I had the opportunity recently to hear an inspirational speaker tell her story. In telling where she came from, she related a story about having ended up in the legal system and having to report to a parole officer for a drug test. She really thought she would test clean, but the test came back dirty and she exclaimed, "What? How did that happen," whereupon the P.O. snorted and said, "You know how it happened!" It's pretty funny when she tells it.
Anyway, I thought this might be a good time to check in with "No, Really," and was astonished to see that my last post was in June, and here it is after the middle of September. My first thought was, "What? How did that happen?" followed by, "You know how it happened!" As I've been telling so many of my friends lately, "Life is what happens when you've made other plans."
I just glanced back over this year's blog entries and I'm thinking, "Dear Blog, I'm sorry I haven't been very attentive lately. Yes, I've been spending a lot of time with Facebook lately, but please don't think for a minute that it means I don't still love you. I'll try to do better. Look! here's a post now! Love, Vicki."
Wow, I completely missed blogging about my chickens!
In April I stopped by the Tractor Supply store, really just to walk around and look at things, see what they had. As it happens, I happened to choose "Chick Week" to go in, which is when they really stock up on chicken supplies and get baby chicks in the store. Big sigh.
The chicken house was not suitable for housing chickens yet as part of the fence was down so we could store equipment in the covered chicken yard, and the entire chicken house itself was full of other stuff being stored. I performed a little mental scrimmage, though, and determined that baby chicks have to stay inside under a lamp for a while anyway, and it'd be weeks before they'd be big enough to go to the chicken house, so I came home with six red pullets, six barred rock straight-run, two black polish frizzees and two buff Bantam Cochins.
Kept them in a box in the house for a week or two, just like we did the first time we got chickens when we lived here before, and them moved them out to the studio until it was time to move them outside.
Meanwhile, Michael's then-girlfriend's grandparents had been politicking to send a rooster or two of theirs with Michael to bring out here. Once I brought baby chicks home, he got on the ball and got the stuff from inside the chicken house relocated, along with all the stuff from the chicken yard, and got the fencing and chicken wire back in place so they'd have a nice secure yard. As soon as that was done, next thing you knew, we had two roosters out there!
Now, I've had chickens before. I know that established adult birds will pick on any additions to the flock, especially if they are younger, smaller, or more vulnerable in any way. I wanted to let the babies get as big as possible before trying to put everybody together. Soon enough, the day came that I went out to the studio to tend the chicks and one was perched up on the edge of the box. Moving Day! Time to go to the chicken house!
Fortunately we were enjoying a fairly mild spring, so I hustled the grown roosters out into the chicken yard and closed the little access door between yard and house before taking the smaller birds into the chicken house. For a while I had two flocks of birds - the Odd Couple out in the yard, and the sixteen youngsters in the house. Before long the young ones looked to be big enough to hold their own against the bigger ones and I slid that little door open for a meet & greet.
Things went well between them. It was amusing to observe that while the younger chickens would go on back inside the chicken house at night, the "Odd Couple" would sleep out in the yard like they had been doing. I don't know exactly when that changed, but everybody goes in together at night now. They're kinda funny - they all have Their Spot where they sleep - I know that the one Frizzee will be inside the old wood stove, the other one will be on top, along with two barred rock roosters, a red hen, and one buff Bantam. Over on the roosts, one red hen will be on the lower roost, and all the rest of the chickens will be on the upper roost, usually in a particular order.
The hens have been laying eggs for a few weeks, now, and a couple of weeks ago I started letting them out to free-range during the day. Oh, man, they love that, and so do I, seeing chickens about the place. I have a couple of favorites, and another that "favorites" me (I call him Paul). One of the older roosters is the dominant, Alpha character, complete with harem. Those hens come when he calls, where they ignore the other roosters, and they ignore me, too! The young barred rock roosters are almost twice his size, but he is still King of the Yard, and pretty too. He reminds me of Floyd, another pretty, Alpha rooster we used to have.
Of the eighteen birds present, about half are boys and half girls. Both of the Bantams are boys and I know at least one of the Frizzees is a boy, not sure about the other one. So far, all those boys don't fight too much. Perhaps they were listening when I told them what happens to bad roosters under my care - they get "invited" to dinner!
All in all, they're a lot of fun to have around, to observe. Chickens are smarter than most folks give them credit for. I'm sure I'll write about them again.
