Ain't No Messiah Here For Us Chickens

So on Christmas while folks were eating some of the animals that donated their feeding dish to be Baby Jesus' cradle, I got to thinking;  what is Christmas about for the animals?  They sacrifice more than their place settings.  Now their lives and even the integrity of their genetic codes are on the line.  Some of them give us hearts or bits of hearts so that we can continue playing golf and shopping.
Buck and the girls received cat food [ let's not get started on what goes into making cat food ] grapes, apples, mixed salad greens, dried fruits and plenty of nuts, but is that compensation for the ravaging havoc we inflict on them as a slave species?
The weather was nasty, a beak or two poked out for a sniff was as far as anyone would go.
Last winter, Buck lured his girls out to forage when it was bitter, icy and even if there was some snow, but now they have gotten used to a warm coop where food doesn't have to be worked for and greens get home delivery.  Today, I shoveled a path for them, put some treats on the ground and went away, assuming they'd come out eventually.  Hours went by, I could hear them in the coop jockeying for prime position in the nesting boxes - I heard Buck trying coax one or the other of them into giving him a little sugar.  Then I heard the "let's get ready to roost" chatter.
They are no different from anyone else in the winter who doesn't want to go out tearing up the slopes on slats or blades, or tennis rackets.  In the move toward more efficiency, or as my family would characterize it, laziness, Even chickens like to do what makes the most sense.  Why make work for themselves?  Only in chickens, it isn't considered a sin, therefore, no salvation is needed, and no Savior.......- unless you are a battery hen.

S.A.D. Chicken

In the very small, [but I am certain, festooned with multiple ridges] brain of Buck, the weather is my fault, and I must pay.
I have stepped up the bribes.
It has been rainy, or cold, or windy, so the coop got cleaned on the first nice day.  I was told in pecks of one syllable;
"The eggs are not your beeswax."
"Keep your hands off the feeding tray and don't touch the water dispenser." he advised.
"Get away from that door" he suggested.
Later after Buck was finished marching around getting all the girls in before dark I made the mistake of being too near their little door before he had roosted.  Ka-THUMP!  I heard as he leapt down, rushing for the door, planting a well aimed snap on the web of my hand.
He has been bad tempered lately.
I see a pattern here; he goes along for awhile, pretending not to notice me walking back and forth to the car, not turning an eye toward any red object I might have in hand until we have had a few days of rain.  The lack of sun acts on him like a depressant.
He becomes moody.
He broods on prior injustices.
He remembers he was once a proud velociraptor.
Though his brothers and comrades have been put to death - rolled in batter made from their children and run through the fryer, he has survived.  He is alive for a reason, and there are days when he takes up the flag of Avian Liberation in his beak with cold determination.
He will not listen to reason.
He is not swayed by grapes.
He will stop to eat them but then fortified with their sweet juice, remembers the task at hand.
The humans must pay.
Three of the New Girls - New Pearl, Stella and Golda don't understand that there is a revolution going on.  When I come out into their yard, they run over and stand very close to my shoes looking hopeful.  They allow me to scratch their stomachs, to pick them up - they have even been willing to sit on my shoulder.  Buck looks up in horror.  

Update......

In the 2 month hiatus there have been some changes.  Just as I was feeling smug and superior about having kept my chickens in one flock for as long as I had, I lost 2 in the space of a week.  I later found out that my neighbor who has a small flock about 1/2 of a mile away had lost several of hers to fisher cats.  The fishers had been prying the metal siding off her coop to get at her hens, and she dealt with it by moving the hens to a friend's house until the fisher went looking elsewhere for dinner.  She told me she had been unsuccessful in trapping the beast and asked if I had been losing chickens.  I would have appreciated the warning in advance, but as it was, I lost Mae and Pearl leaving Buck with 2 ladies.  I was going to see how that went, but then a friend [the one who landed me with Buck in the first place] told me about a man who wanted to cull his flock of some hens, and sucker that I am, figuring that taking care of Buck and 2 girls is no different from 6, went to the other side of the Merrimac river to collect 2 Delawares, 1 Buff Orphington and 1 barred Plymouth.  Very charming girls, beautiful and well kept, and introduced them to the coop.
This time I tried to be responsible and divided the coop w/some chicken wire so that the new girls could be viewed and criticized by the established hens without being picked on.  That worked the first night.
The second night I checked on them, and the Plymouth [Zebra] was muscling over the top of the fence to get closer to Buck, and Stella, one of the Delawares was squeezing around the edge through the tunnel of nesting boxes with the same purpose in mind.  Buck sat quietly on his perch eyes half closed, enjoying the attention.
Day 3, I gave up and tore out the netting while the chickens formed into a flock and roamed around the yard, ruining what was left of my perennials and pushing all the piles of raked leaves back on to the walk.
Buck had been docile during the time of only having 2 hens to bully and pester, but now with more he is busy running back and forth,  keeping them in line, making sure they stay together and making sure I understand that he is taking no nonsense from me.  The first couple of evenings, I was getting the chickens in, and he made it very clear to me that I was interfering.  He seemed to take it personally that I was telling him how to do his job, and once he turned and looked at me, unmistakably telling me so.  Then he bit my shoes, ignored me as he went back to work getting the girls in to the coop.
All the same, I have since then had an evening or two when I have had to pick up 'New Pearl' and 'Golda'  to put them in to the coop because they were standing around finishing up a cigarette and chatting as it was getting dark.
After 1 1/2 years I have realized that I am a slave to the chickens.  They have destroyed what yard I had, left fewmets all over the place and gnawed my herbs into oblivion, yet I still find them charming, and prefer their singing and chatter to  almost any gathering of humans.  Buck goes through periods of calm, and just when I relax and think he's mellowed, he lets me know what's what.... Then we have to play " Who's the Bitch?".

chicken jail

As the weather slides into seasonal change like an out of control car, I'm trying to grab every minute of every portion of every day that has something to recommend it.
The chickens feel the same.
They loiter longer than they should in the yard, and stay awake talking until it is completely dark.  The last few days I have had to be somewhere that made it impossible for me to get back here and close up the hen house, so my only choice has been to keep them in all day and bribe them with treats.  This morning I opened the door, and they all assumed the same posture.  Leaning their weight forward on their bodies, extending their necks and peering at me carefully with one eye.
"You've got to be kidding me"  they say.
"What could be more important than my need to ruin the landscape?"  they ask.
Buck tries to grab my face as I refresh their water and put down a bowl of lettuce and apples for them.
I am, however, wearing a helmet and visor, so all he gets is a sort of percussive feeling down his beak.  Not nearly as satisfying as warm flesh, I hope.
One recent dusk, I lost another hen, Mae who always roosted right next to Buck, [which goes to show that there's always some woman who will like any man, no matter how pushy he is] but the hens I still have always get as far away from him as possible.  I have started scattering some of the morning food under the edge of the coop so that they may have breakfast without that lout climbing all over them as they are buttering their toast.  The result, Barbie's feathers are coming back, as is her confidence.
I still have Pearl, my favorite, best chicken because though she is little, she beats out the others for resourcefulness and independence.
After a bit more than a year, my opinion is that keeping chickens in a medium security facility is disappointing.  This time of year brings out the motivation in the larger predators,  the raccoons [dwarf bears] have torn the doors off the shed in order to investigate empty jars and containers, somebody grabbed Mae, and must have been sharp about it, because I never heard a thing.  Aside from the chicken increasing their time pressed up against the side of the house, or perching on my bicycle on the porch, they have not expressed grief or opinions.
I don't know what's next, but I predict a bad tempered chicken coming out of the coop in the morning tomorrow if the weather reports are correct, and we have a nice day.  I'd better have a broom.

tyrant chicken.

