Spike, who is probably an Araucana
continues to be the dominant male and a loud jerk, but the incidents of sexual assault seem to be less frequent. Or the hens just don't care anymore.
Faith crows with an inhale on the end the makes him sound like a dying bagpipe, but he's not as aggressive and I like him.
Faith
We get two or three eggs a day, and they are small but beautiful -- bright orange yolks. I can't say they taste much different to me, but others swear they are 'eggier.'
They come in brown, white, and off-white. Doug is fairly sure Buffy and Joyce lay the white ones on the shelf above the bin.
Buffy is the one in the middle. She is a Game Hen and looks like a velociraptor.
This leaves Ms. Callendar, Dawn, and possibly Auk laying the darker ones. These three do not flock with the others, preferring a quiet life nearer the coop.
We still haven't figured out if Auk, who LOOKS like Cochin China rooster but rarely crows and is sometimes brooding on the eggs, is a hen or not.
We lost Harmony (off-white with brown checks) last month when she flew into something, we believe, and gave herself severe spinal damage. Cordelia, the Polish, whose gender we weren't sure about either, had been avoiding the rest of the flock. She managed not to get shut in with the others that same night and has not been seen since. The crows made a terrible, unusual racket at dawn the next day...
So we are down to seven.
The other day I went to MA to get the daughter. When we arrived home, Doug, as bravely as possible, said that Joyce was missing. She is one of the layers and almost as humanized as Buffy (read that as 'eagerly exploitive.') And Doug loves her neatness. She is something like a Duckwing. We had not expected such attrition. Joyce had definitely been around at 3 pm, when I stopped in at home on the way to MA. Doug said he knew I had stopped in because the dishwasher had been running and there was chicken poop in the entry way, and indeed the living room. I was surprised because I had thought I had shooed them outside again before such disgusting events could occur. As Doug left the room, shaking his headver mortality, I saw:
o
Man and hen were reunited and Joyce seemed happy to get back to the coop.
The happy man and his chicken
4 comments:
OK, chicken on the moniter, too funny. Thanks for the happy ending!
Nice gloves too, post above. I may just have to get knitting some. They look so cosy.
Superb storytelling. Dying bagpipes indeed! (Have you EVER heard that, or am I to leave it to my aural imagination?)
cute story...Joyce is crafty.
Spikes coloring would make a good colorway for socks. I have some green/black roving that I died w/ Wiltons...hadn't thought about mixing in a tan and rust, but that would "make it". Thanks for the inspiration.
I absolutely adore your chicken pictures! Thank you for sharing them!
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