No itching before. At least not that I noticed. I have been monitoring the camera and she is sleeping peacefully. If I wasn’t so distracted by her bleeding I would be all swooning over how completely adorable they are fast asleep. All puffed up and burying their faces in their feathers (it is cold out tonight). I am going to get up well before dawn and inspect and clean the wound and look again for lice.
Gardener’s Affliction=Chicken Bounty
Warning: graphic photos of revolting insect larva
So I have two raised beds and I’m just a beginning gardener so while I’m adding compost and amendments and turning the soil I’m finding these moth larva —cabbage moth, maybe? Like three or four to every.single.spadeful of soil. I’m not terribly squeamish and I knew the chickens I tend would love them, so I threw them on top of my fermented feed, alfalfa pellets along with some greens and boy you would have thought I was the Guy Fieri of the farmyard set. The chickens loved it. But like I said, it gives some people the creeps...
And if anyone knows how to get rid of the grubs, I’d be interested! Although now maybe I should treat it as a chicken treat crop!
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Better make some ice skates for the hens Bob.
In case someone isn't aware of this if you click on the image it will enlarge.
Cillin and his son Treacle have been scrapping. I've had roosters here for ten years and one thing I've leaned is if you have more than one they'll fight here. There is absolutely nothing one can do about it unless one is prepared to imprison one, or more. I'm not willing to do that. It doesn't resolve the problem, just postpones it. The majority of the scraps are over in seconds. They are more face saving than anything.
There is a rooster scrap here every day, sometimes more than one.
I get in between many of those I see and, in general, that's enough to put a stop to it. You get to know the regular scrappers, where and when, who most likely started it, and if you're there, the cause of it. The problems that cause the fights are pretty constant.
You also get to understand a bit about how each rooster fights. I'm interested in everything chicken and while it can be very upsetting and hard to watch at times, it's part of free range chicken life.
So, not wishing to be gratuitous, but illustrate a point these are just two pictures I took.
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So, this is the fight start posture. Notice the position of their feet. They can take a step to defense or attack. Notice each has a different foot preference. I've watched them swap foot opposite foot so their foot will meet their opponents.
There are lots of fighting styles, some peck, some turn side on for an attack like karate, some stay on the ground more than others.
What I want to make clear is this is rooster fighting rooster. They often don't do any of this when attacking a human.
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Looking at the rather blurry picture aboveYou can see why the foot placement is important. While in the air, both roosters will try and rake his opponent with the other foot after he has pushed himself off the ground. So it's block your opponent with one foot and if you can, gain lift off him so the other foot is high enough to strike at the comb and wattles.
Both this comedians have ripped ears now. Fortunately not all the way down.
I cleaned them up and used a cyanoacylate based skin repair (super glue basically) on both of them.
I checked them both over today. This is Cillin allowing an inspection. Both are fine btw.View attachment 2021517