Buck has been in the yard for over a year now, and rarely attacks me anymore.
The mark I have on my leg from his last gratuitous assault has faded nearly completely.  He has utterly destroyed the broom, though.  He can be standing around, gurgling and chuckling to his girls but if he sees that thing from the corner of his eye, his mental state blossoms from peace and contentment to rage and revenge.
Some months ago I tracked down Buck's previous owner who characterized him as an evil chicken who wouldn't allow anyone in the coop unless they had a broom for protection.  I find that if I have a broom, Buck is busy moving heaven to see that the broom stays away from the coop.

When I pull my car into the yard, Buck comes running excitedly over, hoping for a treat.  If I'm carrying a bag, he will attack it, but I'm pretty sure he's hoping to poke a hole is something that will then spill on the ground.  He calls the hens over in a congenial tone, which is not the warlike one he uses when he believes he's protecting them.
My daughter is still afraid of him, and won't go outside without the dog or me to stand between her and the dangerous beak.

Having firmly established his reputation as a force to be reckoned with, he is free to strut around the yard importantly and proclaim himself the master of all anyone surveys.
I know men like that.....

Chicken Purgatory

Bette had been coming out of the coop and wandering at the outer periphery of the flock.  Having lost her alpha status, she lost the heart to muscle in.  She avoided the others, and they acted in a way that drove her off by herself. What I probably should have done was what a friend suggested; taking her inside and turning her into a pet chicken instead of the co-housing members the others are.  I am allergic to chickens, however, and having a summer of battling my hysterical immune system, I was reluctant to invite another crisis.  Excuses.
Every night as the others went in to roost, I looked around for her.  She would not go in to the safety of the coop that she'd refused to leave for the first 10 days after her attack.  She was finding places further away from everyone and became harder to find.
Two nights ago, I couldn't find her.
Up to that point, she gave herself away by talking to herself before going to sleep.  As someone who spends possibly way too much time alone, I know that it is easy to start talking to one's selves out loud.  She could have been doing that.  She could have been saying prayers.
She could have been asking the great clawed and furry gods of death to come and finish the job.
She escaped them once, but life wasn't what it once was, and she was hostage to the region in between a good chicken's life and someone's digestive tract.
Some people who have had near death experiences say they no longer fear death, and that they were even reluctant to return to finish this life.
Last night I couldn't find her.  It was dusk, and the beak count was 5, and I circled the house and the yard hoping to hear her evening chatter, but no clucking was going on, no sound at all.
The remaining girls, now back to bridge club numbers have been treating her as though she were already gone for some time now.  Chickens seem to be able to enjoy what is going on, or wait patiently until it is over with.  They engage with their entire hearts and attention to the moment.  The main flock knew something was wrong with Bette, and that it wasn't going to turn around.
There are events which mark us, and for who knows how long, render us as carriers if it's grief, vessels if joy.
Grave illness changes us, profound disappointment, trauma - even a turn of great good luck.  People have been posting on FB how our thinking creates reality, but I recoil from that, it is too obvious to me that life creates us, and the spectrum of response we have to life is all we have to work with, and that spectrum has precious few answers.
For a grieving hen, it's a simple thing.  When you can't be part of the flock, you can be part of the food chain.

Chicken Catcher

In the Northern Latitudes, in the early days of rail travel, there was a shovel-like affair attached to the front of the engine called a cow-catcher.  It is this principle that I employ in persuading everyone that indeed, it is time to roost.  

Every so often the AA's decided to stay up late.  I have tried to find a correspondence between astrological cycles and this behaviour; no dice.  It might be meteorological.  I notice their conversations change with the barometer.

So, back to the chicken catching, I have a piece of the fence that I wrap around myself like an apron or long skirt of dubious couture to prevent more bruising of the type Buck might be in the mood to inflict if he sees no impediment to doing so. 

 If I turn the apron around, so that from the hen's side it's convex, it appears to them that they will be scooped up like the actors in Soylent Green, and they hurry up the ramp.

Buck is the only one I have to push along.  He side-steps, he trips over the obstacles in back of him that he cannot see. He protests.  He tries to get a piece of me.  

Once in, I hear him grumbling to his ladies, and their responses of sympathy ....rough translation: "Yes, dear.....".

I suspect they listen to his grievances only partially, knowing that it is politic to pretend to care about the tyrant's wounded ego, knowing when he has made his point, he will move on to other things.  "Yes, dear..."  

I know women like that.

Live Chickens

Two weeks have passed, and Bette is acting like a chicken again, though her status may not be regained.  I am so glad that she's all in one piece, her wings work, and though she is beset with a new reluctance, progress is being made.  Today I didn't let any of the Avian Americans out of the fenced in area and by the end of the day they were all standing around together waiting for Buck to give the orders to go in for the night. 
Buck has tried to inflict his attentions on Bette, so I suppose he feels as though she has recovered, but when I go down to close the chicken door and check numbers of beaks and toes, she has not gone in with the rest.   At first I thought maybe she was so despondent that she wanted the predator to come back and finish her off - I have known woman like that - but that's not it.  She roosts, but under the ramp to the door.  Is she hoping to be overlooked?  She allows me to pick her up and put her in the coop, but I've been putting her in the nesting box, because  otherwise she wants to come back out and acts as though I have put her in a room where a cocktail party is going on, and she is incorrectly dressed, or just came out of rehab.
Anyhow, she has survived.  I think she's improving.  I'll know for certain when she stops being easy to pick up.  The docility is disturbing.

Chicken of Doom

Bette has survived the attack of 8 days ago, and today she decided to lie down outside the coop for a change.  I'm not certain if it's because she has been ostracized by the others, for she has not rejoined the flock, and nobody speaks to her except to say unpleasant things.
Mostly they seem to pretend she isn't there.
Nobody wants to be reminded of infirmity or decline, even a chicken.
A friend of mine died of cancer nearly 11 years ago, but for the 18 months prior to her death, her life changed in ways she had not anticipated.  People treated her as though she were already dead when she was still busy fighting for her life.
"You still here?"  seemed to be the general tone.
At funerals I have noticed there are the groups divided by time, and if illness or hospice was involved, someone who was part of the end of life care gets up and speaks about the departed... such a contrast with the stories of childhood friends or mid life associates.
A little over a week ago, Bette was the alpha hen, perched at Buck's side, pointing her beak in the direction of any one thinking they could move up in the pecking order at her expense.  Now she is a different person.  Whatever happened when that predator took a bite out of her, took a bite out of her spirit.  She no longer confidently struts down the days of summer with sparkling eye.  Buck has 4 ladies left to follow him around like talkative ornaments, but the number one wife is left alone to heal by herself.
 I don't know if she's going to make it.  I was hopeful because she laid an egg this week, but then it disappeared. Did she eat it?  She has lost heart and is despondent.  There isn't anything I can do for her.

Day 4...

