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

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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.