So Sorry Lozzy
Could you tell the story of how Chickie came to live with you please? I never realized how much she was debeaked poor darling.![]()
I bought Chickie and Henny Penny from a battery farm nearby (which has since been shut down because of animal cruelty). I had just lost Emily, one of my two original girls and Lucy seemed lonely. You could buy them for $5.00 each and give them a home, otherwise they were killed at 18 months old. I didn’t know anything about quarantine then so I just put them all in together. It took Lucy about 5 minutes of hanging back before she got in there and started scratching around with them. There was no bullying, no pecking order, just three mates hanging out together. I was a bit shocked at Chickie’s appearance; her severely trimmed beak, one eye in which the pupil remained dilated, plus she was smaller than the other two, but as I got to know her, I discovered how cruisy and laid-back she was, how she stayed relaxed when I picked her up.
When I was painting the tractor after I had lost Penny, I had all the pieces spread out on the trampoline. I also had the pot of varnish up there as Lucy and Chickie had a habit of licking pictures and brightly coloured things and I didn’t want them to do that on something that was covered in chemicals. The two of them had been hanging out with me under the trampoline and every so often I could hear trilling (which I’m pretty sure was Chickie). Anyway, Chickie decided she wanted to know what I was doing so she flapped her wings furiously and got herself up to the edge of the trampoline and perched there. I lifted her back down as I didn’t want her licking stuff. She did this four times in a row! It was very cute and if I hadn’t had stuff covered in varnish, I would have let her hang out with me up top. It’s a nice memory, anyway.