main man rooster. Nobody challenged him. And his comb was HUGE. There was NO DOUBT he was a big rooster. A week before she came I'm positive I heard someone crow. I came in and Angry Baby looked horrified. I assumed it was him from the way everyone was looking surprised. Time to go, Angry Baby!
She took them home, and I got new babies. Killian, Azrath, Morath, Zinthos, and Polaris. I needed baby chickens. I kept her updated on the new babies, and she sent me pics of mine sometimes. Time passed and she picked up the new set. She's thrilled because her son is SO HAPPY to have trained chickens that are friendly. Her autistic brother in law is happy because he can pet them. She likes them for bug control. The chickens are happy that they're not dinner, and I'm happy they have a home, I can keep in contact, and they're well taken care of. My rooster helped me find forever homes for all my awesome babies! I can keep getting chicks, then when they're too old I can rehome and get more. (It's great for my anxiety).
She just messaged me today. She's pretty sure Angry Baby laid an egg.
(My current theory is that she knew she would be dinner - she's HUGE! - and she knew my chicken lady would see my post. So she faked it, set us both up, and then revealed she planned it all along.)
----------------------------
My chicken lady loves the chickens I've sent her. But I hear about Killian the most. She's a TINY little silkie. She's the same age as her group, but half their size. There's another silkie that's a week older than her. She's less than half the size of that one. Killian was younger than my other flock, so she got stuck a lot. I ended up carrying her around when she got 'lost' (The babies jumped too high and she couldn't figure it out. She was too busy pecking at bugs to realize they moved to a new area, etc). She's pretty much trained to do her own thing, and eventually a human will rescue her.
Problem is, she's now on a 40+ acre farm. And the other chickens are much bigger. They can't fit through the chicken wire like she can. She tends to forget that. The following is a usual day for her.
Killian: Heeeey, the other stupid babies can't follow me through this wire. I'm going to go eat all that fresh grass while they watch. >
(Or, "Heeey, there's fresh grass out there. I'm going to go eat it.")
*Ten minutes later*
Killian: Heeeeey, there's more grass over there. The other chickens will follow me eventually. (Remember how she was smirking that they couldn't follow her? She forgot.)
*A while later*
Killian: Wait... Where's the other babies? :-O HELP!!!! I AM LOST!!!!!
SOMEONE SAVE ME!!!!*Hours later*
Chicken owner: Where's Killian? Did a snake get to her? everyone else is here.
Killian: HEEEELLLPPPP!!!!! I AM LOST!!!
Chicken Owner: Oh you poor thing. How long have you been here? Come on, let's go put you back. You know you need to stay in the coop, Killian.
Killian: OH THANK YOU KIND HUMAN!!!! <3 I LOVE YOU! I PROMISE TO NEVER LEAVE AGAIN!
*Five minutes later*
Killian: Heeeeeyy, there's grass over there.
My chicken lady now calls Killian the bane of her existence. She has a love/hate relationship with her. She's the friendliest due to always having to be saved, which is good. But she's clueless and doesn't like staying put, which is bad. They find her lost or stuck at least twice a day. You would think that after a month Killian would learn to stay in the coop with the other babies. Nope. She needs that grass.
------------
I feel very lucky to have such strange chickens! The other ones turned out to be 'just chickens' without much of a personality. But these two take the cake. Angry Baby saved the herd from being dinner, and Killian is the terror nobody knew they needed. I'm a little miffed that my clearly male rooster turned out to be a hen, but she's hilarious.
(Purple arrow is Angry Baby, red is Killian)
... I’m glad you found something that helps your anxiety... I had it really bad a few years ago and what helped me a lot was watching Duck Dynasty... pretty much 24/7 