Bette still won't come out of the cat box, but she is, at least, still alive and taking in water and a little food.
I suppose I didn't want to take her to the avian specialist who had no idea what sort of chicken Buck was [Maran] and wanted to put him on antibiotics for making growling noises.  It's true that he used to develop an asthmatic wheeze after attacking the broom or the pillow, or me, but now he has calmed down to the extent that he rarely  gets that upset.
This morning, everyone was vocalizing with gusto, so I expected the worst.  I thought somehow they had discovered that one of their number was dead in the nest and were horrified, but it was really just my fear of finding her dead.  Other than seeing that she has clean shavings, water and food, I don't know what to do except wait.  She'll get better, or she won't, but I'm not taking her to a vet to have him tell me to kill her.  
What I have noticed is that killing chickens seems to be the standard treatment for anything troublesome, which I suppose is how one might view a commodity.  Though my chickens aren't commodities, they require a fair amount of attention if I want to keep them out of the jaws of the residents in my area who believe them to be.
Dwarf bears, giant weasels and such will have to be more efficiently blocked from getting even one more egg, but for now I  don't know anything about how to help a chicken recover from  a partial mangling.
 If I had known how much death was going to be involved in having chickens  to manage the tick population, I'm not certain I would have let myself get talked into it.  But they're here now, and in lieu of a social life, feel like friends.
 I'd better get it together and be a better friend to them.  Maybe a chain link fence with a top, something a raccoon absolutely can't get past.

Near Death Experience

It's rarely a good idea to appreciate the lack of upheaval and disturbance here because the very act of gratitude awakens the coyote gods and nudges them into action.
Last night, I had been stricken with some kind of illness and after expressing it, fell asleep, to awaken after dark to screaming.
By the time I got my arthritic self to the door, turned on the light and made my way out into the yard, it was clear that one of my chickens was being hauled away into the woods.
I'm assuming that she was meant as a practice kill for some kits, or puppies or other young, because she was alive and alone when I found her, but extremely freaked out, yelling and ruffled.
I really have no business being responsible for any life forms at all, I don't seem to be able to stay focused on their safety long enough to keep them alive.
Today, Bette is refusing to leave the coop, not that I blame her, and Buck has plenty to say to me about dereliction of duty.
There have been nights when I have gone to a movie, and the electric door hasn't worked, [ I've pretty much given up on finding a timer that does]  and have returned home around 10 to find nothing worse than a stolen egg or 2.
There were 2 chickens that vanished mysteriously last summer, shortly after they came here, and one that died from a cough.   Otherwise, I've been fortunate in a low death rate.  
Buck has probably kept things together in large part because he never sleeps on the job during the day.  I am trusted to keep away the owls, the raccoons, the fisher cats, the coyotes during the night.  I failed last night.
 I hope that Bette gets through this.  I picked her up and examined her carefully and found no external damage beyond feather loss, I'm not really sure what I should look for.  No broken wings or legs, and she would probably not have stopped shrieking if she were in pain.
I am getting to the point of feeling certain that though I enjoy having these avians wandering around in my life, begging at the window, trying to find ways into the house, lounging on the deck and having their ongoing chat nearby, I'm really not a farmer.

On the Other Hen....

Is it consideration, or is it a bribe?  As my flock dwindles this summer, Buck is trying harder.  He's putting girls in the coop earlier, and I have to close the door before dusk now, or Bandit, the raccoon gets all their eggs, and it's only a matter of time before he decides to take a chicken.  I'm not sure who has been taking chickens, but I have lost 2 during the day.  Buck now only has 5 girls, and he keeps them close, gets more upset when his current favorite runs off on her own, and hunts for little treats for them.  I have watched him catch a large fly, kill it, toss it down and make little short noises that are similar to what he says when he's tucking in to a pile of blueberries or watermelon - "tuk,tuk,bik,bik, tuckety, bickity!" and the hens run over to see what he has, he picks up the fly and drops it within beak range of one of the ladies, and they give it the eye.  He picks it up and pretends to eat it, "num num" he seems to be telling them, or [" Hey baby, how do you like the canoli?"] and they swallow the fly, say thank you in Avian and move on to the next edible.  They must have amazing taste receptors in their beaks, [ I heard on NPR that birds don't taste with their tongues ] because they get so excited about certain things, or the possibility of something new.
This weekend rain or sweltering heat aside, I have to enlarge the size of their restricted area, because I'm going off and leaving them in the care of my family to move an RV across the country, West to East.  This blog will be about that for a couple of entries, so if you don't want travelogue, skip it.  

tick, tick.

Between computer problems and having too many animals on the property, it has been  enough work to get simple things done, so there's a backlog of stories now.  My daughter's giant puppy and her disagreeable cat are staying with me for what seems like the entire summer as time stretches out ahead of me like a Salvador Dali Landscape.
Storm suffers OCD when it comes to engaging Buck in a game of tag.  It makes me tired just watching them.  She begins by standing outside their new enclosure and barking.  Buck takes that sort of talk very seriously, adopting  martial stance and Elizabethan costume. After an prelude of stomping back and forth on his side of the fence, he moves briskly with focus and intention around the corner of his doorway and out into the arena. [ It used to be a lawn, but between dog toes and chicken beaks it has become an arena]  Storm lunges and barks until Buck gives chase but with the conservative nature of chickens, only does what is necessary before strutting back to engage in the important business of bug detection.  Storm never feels as though the issue has been settled, so it may take as many as a dozen tries to provoke Buck into a serious chase.  This ends with Storm standing in the road, access to the house blocked by Chicken.
The girls in the meantime wait in the coop, talking amongst themselves.
"Oooooh, he's so Big!" the say.
A word about the cat.
Molly.
More about the cat: She's a little bitch, and this is coming from a cat person.  A cat whisperer, even.  She has driven off my beloved boys. They have gone to the neighbors, I hope not forever.  Yesterday began by having to throw out all bedding down to the mattress  and the carpet in the room she has been expressing herself in and hiding my shoes before they fall prey to the same fate.  My cats and dogs have always loved cuddling with each other.  Storm and Molly have not reached that kind of understanding.
But the title of this is about ticks - there are so many ticks this year, I'd need a much bigger flock to keep them from turning up daily on my arms, legs, neck - I may have missed some, but the nature of ticks is that they don't go unnoticed forever.  It's too bad the dog can't be trained to find them and eat them instead of just being a tick metro.
Well.
Time for the Deet Dip.

Jail Birds

No more rolling in the perennials or mining in the vegetable garden.  My mother often complained that there was no way to keep jerusalem artichokes from taking over the entire yard, but if she had let me have chickens as a child, she would not have had a jerusalem artichoke problem.  I planted a nice even row of them and they had gotten well established but this year, I see they are coming up in places I wouldn't have picked, and the row?  ..... gone.
This month has been about restoring plantings, and trying to erect a fence that the chickens can't wriggle under or flounder over.  I have a couple of fliers who like to get up on something and flip themselves over the fence in spite of a large piece of lattice placed horizontally off the back of the coop and resting on the fence.
The third day of being imprisoned Buck hooted non stop until 11am while Pearl and Barbie created a groove in the ground next to the fence.  They have shade.  They have water.  They have food. They have treats and they have each other.  I'm letting them out for 3 hours in the afternoon until they go in on their own so that they don't feel completely bereft but I have to say, it is nice to be able to get things done without being ambushed by the angry bird.

& That's How You Spell "Chicken"

There isn't anything chicken about chickens.  They are valiant, intrepid and persistent.  It is possible that they have an inflated idea of their capacity to manage a world in which larger animals with teeth rule.
Buck is a big chicken.  When he draws himself up to his full height he is 24'' tall.  He weighs almost 15lbs, and for any  jungle fowl that is respectable, and respect is what he likes.
So when Storm, comes to visit, a political discussion blooms every few hours.   Buck stands his ground, armed only with surprise, speed and very pointy spurs.
Storm remains convinced that she is going to show that chicken who is in charge of smaller life forms, and though she has gotten close, so far she hasn't gotten an actual grip on Buck before I've been able to put a stop to it.

