ingrid

Hi There ! Yes, eggs eating IS a nasty habit for a hen. I can cure her of that by putting her in a curry pot. If you don’t mind, do reply. I could stop by to pick her up asap.

I’m feeling a little sad about Atilla.  I just sent her off on a motorcycle with a nice Vietnamese man.  He was driving, not her.  She was in a little box on the back of a mean looking machine.

She isn’t going far, just St Johns.  And even though his initial e-mail sounded like she was destined for the “curry pot”, he says that he would actually like to keep her if she can lay worth anything.  Problem is that I don’t think she can.  She dropped two malformed eggs last week, and then I haven’t seen anything decent from her since.

So now I am sad.  Sort of sad in that way where you wonder if you made the right decision.  Poor Atilla.  Maybe I should have kept her and just tolerated her worthlessness.  I remember her as a baby.  She has been in our flock the last two years.  She has sort of ruled the roost, and that isn’t just a figure of speech.  Now she is going to have to join someone else’s flock and scratch and claw her way to respect in a new environment.  Man!  Life is hard for a chicken!  I hope I did the right thing.

But life goes on, doesn’t it?  And Atilla is going to fend for herself just like she always (thinks she) has.

In other news, we introduced the two new babies to the flock today.  I was worried about this as on-line discussion groups were full of horror stories of adult hens pecking babies to death.  But that didn’t seem to agree with my general feeling that these animals should know best.  Surely in nature a hen just trucks back to her flock with her babies when she is ready (or she never leaves it in the first place).

We brought Agnes and the babies out into the fresh morning sun and let the older girls watch them through the chicken wire for a bit.  They were curious, but not agitated.  When it seemed time to bring the older ladies out, they came near but didn’t crowd in.  Agnes raised her feathers and spread her wings, signaling that she would not tolerate any nastiness with her babies.  The older girls backed off fast.

I tried to encourage the kids to sit still and just watch Agnes and her chicks as it is truly fascinating to see them explore.  It is hard for Francis and Zephyr as they want to grab those babies and just hold their sweet fluffiness.  Francis is sure that she needs to mother them.  She has no faith in Agnes’ abilities at all.

I love watching them doing their own thing though.  You can REALLY hear Agnes saying things to them.  I swear I can totally understand her as she instructs her babies.  ”Right here is where you dig for bugs.  OH!  I found some!  Get over here babies!  Bugs!”.  And then she said, “And this is how you drink from the watering can.  Now you try.”  ”Okay, we are going to scratch at the dirt now.”  And they did it.  It was wonderful.  Agnes is a very good mother.

And what about those other eggs, you ask?  I brought the chicks out because one of the eggs had EXPLODED in the nest during the night.  I needed to wash the little black and yellow chick off because she/he was covered in rot.  Thinking that maybe it was too late to get much from the other eggs, I decided to toss them all in the compost.  It was a risky bet as I knew there might be other chicks (although this was unlikely as the hatch date was to be the 20th and we were 4 days late at this point).  Okay so this was GROSS.  Two eggs just cracked and were obviously just unfertilized, but two others were rotten.  They made this bizarre “pop” when I tossed them in the compost.  And the stink was horrible!  It was so bad that I had to go take a shower.  I kid you not.  I felt like I could smell it everywhere.  Yuck.  It was a Templeton moment.

That is a lot of chicken drama around here.  I think it was worth it though.  Here are our pretty babies:

In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, Current musings, urban farming | | #