What did you do with your flock today?

[My Very First 6 Chickens]

Does anyone else's chickens seem to know the names of their flockmates?
For a while now I've been half jokingly asking Ferdy to fetch me a particular hen. For example, if I ask him to find Pru off he goes and brings her to me within a few seconds. He does this with all my chickens except Gladys. He goes looking for her but usually comes back without her.
I'm going to start documenting him doing this as anecdotally he seems to have an 80-90% success rate in bringing back the right chicken. Maybe I'm just losing the plot but if chickens can memorize up to a hundred faces, why not the sounds we make for individual flockmates names?

I have 5 hens that travel tightly in a pack. When we are hanging out, sometimes, they want to travel along, one will stay with me, or come back to get me. The one hen is telling me 'Lets go'. So I do. I follow to keep up with flock with the informer by my side. When i look for a hen, the others verbally join in. Said chicken always appears from somewhere ; like, 'whats the commotion? I'm right here!? What did I miss?!' Lol

 

[Nomadicus]

I might give it a go then!

If you don't fry it then something with a good amount of tomatoes preferably fresh ones will take out all the slime. The acid in the tomatoes neutralizes the slime.

 

[Nomadicus]

No more bloody roosters this morning. Only 3 roosters and no pullets returned to their coop last night and no Cornish did. It's a problem when there are so many places for them to hide in late afternoon.

 

[kurby22]

Hope you get better soon. I've had covid 3 times now, totally different symptoms each time. It's an absolute b*tech. Sending you lots of hugs and healing vibes.

Yeah it’s been different for every person in the house who’s gotten it! Today is the first day I haven’t needed immediate DayQuil dosing to be awake…so I take that to be a good sign. It sucks though, as I was supposed to help teach a course in Nebraska this week and had to cancel :-( Wasn’t looking too forward to the humidity, but the course is a fun one to teach so I’m bummed about that! Hope I’m better by next weekend though, that’s when all the sports starts and we have to run around everywhere all day!

 

[Nomadicus]

I had to separate 2 roosters tonight where one just wanted to sleep and another wanted to fight. They are all alone tonight now by themselves. I didn't have a lot of time with them today as we went out of town to party with one of the great grand kids that just turned 4 today.

 

[PopoMyers]

Does anyone else's chickens seem to know the names of their flockmates?
For a while now I've been half jokingly asking Ferdy to fetch me a particular hen. For example, if I ask him to find Pru off he goes and brings her to me within a few seconds. He does this with all my chickens except Gladys. He goes looking for her but usually comes back without her.
I'm going to start documenting him doing this as anecdotally he seems to have an 80-90% success rate in bringing back the right chicken. Maybe I'm just losing the plot but if chickens can memorize up to a hundred faces, why not the sounds we make for individual flockmates names?

Their hearing is keen, so that makes all the sense in our world. What a smart Ferdy you have! Gladys probably does not like his herding and bossing her around, right?

 

[PopoMyers]

Yeah it’s been different for every person in the house who’s gotten it! Today is the first day I haven’t needed immediate DayQuil dosing to be awake…so I take that to be a good sign. It sucks though, as I was supposed to help teach a course in Nebraska this week and had to cancel :-( Wasn’t looking too forward to the humidity, but the course is a fun one to teach so I’m bummed about that! Hope I’m better by next weekend though, that’s when all the sports starts and we have to run around everywhere all day!

Get well soon. What class were you going to teach? Nebraska?

 

[PopoMyers]

Asked my son to check for eggs. I did ask if he knew the difference between the wooden eggs and real ones, and he said he did. How many did we get? 11 eggs. I checked later, and he had brought in all 6 faux eggs.

 

[PopoMyers]

No more bloody roosters this morning. Only 3 roosters and no pullets returned to their coop last night and no Cornish did. It's a problem when there are so many places for them to hide in late afternoon.

Did they show up today?

 

[kurby22]

Get well soon. What class were you going to teach? Nebraska?

Thank you! I actually feel quite a bit better today, hoping tomorrow will work out the last of the worst stuff. Definitely improved from yesterday by a lot.

I was going to help teach an introduction to rangeland (non-tree dominated land) ecology course for new employees. My specialty is the ecology portions (native and invasive plants, soils, hydrologic cycle, nutrient cycle, disturbance regimes, etc) and the other instructors focus more on vegetation data collection, monitoring, rangeland health assessments, and how to use the information to help ranchers/land managers do conservation and restoration work on their rangelands. Nebraska has some really nice midgrass prairie where we can spend time outside discussing the plant-soil relationships, patterns that occur based on locations on the landscape, etc. Plus we have our big National Soils Lab at University of Nebraska so we go to NE a lot for trainings. It’s not my favorite because like our Hawaii office, it’s in a federal building with the FBI and others so security is heavy, the buildings are hot, old and boring, and the parking stinks Although this class was going to be in Western NE and I haven’t been there before. :-( It’s always fun seeing parts of the country I’ve never seen…even the flat and flatter lands of the Midwest