Okay, thanks. My curiosity is satisfied.
Doing good today so much less drama, the peepered girls are still behaving and doing much better at functioning with peeps on, i hope it lasts! got 6 eggs yesterday and 5 today! My true wish is we can remove the peepers in a month or so and have everyone get along(they really look funny, and detract from the natural beauty of the birds) I guess it beats bald spots and raw flesh though!!
Yes it's very stressful to me! My sister got seven pullets this spring, and is down to two. I just can't let them roam free unprotected to be plucked off one by one by a dog owl hawk coon coyote, so far hers have been killed by neighbors dog when they wander too close to it's chain reach, not dog or chickens fault, and my sis will probley live longer since she doesn't stress about it at all???LOL! Not sure if I am to sensitive for this chicken bussiness or just a control freak, but all I wanted was a few happy hens and a few eggs! I guess I wasn't prepared for canabalism, disease, parasites, death, bullying, and all the dark side of hen keeping you don't consider when you see those little darling day old chicks and those big brown tastey eggs
It's always important to realize that chickens, no matter how cute and fun, are farm animals, not pets. And that being a responsible animal owner means taking care of everything, even when "taking care of it" means death. Culling a bird is the kindest thing to do for it sometimes. When you live on a farm, you are responsible for it all, from the creation of life to the taking of life, and you have some hard decisions to make. When you start to think of it that way, it's an awesome responsibility very different than owning a dog or cat.My husband and kids are totally new to this! I keep telling them that it's normal for the chickens to do what they're doing. I had chickens around as a kid and have witnessed the brutality and "way of the chicken world" so am not shocked by nor suprised by it. Someone else was always around to take care of the "dirty work" ie culling, butchering, I always just had to feed and water them, and collect eggs, play with new chicks. Now as an adult, I am responsible for this little flock, and dealing with it's health and well being, way different now, i just need to calm down, but my husband, kids, and neighbor are all looking at me in a different light now that I had to cull my first bird a week or so ago do to untreatable complications from cocci as a chick, it wasn't fun, and they are all acting a bit standoffish because they didn't think i had it in me. Maybe we should watch "Delores Claiborne" movie this weekend hee hee hee(only kidding!) My favorite scene from that movie is when the old neighbor lady says to Delores the abused wife" ya know sometimes when a husband is coming home from his mistresses house late at night his breaks fail"!!!
getting pecked often by my chooks, i assume that if i died in the backyard my little dinosaurs would eat me. however, on the day a tiny, tiny kitten crawled under the backfence they made such a fuss and racket you would think a pack of wolves had entered the yard. the 3 chooks were much larger than the tiny kitty and quite capable of pecking the little fluffball to death, luckily they have forgotten their illustrious genetic history and are now "chicken".
OMGosh! childhood horrors coming back from watching the chickens play a leathal game of tug of war with a bullfrog once, and one day fishing saw a huge bullfrog with another bullfrogs leggs sticking out of it's mouth, yes defenitley Primal!! We humans like to anthropomorphize when it comes to chickens and frogs and critters, but really we are just in denial or trying in some way to feel good about ourselvesI decided that they'd eat me after I watched them find a nest of mice, catch and eat the mother mouse, and then the babies.
I don't tell that story to my egg customers. Many of them like to believe that "vegetarian fed" means the same as "vegetarian."
awww lucky kitty, mine attack any cats but my own, even full grown ones and small dogs!