 Buck remains unflapped and I have seen Bette go after Storm with an enthusiasm that doesn't match her size.
The cats, who are well equipped for a scuffle, just stay on the roof until the dog goes home.
Conditions have improved.  Storm listens now when I say "NO CHICKEN" and while she and I discuss the fine points, Buck stands perfectly still watching the proceedings with one eye, and standing between us and the hens.
It may be awhile before they have an amicable relationship.  I think my dream of Buck and Storm on a Victorian style post card is unrealistic.

Peeping Mom

I'll just report that tonight Buck demonstrated his opinion about nasty fleshy faces with eyes situated inappropriately at the front of their skulls, proclaiming them to be predators peering through the coop windows at dusk.
In my own defense, it was well past time when he should have taken the girls to roost, and there had been some squawking that sounded like distress.
Here it is, May, and I have been able to retain most of my flock in the presence of foxes with kits, owls w/ owlets, and whatever you call baby fisher cats.
Anyhow, the hens protested when I looked through the window to take attendance so Buck wasted no time, as is his style, and charged out  full Elizabethan ruff, toes and beak in the air.
"Don't be silly"  I advised.
"Get out, you!"  He replied.
I then told him I would pick him up if he didn't go in on his own, and so, grumbling, he went up the ramp, turned around beak facing out so that he would be able to deal with followers.
He is paying me forward for the fence that goes up this weekend in anticipation of a week of dog-sitting.
The cats learned about Buck on the first day.

The dog is slower.

A sit down strike

The last notice on Barbie is that I managed to get her isolated long enough to get a chicken saddle on her poor stripped back, and that kept her safe for about 1/2 a day.  She had successfully wriggled out of it the last time I tried, and now she had it part way off, and would take three steps, stop, turn, tug on it, take three more steps, stop.... it was torture.  She reminded me of someone getting out of a car and trying to pull down an ill fitting sweatshirt and pull up pants that are two sizes too small.
 I felt that once again, in my ignorance I was torturing animals.
Some design, though.  I often think, as I try out these chicken products, that someone is having a good laugh at my expense.  I can hear them as they pack up the order chuckling among themselves like pleased hens at having managed to sell another useless item purported to make chickens' lives better.
Well.
This morning I picked her up and put her in her own crate with some of my daughter's magic healing salve on her back and a collection of the choicest treats in the house, but in 5 minutes she had knocked over a carefully weighted bowl of water and pushed all the food out through the grates.   She said "tuck,tuck,tuck, ba-GAWK, tuck,tuck" over and over.
I drove to town and bought some "anti-picking spray" came home and put it on her.  I took her to the door and put her outside again.
Buck had spent the day making circles around the house and peering in the windows.  As soon as I let her out, he came tearing around the house, and she assumed the position of submission, and he welcomed her back into the flock.  That's why her back is raw.  The other hens keep an eye on him and step aside when he give them the "Come on, baby" moves.
I don't know what else I can do.
Get more hens, maybe.

ow.

There's nothing like the hot tub for stiffness, there's a groove on the rim so that it's possible to rest one's neck and float.
Today I looked out the window to make sure the chickens were paying attention to getting in to the coop.  I looked out the window, because if they heard the porch door, they would rush over with expectations of a bedtime snack.
After determining that they were making their way in to the chicken house, I went to float in the hot water.
That was nice until I felt a sharp point hitting the back of my head as though someone had come and stabbed me with a pencil.  No mystery there, I relocated to the center, out of reach, and Buck paced back and forth on the deck as close to the tub as he could get.   He poked his head up, then his tail, dancing up and down, talking to himself.  After about 5 minutes he decided it wasn't worth it, and possibly remembering that he had responsibilities more pressing than putting me in my place,  turned and ran toward the coop.
I still have no idea what he is on about with the hot tub.  Unless someone is in it, he is completely uninterested.  He does not care to get wet, and though I have seen people put their chickens in swimming pools, the chickens don't look as though it's a choice they would make on their own.

A car chasing chicken.

I live on a dirt road that dead ends at a lake, so in the summer, the traffic here is dense, fast and noisy.  Lots of people in a hurry to get to the lake, or to get from the lake to the next venue of anaesthesia.  Last summer, the chickens were pretty good about staying out of the road, but over the winter, their attention has wandered.  

This Spring they have discovered new vermiform delights in the rotting wood near the brook across the road.

Because they have been more dependent on scraps donated by local grocers over the last couple of seasons, they have begun to associate cars with food, particularly the van.  

They are like bears in this.

We do everything on a smaller scale in NH, we don't have any venomous snakes, the occasional and very rare spider that can cause trouble, and not much of that, we have a low-ish crime rate, and only one big disease threat that is brought on by nature and not drinking or obesity.  Even our bears are cute when compared to the majesticly scaled grizzly, kodiak or polar.

My point is that people here tend to overreact to a small animal that would be entirely overlooked in the intermountain West. 

If I had raised my daughter in Idaho, for example, I doubt she would pull in to my yard and call me on her cel to tell me that she couldn't get out of the car because Buck was leaning  against her door and breathing heavily.

I went out to find her car surrounded by expectant chickens, closely examining her tire crevices for anything interesting.

She told me that she opened the door and all the chickens rushed over from about 100' away and surrounded the car, that she only had just enough time to get back in and close the door.

I have had this experience myself when trying to leave.  Buck instructs his ladies to form a circle around the car and rely upon my native reluctance to run over an investment.   As I slowly pull away, Buck has been known to peck at the door, and run after the van.

There are people who keep dog treats in their pockets to bribe Canine Americans of uncertain temper, but I would bet that not many of my visitors or mail carriers or UPS men or relatives will remember to put grapes, lettuce and spaghetti in their pockets before they come here.

Chicken Skin

A week of clean up and it is done, the bathroom still smells like smoke, but it's slight compared to the beginning of the week. Buck & the girls have been lurking near doorways and slipping in to the house to look for more interesting shelter whenever the door is left open for more than a minute.  This goes double for the van where I found 3 of them yesterday clustered around the pedals when I returned from a brief trip back to the house to get my wallet.  

They were having a conversation about something, but stopped when they saw me, excuse me if I'm suspicious about their plans.

For the last three days they have been hiding under things and muttering, clustering around the bases of bushes, and I sometimes hear Buck giving the warning "chuck"  to the hens as the crows fly overhead and watch them.  I didn't think that crows were a problem for chickens, but perhaps they are looking at Barbie's raw back and wondering if she will soon be available.

I've decided that she has to be isolated from Buck for awhile, her back is even more naked , and she's had parts of her wings stripped, she's going to dislike being in a separate section from the others, but it's got to happen. 

 She knows this, or suspects something, and has gone from being an easy going approachable chicken to one who stays very close to Buck , occasionally using him as shelter.  This reminds me of women who when the neighbours call the police on their abusive boyfriends, deny that there is any problem, and refuse to press charges.  We all know how that turns out. 

 From what was going on with Mae last year, I know that it is a matter of time before the other hens peck her until she bleeds, and I don't want to know what happens if that's not addressed, but I foresee another unwelcome chicken horror story.

