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Chickens
We have one chicken - a hen we call ChickChick. She is a game-type breed, which makes her pretty scrappy and street-wise. She was hatched in about 1996. She's not tame - doesn't want to be caught, attacks the cats... Heaven help you if she catches you stealing one of her eggs! But she's not so wild that she won't sneak into the house to eat cat food, or just to sleep on the carpet in the living room if it's too hot or cold outside. She knows that if she stands at the back door and stares at us, that we'll find some treat in the kitchen for her. She loves grapes, soggy bread, cat food, bugs... We put out chicken food for her, too! She's a respectable flyer, for a chicken. Getting into the trees or over a fence is no problem. I once saw her fly from the neighbor's yard (about 3' lower than our yard), over a 5' fence, and up to the roof of the barn. When I first thought that I wanted to get horses, and keep them at home, I figured a low-investment reality check would be worthwhile. If I couldn't stomach the idea of getting out of be at o-dark-thirty to feed and clean a chicken pen, then I had no business tearing out half the backyard to put in a horse pen and barn. So I got a chicken coop from a friend, built a pen out of a chain-link dog run, and got 6 hens from a breeder. She was going for a particular color, and these were her "pet quality" culls. Chickens are great for keeping bugs in check. They work hard all day at hunting down all sorts of pesky critters in the garden. They also turn compost heaps, and break up manure balls. Oh yeah, and they lay eggs! Y'know that lemony yellow color you see in store-bought yolks? Well that's just not natural. Hens that get to run loose in the yard, eating bugs, weeds, and other good things will produce eggs that taste very strongly like eggs, and have deep orange yolks.
Here's a typical day in ChickChick's life - scratching for bugs in the horse pen. She's up at dawn, and busy until just before sunset, when she flies up into a tree to roost. This is what the phrase "to get someone's hackles up" is talking about. The hackles are the long neck feathers. This is also what you see just before you get attacked for threatening to steal an egg. This is what happens when a cat surprises a chicken who has snuck into the kitchen to eat cat food. A nice close-up. Another look at the last thing you will see before you get your eyes pecked out. Here's what she's guarding. |
