Can I call my two girls "hens" now that they are laying?
Two eggs from two girls two days in a row! The eggs are piling up...maybe that's because I bought 5 dozen the weekend before I got my first egg!
As Ron has posted...I think the best term for you to use is your girls are "at the point of lay" which is often abbreviated to just POL...often seen in
for sale advertisements to describe females that are not hens and not chicks but getting ready to produce eggs. POL is inferring to people these are females under a year of age and approaching or in the midst of laying eggs (their first laying cycle).
So you got some eggs piling up..
....make crepes, biscotti and freeze some of it fer later, or devilled eggs for a nice FEAST of cackleberries. Eggs keep a very decent amount of time and a flush is always a reason to rejoice and bring on the enjoyment of the bounty!
The one "age" item term I like to spring on the exhibition youth kids at our club was the definition of "yearling."
Pullet\hen is used incorrectly quite a bit. So many of us are learning here. It is only important if speaking with a Show Breeder. They will not think you are serious if using the wrong language. Some will not sell to you if they think you are not serious.
Ron, any person that has "hang ups" regarding "terminology" and uses that to decide whom is good to sell to is pure idiotic. Just because someone does not have the "right words" on the tip of their tongue as in a walking dictionary/encyclopedia for a specific area...does not make them exclusively a bad "chicken" person. Harumph...I was isolated myself as a child growing up...only commercial poultry publications to order into our library for me to study and the very occasional golden find like the kids' book "Flossy & Bossy." Silly chook versus commercial poop handling...what a contrast with no middle ground covered! I am sure someone that was a show breeder would have been thoroughly confused with my personal "lack" of socially acceptable chicken graces...but man alive I could keep a bird well and I dearly loved all them barnyard mutts indeedy.
Every person is a newbie at some point in their lives...we can't be experts at everything and don't ever want to stop learning...better off being dead when we think we know it all!
Some of the easiest people to get up to speed are the ones with a completely clean slate. No baggage, no preconceptions...rights or wrongs. An empty vessel to show various methods to and let them logically decide what suits them at their place!
Personally I have found all persons (whatever their skill & experience levels) are either born with chicken down or webbed toes (landfowl and/or waterfowl) or not. You are a bird person or you are not and while many can learn how to keep birds and do a rather good job at it...the real true finds are the ones with chicken blood running in their veins as of yet, just an undiscovered "talent" that needs coaxing out. We know their type instantly...stop dead in their tracks and observe birds, know how to move about animals without freaking their beaks--even as children, locked and mesmorized by dem birdy brains and the birds know them just as instantly too!
"Now there's a human that'll powder puff my duff and feed me all the candy corns I can gulp! Bock a bock bock!"
People that have empathy with fellow living creatures and are all about taking good care of their dependents do NOT have to speak the "glossary of technical terms" language to be good potential owners. The truly good animal/bird person is already stoutly serious about their interests and the truly good seller will be serious about assisting that person by recognizing instantly the bird fever/hunger behind their eyes, whatever the lingo used. The very best way to learn is by doing and while setting a person up to fail right off is not a bonus...knowing a diamond in the rough and having a clue the student is going to surpass the teacher...now that is how hobbies prosper and evolve into greatness.
I think some of the best
two feet in trap and firmly fallen flat upon my ample butt times were when I first sent out handwritten letters requesting information about my dog breed some 35 years ago now. I can only imagine the dog breeder's groans to my request for information about "Blue Ticked Heelers" when the correct terminology is "Blue, Black, and Tan or even Blue Speckled/Mottled - Australian Cattle Dogs." As a newbie and a very determined researcher in most all things my family does...you make inquiries and ask the "experts" to assist you to get up to speed. Any oldtimer not willing to invest in the future education of the owners of their stock is not worth a pinch of coon crap in my books. You don't sell an animal, you send it out for forever home "adoption" and you are always in the background ready to assist if required. Even us oldsters make some of the most incredible blunders but in regards to differences in language use, that can be from county to county, not just country to country or even culture to cultures.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!
- William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet
Here on BYC, we have people from all over the world chatting up chickens and poultry...a little give and take, a little allowances for communication errors and hiccups as we try to have some fun on mass as a group? I refuse to use the one year and older male term for a chicken...it is rude and my use of it is rare if ever because it instantly makes me wince! Just as I concur that my dog terminology for a female dog would be taken as offensive by many. Never laughed so hard as when some of my Oz friends told me that historically in Australia, when they had a female dog in season, the old sure fire practise to not have her bred was to place the receptive female up in a tree in a box...called the B-box... "What? What? REALLY?" LOL...lotsa wild bush roving Dingoes in the Land Down Under!
Dr. Clive Carefoot sums this "techno terminology" up rather wonderfully in
Creative Poultry Breeding, page 75:
dude somehow I knew you would remember the location of a nude beach. I bet you can draw a map to the exact spot for dsgard
You mean it can get worse than
Speedos? Oh my eyes...
Sun burnt RED as a lobster (don't sharks like lobsters or is that just money grubbing persons on first dates?--I'm so confused--too much humidity soaks what brain cells I have left into uselessness--can't fire proper!) and nothing protecting any of you from further harm? Ghastly thoughts...must / make / it / stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh there's a sparkly...gotta go...
And on that note...I truly mean
CHICKEN UP peoples...
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