I'll just have to put on a helmet and go in at night and fish her out.  It must be taken into account that Buck at least can be roused to some show of energetic male protective behaviour even in the middle of the night, and he roosts at my eye height.

Bette has been unwilling to come out and forage during the day, because she is sitting on eggs.  "This is how it is done"  She told me.  She's right, and paying attention is the only way it works.

A bad week for the chickens.

I went away for the weekend and came back to hear extreme stories about my malcontent rooster.  It seems that he stalked my daughter and her partner, their children were not safe, and everyone had to sneak out to the car armed with shovels, brooms, towels  and stout shoes.
I came home to find all the last years work on getting Buck to calm down gone away with fights between dog & chicken, [chicken mostly winning] and high indignation expressed in my direction.
Every day this week I have had to pick him up and tell him that he is a nice chicken, scratch his neck and feed him grapes.  When I put him back down, he stands nearby, grumbling, almost forgiving but I think, not quite.
The girls regained their equilibrium the instant the dog went away, but Buck is vigilant, and I expect will remain so for awhile.
The baby chicks were fine in the care of my family, until I got home.  I managed to cause their deaths, and I'm not going to get over that anytime soon.
In spite of carefully following all directions, checking on them every 2 hours, changing their water, and making sure things were fine, in spite of buying the regulation objects to keep them in and keep them warm with as advised by Agway, the heat lamp started a fire in the bathroom, incinerating everything while I went out to buy groceries.  I came home and Buck was standing in the yard screaming at me, smoke coming out of the front door.  This week has been about cleaning up, and trying not to panic every time I get a whiff again of charred plastic, and memory of finding my little babies in a blackened mass in the bathtub.
Ignorance is dangerous, and I think instead of trying to increase the numbers of chickens around here by getting little ones, I'll adopt menopausal hens or wait to see if any of the girls who are already here will decide to sit on their own eggs, and keep the babies under their own wings, they clearly know more about how to do this than I do.
It is hard to listen to the news this week.  Having been responsible for horrible violence in my own house I am even more at a loss than usual to understand the routine viciousness humans inflict on each other. This world's more full of weeping.... 

It's a testosterone thing

Yesterday Buck and the ladies had been given several piles of treats and nutrition in different parts of the yard, so all the complaining and yelling that was going on seemed baseless to me.
Barbie kept getting on the wrong side of the house, and ran around in circles muttering "chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck - GAWK, chuck, chuck...."
Buck stood on top of a glacial erratic to make himself even taller than his towering height of 2' and crowed incessantly.
 It took about a half an hour for all the flock to find one another and go lie down in the sun dappled dirt to rest up and get over it.
Several times, I went out with more leaves or fruit or grain and they all ran over, trying to trip me while I distributed largesse.
Buck then would not let me leave, but circled around me jabbing at bits of stuff on the ground keeping one eye on me the while.  Backing away from him seemed to raise his ire.  "No, you don't " he said.
"I thought we had an understanding about those shoes"  he said.
Being in no mood myself, I scooped him up and brought him in the house for some photos.

It only took a couple of minutes out of his schedule, but when I let him go he tore away as fast as I've seen him run to his hens.  He did not bother to circle them or drop a wing or court them in any way.  He just jumped on one as though she were a bicycle.  Then he jumped on another.  Then he had his strut back.
So:  Chickens have comfort sex too.

Spring Chickens...

Mindy

Maxine

Misty

**********************************************************************************

I went to Agway today to buy chicken feed and found the baby chicken bin.  Several people had ordered some Avian Americans who had just gotten out of their eggs, but had not come to pick them up.  A number of interesting breeds were stranded there at the commercial refugee center, and I was a sucker, even after being told that it would be 4 months before I could even think of introducing these new girls to the main flock.

I was sucked in because Misty is a barred rock, and I think they are so pretty, and Mindy and Maxine are Marans, which is the type of rooster Buck is, so it stirs fantasies of being able to have a little flock of Marans over the next couple of years. 

Now the digital timer on the coop is the smaller trouble, because I'm going to need more space.

I have 3 months of chickens in the house to inspire me to tear off a piece of the coop and create a bigger space that would be contiguous but with an optional barrier to allow the hens' hormone levels to coordinate and to have a potential chicken infirmary for people like Barbie who really needs time to recover her feathers.

The flock today has been griping and squawking, making egg laying noises, and Buck is continually commenting that there is an orange alert.  

My solution was to leave and go somewhere quiet for part of the morning.  

But then I came home with more chickens.

oops, What a relief.

Of the red hens I had Stella and Feather, who hung around in a pair, Bette, the Alpha, and Pearl, the renegade.  On closer inspection this last week, I see that it was Feather who was lost.  Either that or one of the hens other than Pearl  is impersonating her.  It looks as though Stella is sticking closer to Bette and Pearl is in fact still here.  She stands around looking at me as if to convey disappointment that I didn't recognize her.  Now I have to grieve all over again for a different hen while celebrating the one that I thought was lost is now found.
This morning I found the remains of about 1/2 a dozen eggs on the ground and felt a chill wondering if the raccoons were smart enough, cooperative enough and strong enough to lift the fairly heavy lid on the nesting boxes where the eggs usually are.  I think what happened is that several of the hens have been laying eggs underneath the shed that stands next to the chicken coop.  It's nice and low to the ground and dark, probably looks like a good place to leave eggs and keep me from collecting them.  My attitude toward eggs has changed dramatically since I found that I can't eat them, and neither can my granddaughter.  If I get any more chickens, I think I'll go for rescue hens that are menopausal and considered useless by ovitarians.
Every now and then I'll eat an egg, but not having them for some time makes me notice how rich and heavy they are like very fatty meat.  The chickens don't feel this way.
If an egg has been crushed, spilled or partially eaten, they will go and clean up the rest.
There are people who believe in eating the placenta.  Is this the same thing?

Chicken Bouncer

I know a person who enjoys arguing with those people who show up uninvited and predictably at the worst possible time to cram whatever religious claptrap they are holding themselves together with down someone's throat.  Over the years I have tried different approaches with an eye to discouraging them enough that they might stay in their Watchtowers and leave me to my increasing Yankee curmudgeonitude.
Telling them I'm a Buddhist, or Unitarian [same thing] just encourages them to think I am pining for something real to believe in such as imminent death and/or destruction.  Showing up at the door naked flummoxes them only briefly,  they soon regain their equilibrium and press on.
This week though, I had a real treat as I stood at the window and watched Buck do all the work.
Two optimistic ladies and one gentleman came walking up my path, wearing Republican shoes and beige.  Buck has very high standards of dress, being handsome and well dressed himself, and will not tolerate certain combinations.
Just the other day I left the house with a bag that did not match my shoes, and he made it clear.
"That bag isn't going anywhere."  He said.
"How many times do I have to tell you?"  He asked.
"Put that down."  He advised.
I now have a leather bag that in addition to coffee stains has been tagged with fowl graffiti.
I have mentioned that I'm not encouraged to read magazines near the perimeter of the hot tub.  Now that I soak holding the magazine  out of beak range, Buck just circles the tub criticizing my choice of activity soto voce.
Well.  When Buck saw those Republican shoes and periodicals printed on cheap paper in one place, he went mad.
It's such a shame I didn't get on film the gratifying sight of Jehovah's Witnesses experiencing what the end of the world will really be like.

