Yikes!!!! I didn't realize it had been that long since I last posted. The chicks are WAY bigger than they were in the last pics.I'm only going to post when interesting things happen because things are quite busy around. You might want to know that Largo and Goldie's names have been changed to Cleo and Calliope respectively. We first wanted to name Goldie "Calliope" as she has quite good lungs(
) , and then we decided to name Largo "Cleo" as both are names of the Muses. That made my sister who wanted to name our hens after Greek goddesses happy
. But it's been so busy around here that I haven't had time to post the crazy things that have been happening around here for the past three days! Well, I'll start at then, because after all the beginning is the very best place to start, isn't it? (Warning, this may be a little long, sorry. But I think you will find it interesting.
Chapter 8
It all began last Saturday when UnderHisWings went to check on in Miss Henny and the chicks. I was upstairs hanging out on BYC when she rushed up asking, "Where's the Nesporin?!" "What's wrong?!" I asked, going to the bathroom to look. "Calliope's neck is all bloody!" replied my twin, almost whimpering. My eyes grew large," What happened?" I asked. I remembered that the Nesporin had been lost for awhile and told UnderHisWings so. We looked for the Vaseline as my twin said, "I don't know, but it doesn't look very good." We found the jelly and applied it to Calliope's neck. Poor chickie- it
didn't look very good.We guessed it might have been a wire or something that she could have cut herself on if she flew up to high. We had to go to a party quite soon after, and we decided to leave her with the others for then. We probably should have isolated her, but that would have been a noisy and difficult affair. Anyways, when we got back that night, all the chicks were huddled around Mama hen and everything looked fine.
But that morning I woke up to noisy squackings. I jumped out of bed, ran down stairs, grabbed a jacket and slipped on shoes while praying, "God, please let them be ok, I hope it's not a hawk or something! Oh! What could be wrong!" I'm glad God understands mixed up prayers like that. Anyway, when I got to the coop, I saw Calliope running away from Henrietta who was chasing after her. Papa was already out there. Picking Cali up, we tried to put her in a box that had a screen over the top. But she was going frantic trying to get back to the others. The short of it is that Miss Henny had been picking on her and some on Cleo (I wonder why she chose the twins to pick on?) and so we put Miss Henny in a shed, the front of which we covered with a board and chicken wire. The frantic squackings of Miss Henny only deepened the chicks' sorrow and distressed peepings. I sat with the eight wailing fluffballs and had to plug my ears to keep out their heart-wrenching cries. I am not ashamed to say that I broke down crying. Who could do anything else? I had to run out of the coop where they stood, peeping their hearts out, so that I would not cry mine out. Eventually I went back inside the house with the feeling of a stomach tied in a sailor's knot. I was frankly miserable. We also separated Cali by attaching more chicken wire to one wire "wall" of the run. In this way, she could still see the others and "talk" to them through her prison bars so to speak. That night we found that she had somehow gotten back in with the others and we left her there. She probably would have gotten back in again or wounded herself in an attempt to. So the extra pen was empty. But not for long...
Mama and I had just returned from going down into town today when the doorbell rang. It was a neighbor stating that she saw a chicken near the mailboxes and wondered if it was ours. We freaked out hoping Miss Henny hadn't flown coop. One of my sisters went to check out Miss Henny's "coop" while UnderHisWings and I flew down to the mailboxes. When we got there we saw that the chicken was not Miss Henny. In fact, it was a Barred Rock with big fat legs and a really long,droopy comb . We remembered that another neighbor of ours had a Barred Rock so after catching her (which was fairly easy, she seemed friendly enough) we walked down the road to them. The chicken hardly struggled at all; we concluded that she must be quite friendly. We got down to the neighbors house who checked to see if her chickens were all there. They were. "Who's is this chicken?????" we thought. We went down to our house and put her where Calliope had been. We gave her food and water and she went at both of those like crazy. I think she was just so calm because she didn't have any strength to struggle. Once she had regained some though, she was curious enough to try to peck at on of Curi's feathers. That was when we noticed that her big legs weren't just big legs. "Mystery" as we had christened her, had scaly leg mite. Poor Mystery. Well, UnderHisWings and my other sister went around to some other neighbors to ask if the Barred Rock was theirs while I stayed with the chickens. I'm
trying to keep it short-ish (and not really succeeding
) so, basically, none of our neighbors owned her and we had moved her to the barn. Poor girl though, we also noticed that she wheezes.
Looking back now, I see that if Miss Henny hadn't pecked at Calliope, we wouldn't have had to make Cali. her own pen. Then, if Cali hadn't flown over and stayed with the other chicks, we wouldn't have had an extra pen ready to hold Mystery. I don't know, but I sort of think that was a God thing. I don't know if we'll be able to keep her. We'll first have to look around some more to see if Mystery is anyone's chicken. Then, I'm not sure if Mama and Papa are up to keeping another hen especially when were probably going to give Henrietta back to our Aunt. But I don't know what else we'd do with her, because I don't know how many people want a chicken with scaly leg mite, and I don't know of any A.C.F. Rescue's around here! We just may have to start our own....
(I'll edit later to add pics)