Chicken Perspective

You can't make a chicken feel guilty.
Being uneducated in these matters, I don't know if it's a missing development of brain function [one I could do without, let me tell you...] or that they can't be bothered or that they are graced with an acceptance of the supremacy of the present.
Cats have no such encumbrance as guilt, but it's not so much because they are living in the present, though they do, but as hunters, they appear to have a plan.
Recently, studies have proven that dogs have learned how to present a guilty mien when it is called for, when they hear "bad dog"  or "no", but it isn't a real sense of guilt.  It doesn't keep them up at night that I have noticed, and I have been up at night, watching for it.
So when I try to admonish Buck for being lax in his responsibilities to Pearl, he looks at me and asks "Got any grapes?".  Alternately, he bites my shoes.  At my suggestion that he could have taken steps, he shrugs, in Gallic manner, purses his beak and lets out a puff of air, then saunters away.

If I pursue the topic, he will point out to me that I have eaten so many chickens in my life that my concern for the fate of one may only be considered as the same purely human conceit that created canine hypocrisy.
"Aside from the inconvenience"  Buck said
"If an owl came and carried you off, I would feel neither guilt nor remorse.  Hand me that lettuce, now."

Vandals of Hancock*

O.K.  Somebody want to explain to me how a 14 pound chicken who has never been caught in the act, has been able to dent, bend and render completely useless a galvanized aluminum waterer?
I understand that they are capable of getting on the top and roosting there, fouling it, and that they can kick it over and get the water access all clogged with dung and shavings, which, when mixed correctly with chicken spit, hardens up as solid as any early American brick.
If I hang it from the ceiling, they act as though I am trying to trick them.
It is much harder to roost on when there's a string in the middle and the whole thing swings as they attempt to jump up there for the night.  So I don't hang it from the ceiling.
I have raised it up on a heated platform, but that only makes it more attractive as a roosting location, and the girls squabble over it.
So far, what works best, but means I have to get up early when they are noisy with thirst, is to have 3 or 4 large containers around the yard that are strong enough to hold chickens on the edges without collapsing or tipping over.  I'm not happy that they are denied that last drink of water before going to sleep, the final dodge of small children before entering that uncontrollable dark world, but I'm also not willing to clean out the waterer EVERY DAY.  These Avian Americans already want me to have treats near every door and window of the house, and still Buck runs after me with unfriendly intent if he sees the back of my head.  Chickens are not grateful.... -  I think that's one of the things I like about them.



* This title for those of you who aren't Morris dance familiar, is a play on the title of a dance - Vandals of Hammerwich

Squawking at the Bar.

Somewhere between Sunset and evening Star I lost a hen.
My favorite renegade, Pearl, always the straggler and non conformist, the one I could count on to be away from the flock, looking for other places to go about 3 times out of 9 when everyone else was bathing together or browsing in a group.
Pearl was also the most curious hen, she was the one who would come over by herself and stand around beaming fowl thoughts in my direction, standing on open window sills or getting herself stranded on the porch.

She was the littlest of the original hens, but she let the new girls know she meant business if they thought they could move ahead in the pecking order.  She was the hen who figured out that she could be an Alpha girl in the Beta group.  

It's pointless to keep chickens and be sentimental about them if you live in the woods.  I knew from the beginning that I was going to have to share these chickens with the indigenous Sanctuary dwellers, the fishers, the foxes and the hawks.  I don't know who got her, but I will be grateful for what information about the nature of chickens she graced me with, and hope that her life has gone to support  some owlets or litter of foxes or even brood of baby fisher cats.  It is also possible [though not very likely, more like the kind of story you tell your 5 year old] that she took her independence one step further and is off on a grand adventure.  I hope she can come back as a raven and really use those wings for something.

Salve Chicken....

Does the word Salve derive from the same root as saliva?  They both sound suspiciously latinate.

This herbal salve my daughter makes out of, I am assuming, beeswax, oil and various secret greens, is a healing balm of miraculous properties.  Last winter I fell on the wood stove searing my hand completely.  Terrible 2nd degree burns, and painful as hell, this salve healed it up in under a week.....[PSA]

Today I was trying to get close enough to check Buck's comb for more damage or infection [without getting a pointy object in my face for my trouble] and saw that he is doing vastly better.  I'm thinking of trying it out on Barbie who has been mercilessly pecked, plucked, clawed and pummeled by Buck and the other hens.  It does not pay to be Buck's favorite, it reminds me of those girls in high school and the "cheap" ones in junior high school, who probably were really victims themselves, though we didn't see it that way at the time] who wore their hickies like flags to show that someone found them attractive and branded them. 

The ladies have not one issue with staggering around the yard looking bedraggled.  They wear their loss of feathers with philosophical acceptance.  They are the housewives in flowered housedresses, aprons covered with flour and gravy, terrycloth mules on their flat feet, pouchy eyes and puppet lines.  

Still, if I place a mirror in the yard next to their coop or the trees by the mailbox where they like to sit and chat, they will stand and admire.

.

Buck, of course, believes himself to be the grandest chicken in the jungle, no matter what his feathers are about.

Saliva Chicken?

On NPR yesterday when I was just thinking that all media outlets needed to be taken out and shot there was a piece about correcting odd Chinese menu translations.  Husband and Wife lung slice, for example.  I'm not sure what they are going to do about that one, but Saliva Chicken was obviously supposed to be mouth watering chicken.  I'm pretty sure I would not order saliva chicken, [Buck agrees] and it does seem that between google translations and a mutual misunderstanding of foreign idiom, we are bound to order something nasty or possibly be pleasantly surprised.  Another argument against being presented with "that foreign muck" as a friend once put it.
Well.
A more local cuisine seems to have been Buck's comb, and I'm wondering if I'm going to just have to set the alarm and get up early enough to let Buck get away from hens with grievances.
This morning, they were all on the porch, the door blew shut and even my lethargy was moved by the sounds of chickens in a panic.
Before 9:00 AM Buck had already been twice thwarted in his goal of removing a piece of me so you will understand my reluctance to be on a closed in porch with frantic chickens, but I am a big girl and they are a fraction of my height and weight and I have a broom and raisins for distractions and diversions.
I got past them and opened the door letting them out before I noticed that Buck's head was covered with blood.
Went back, got a towel, engaged in some matadorial maneuvers with Buck until he had the towel firmly in his beak.  Before he could take off with it, I dropped it over his head and picked him up.  It always surprises me how docile and charming he is when he knows that resistance is futile.  I put him in the tub and cleaned off the blood with a warm washcloth, put some of my daughter's magic healing herbal balm [contact me for her contact info] and let him loose into his flock of disgruntled hens.
He is so intent and serious about his job, so careful to keep track of his ladies and to chivvy them out of their hideouts, keeping them together and safe. He makes sure everyone is in at night [probably why he resents the beak check.  Probably thinks it's an insinuendo about his competence] and waiting until all the hens are out of the coop in the morning before he starts nailing them.  What are they upset about?  Maybe I should spray his exterior with some nasty tasting substance like Brut.  

Bed Hog.

Buck likes to sleep near the door in case any humans try to open it for beak checks at bedtime.

"Check this!" he advised me the last time I was optimistic enough to try it.

I won't be opening that door after dusk without a face mask and a helmet.

Trying to see them through the small chicken door means using a mirror, because there is little time between the sound of Buck jumping off his perch and jamming his beak into my hand and my getting an accurate count. Best if I use a flashlight and look through the window, or trust to the Guardian Angel of Chickens to know if they are all in the coop.

It's not an unreasonable thing to be doing - not compulsive or anything;  sometimes I'm lax and don't latch the door open during the day, and if the wind blows it shut, they have to find some other predator free place to roost.  What I know and they don't is that the only safe place is in the coop.  

Tonight as they were settling down, I heard more arguing than usual and it had a distinctly acrimonious tone.

I found that 2 of the hens had taken Buck's favorite location and would not step aside for him.  He leaned in to their personal space, breathing heavily and making personal remarks.  He moved 180 degrees on the perch in close proximity, disturbing what feathers he had not already raked off their backs.  That did not work after several tries.

  He jumped down and tried jumping up again in the place where his spot should be, landing on recalcitrant hens.  Eventually, he gave up and just crowded them, hoping that time, and no pillows or blankets would do the trick.  

free lounge chickens, again

In this freakish weather we've been having, the chickens have gone back to their summer ways

I think I'd had the deck cleared of all winter detritus for as long as it took to upend the chair before the chickens came tearing around the side of the house hoping for some watermelon or lettuce. About an hour of scratching and nibbling and they are ready for a little lie down.
 I don't even bother to buy them chicken pellets or meal anymore, it's like expecting them to eat instant oatmeal when they can have pizza.
I found out more about what makes Buck the way he is by talking to the guy who gave him to the guy who gave him to me.  I was told that Buck attacked him with enthusiasm, jumping up into his face, so he adopted a policy of whacking him with a broom on a daily basis in order to manage the flock.  Buck has gotten simpler in his approach since he moved here, I haven't had him go for my face, it's just too much trouble to jump that high, but I can't say that I would feel safe lying on the ground without sufficient bribes or shielding.
I  found out that he is an Aries, so he got a pineapple for a birthday present this week. He is a year old, so that once again shows me how much the avian specialist vet knew.
Buck doesn't like pineapple, as it turns out, but was consoled with cat food.
He also turns out to be, as I suspected and hoped, a French Maran.  It's not the most frequently seen breed of chicken around these parts, and so I'm extra glad he didn't get either tossed into a cauldron or turned into a capon.  I wonder if it's worth coming up with a couple of Maran Hens?
Feedback on this point would be gratefully received.
Now with the good weather here, and the freedom to roam far from the deck and turn over every leaf on the property, everyone is in a good mood and I can hear them making little trills and whirring noises to let each other know they are there and  happy.
Buck's version of this sound is somewhat more like prolonged belching than singing.  I suppose that could explain why he comes over and crows next to my knees when I'm playing the accordion.

 I'm still not clear on the fine points of Avian American dialects, but my guess is that Buck and his ladies have been asking each other WTF all day.
The black flies [Northern scourge] have arrived 5 weeks too early.
Today, technically still winter, there were butterflies.
Tulips are up and shouldn't be for some time.
I hear the continual conversation between the chickens as they turn over leaves and sticks and find things to eat that shouldn't be there this early.  They have stood at my feet, peering up at me and asking why I'm not doing something about this, or is it that I just don't notice.
Hens are sitting on eggs.  [I'd better go & remove those eggs...] and if we get any normal weather back, there will be cold little chickens and I will have to do more work, will probably wind up moving them in to the bathtub.  As I am allergic to chickens, this isn't my first choice.
Today I tried to get in the house with a bag of ground coffee.  It's always better to bring beans in , I think they don't emit so much smell as ground in a paper bag.
Buck wasn't going to let me get away with that.  I have deprived him & the girls any coffee grounds in the compost for some weeks now, for their own good, and for peace in my house.
He hasn't launched himself at me since I shut them off, but today he ran at me, hurled his beak toward the bag, piercing it, and making a couple more tries.
 [omg, I just saw a fruit fly!!]
He successfully caused me to spill about 1/4 of the bag before I got away, the rest pouring into my shirt.
I'm leaving now.  They are on their own.

Downward mobility

There is no point in providing Buck with attractive hens of interesting lineage.  He will have her looking like a crack whore in a few weeks.

I tried isolating her for a day, but she was so miserable that it was almost not worth it. 

First I had to make sure Buck came out of the coop first, then I got in and closed the door behind me to indignant shouts from outside that translated roughly as "Bitch!"
You would think that in a space the size of the interior of a Subaru, I'd not have a problem catching one hen.
Wrong.
There's a channel between the roof of the nesting box and the nesting boxes where there is plenty of hay and some manure to create a toxic dust cloud by a reluctant chicken rapidly moving from  one nesting box to the other.
I read somewhere that it is bad form to try to catch a hen and to be unsuccessful because it gives them the idea that they have a chance to foil human efforts and step out of their slave status.  Then they have hope of evolving back to the resourceful and independent jungle fowl ancestors they came from -  {yes, chickens do believe in evolution}.
I am hunched over breathing through my shirt that I'm holding with one hand while I grab for this very fast chicken in a very small space where the visibility is getting worse by the second.
I am in charge. I will succeed.
Putting Barbie into the cat carrier and keeping her there long enough to grow new feathers will mean listening to her outraged remarks until she refuses to speak to me at all and begins to act like Mae who underwent the same treatment and is now fully feathered and round as she should be, but holds me in the lowest regard as a consequence.
Barbie went through all the food and tipped over the water in about 15 minutes.
I'm going to wait until more feathers come off and she's more uncomfortable and then will perhaps be grateful to be separated from the other girls.
She has figured out how to get the protective saddle off, so I figure at this point I've done all I can stand to do, and she's just going to have to take her chances.

Sloppy Habits.

After 2 days of hauling loads of stuff to the dump [spring cleaning, haven't even gotten to the cellar yet]  I broke with the customary routine of enjoying the hot tub late at night to float around with a nice cup of tea and the recent issue of The New Yorker.
As soon as I had gotten in the tub, Buck began growling from  under the deck.
"grrrrawwaarrrr."  he said
"GRAK, buk buk!" he said and leapt up on to the deck next to the hot tub.
Fixing me with an unswerving and disapproving gaze, he jumped up on the rim, grabbed the magazine out of my hand and tossed it to the ground.  In my surprise I lost most of the cup of tea in the tub, while splashing him to let him know he wasn't welcome.
Sorry I have no photographic proof of this, but it is a true story.
I suppose, in future, daytime soaking will have to include bunches of grapes to throw around for distraction and bribery.

It Might as Well be Spring...

I got a rotator cuff injury this week from patting myself on the back.  Self congratulation took place a little too soon.  Buck was not a tamer, calmer, happier more pacifist chicken, he had only been suffering from seasonal affective disorder.  He had  asked himself "Oh, what's the point?"  He was put off by the cold, the frostbite on his formerly handsome red comb, turning it black and scaly in places.  His feet hurt.  He had ingrown toenail on one foot.  Everything just seemed like too damned much trouble.  So he caved in, and allowed himself to be picked up, patted and generally human-handled more than in the early days.
I could be out shoveling, or moving objects around in the yard, or going to the car with a bag in my hand, and Buck would stand around on one foot, casting a disinterested eye on the proceedings, hardly bothering to molest nearby hens.
I thought he had gotten used to the idea that nobody was going to give him the boot, or boil him around here and he could relax and just be a happy chicken.
Nope.
We've had a few truly warm days now, and every time I look out in the yard, he's circling some hen.  I did a few dump runs today, and every time I left the van unattended, he had gotten in and roosted there with some of his girls and grumbled and complained when asked [nicely] to vacate.
He rushes me if he sees me with something in my hand and the girls come tearing after him like a cloud.  They are looking for food.  He is looking for more opportunity to point out to all life forms, particularly resident gyno-Americans, who's boss.
The season of walking backwards has returned.

& Now a Word from Buck....

You think it's easy being a chicken?  You think I am unemployed, just strutting around eating bugs, getting sugar from the ladies whenever I want, and feasting on grapes, watermelon & lettuce that the Gyno-American throws at me to keep me from kneecapping it?
No.  It's not all the nest of luxury around here.  I have to be vigilant for all kinds of threats, all the time.

There are dangerous pillows.

Evil Towels....

Threatening shoes...

Unfortunate fashion choices.

Unwelcome attention.

Aggressive Chicken impersonators and...

Competition.

Forgive? I think not.

It was with an air of contrition that I let the chickens out this morning.
Yesterday family was here all day with a very enthusiastic german shepherd puppy.  A 70 lb. puppy.  The cats go to ground and the chickens scatter away from the exuberant dancing dog.
Around 6pm, dark out, I go out to the coop to close the door.  Door has been pushed shut by wind or by dog or by careless chicken.  This happens sometimes.  Everyone heads for the plan B roosting location, but I had closed that door earlier to keep raccoons out.  No chickens, no chicken noises, no replies to my chicken noises and no indignant low cackling at the sight of a flashlight.  No eyes to register it.
I felt guilty.
Bad Steward.
Came back in to the house and had a piece of cake to fortify me in the next level of after dark chicken stalking.
When they roost on the ground they resemble a pile of leaves instead of a pile of poultry so it's easy to miss them.
Their Plan B location is under the coop, but even that was too exposed in the presence of a dog.  They had burrowed under the shed, it is probably about 4" off the ground, but that's where they had gone, and they were far under there -well out of reach.
I had an 8' length of plastic gutter which I managed to scoop them out with one at a time while lying fully extended on frozen chicken shit.
I collected all but one; Pearl, of course had found some other place to hide where she could not be found.  I went in hoping that she would do what she has done in the past when this happens, and come around to the door asking for advance rations in the morning.  That is what happened, and I still have 8 chickens.  I'm facing up to the fact that my lax attention to the behavior of winds and doors may lose me a chicken or 2.  I'd better get it together before the fisher cats do.
This morning I was eyed with more than a little suspicion.  Everyone also kept their distance and made warning noises to each other if I got too close. Of course, the instant I turned my back, and Buck thought he saw an opportunity to hamstring me he'd take it.  It's going to be another week of walking backwards.

Even Chickens are afraid of Ghosts

As I tried to get the last of the lettuce recently liberated from a local stores' dumpster out of the bag by shaking the bag, Buck decided with alacrity, that something was not right.  The balance of power had shifted and the world looked like it needed to be dealt with, and he did not mean maybe.
He acted as though some being from the beyond had left his spiritual throne to test Buck's mettle and manliness.
I often have found that testosterone does this.  Threats appear where no threats exist, enemies where there once were allies and the need to handle discomfort with a great show of feathers.
In the background, the hens mill around being as careful of their toes as if they had just spent money on them saying things like  "Ohhhhhh.... "  and "Weeeeellllll..."  They remind me of a pack of Olive Oyl's watching Popeye and Bluto get ready for a scuffle.
Bluto though, is just Plastico in this case, and shifting shapes in the breeze as he disgorges lovely big leaves of Romaine.
Buck is not apppeased.
If he doesn't pick up the pace, the girls will have eaten the best leafy bits leaving him to toss the spines up in the air, catch them and then prowl in a circle, looking pleased with himself.
Maybe that's the point.
Sometimes the Avian American posturing is more than this nascent observer of T-Rex Grandchildren can fathom.

Even Chickens Have Personal Space

The flock mentality seems to be somewhere between the rogue and the hive.
Chickens will stand on each others feet, under each others tails and will crowd each other without mercy on the ground on the perch.
Much like middle school girls, they like the same spot night after night.  I hear them arguing about it before they go to sleep. Buck always roosts in the same place, farthest from the chicken door but closest to the human door because that way he doesn't have to reach over anyone to let me know what he thinks of whatever it is I'm trying to do to make life better for him while he's roosting. Next over is the Alpha Hen, who used to be Bette but has been supplanted by one of the newer girls.  The rest clump together rather further away from Buck, who takes liberties whenever possible so that there are a few hens who are going to be candidates for the chicken spa isolation and therapy treatment soon.
Sometimes I just don't get to maintaining things while they are out turning over every leaf on the property looking for, I hope, ticks.  It is a continual project to see that there is clean water for them.  The way they treat the water, you would think they like water with shit and feathers in it.  Same with food.  First thing Buck does when I drop treats is to go stand in the middle of them and then dance a bit.  Then he tries them out, lets the ladies know that there's something wonderful near his feet, and then jumps them while they are snacking.
In my own life, I find that crackers in the bed discourages this.

Bird's Brain.

OK, maybe I was wrong about Avian American intelligence.  I am still reluctant to see them as stupid, so don't get your hopes up, but it's clear that my evaluation of what is and isn't of interest to chickens needs tweaking.
Often when I watch them and think about how they were designed and what they were designed for, it strikes me that they are elegantly suited to eat continually, to rearrange the pieces of the landscape that weigh less than a pound and to distribute heat efficiently around their immediate personal space.  Sometimes that tiny little head on the big round body makes me think that they are mobile one-handed creatures.  If they need more than one hand, they engage their feet and don't feel as though they are in any way deficient.  Try fending off an enraged chicken with 2 hands.  Until you get the hang of it, they win.  Their wings create a distracting disturbance while they come down hard with their toes, following up with a beak that is attached to a telescope and has tracking devices on either side of it.
Aside from having a sticky memory for the important things, their vision is astonishingly good.  If I come out of the house with food in my hand they will all look up and run over from 50' away.  I wonder if they also have a fine sense of smell.  They know the difference [from a long way off] between romaine and cabbage.  They can be starving, having only eaten commercial chicken food and what they have scrounged but if I put down nice fresh big green cabbage leaves they regard them with question marks hovering over their heads.
"What are we supposed to do with these?"  They ask.
They will toss them in the air, they will trample them, they will nest on them but they will not eat them unless the leaves have first been run them through the cuisinart.
I could use the whole leaf to line the nesting boxes...... someone laid an egg on one this morning.
Except for the vinca, which I am told, has the same components as some chemotherapy meds, they have destroyed years of established perennials.  They have done in one season what it takes global warming many more seasons to accomplish.  The desertification of my yard ought to alter the tax base but that is a faint hope.
Trouble and expense has been gone to for their comfort and convenience, but they turn all efforts to their own ends.
I bought a heater that goes underneath the galvanized water feeder so that they would not have to be thirsty while waiting for me to get out of bed in the morning to let them out.
Now I have to change the water every day because Mae has decided that the waterer is the warmest place to roost.  Of course it is.  I'm sure that installing a designated place for her to poop instead of down the side of the water dispenser would be met with the usual suspiciousness.
Yesterday was warm enough for Buck to think that his ladies should go to the summer location under the house and chatter to each other.  I went out on the deck to drink tea and read, but as soon as they heard me, they all clustered enthusiastically around and went over the food that they had earlier decided was not worth finishing.  I have noticed that they like to come and do whatever poultry things they enjoy near my feet if I settle somewhere.  They aren't interested in being touched, but respond well to being talked to.  They even present me with facial expressions that are skillful enough to fool me into believing that not only are they listening but that they understand.

And I'm concerned about chicken intelligence?