Smart Chick

This is our favorite chicken.

I realize that we have a lot of very cuddly animals on the farm and that chickens are not really...cuddly, so it's hard to become attached to a chicken.  I also realize that there is a certain danger in becoming emotionally attached to a potential food source.  However, this chicken is really the best one. 

Chickens learn by imitating other chickens.  But when you buy baby chicks, they have no one smarter than themselves to imitate.  The result of that is, if you have one semi-retarded chick picking at a 2X4 hoping it will magically become food, then you get sixteen others doing the same thing. 

This chicken, however, figured out the whole scratching the ground for food bit rather quickly, and then scurried off so no one could copy her and eat all the food.  She has also been patrolling the fenceline religiously.  Whether it's for the spiders that crawl up the fence or she's just looking for a way to breach the perimeter, we don't know. 

The problem is that we have no idea whether it's a he or a she.  So we don't know what to name her/him/it.  Adam has assumed girl and started calling her HennyPenny.  But we're open to naming suggestions.

Solstice

The End. 

Bushyakked

I'm really starting to feel bad for the lilac bush.

Chicken Run

Yesterday the new chicken enlosure was put up, allowing the chickens to go outside for the first time.

The chickens had other ideas.

Notice the distinct lack of outside chickens.

The fact that Thora was lurking patiently next to the pen may have had something to do with it. 

This one was only outside because he got shoved out the door by his "friends." I can't believe how big they've gotten in a month.

Saturday in Pictures

Busy Saturday

Over the past week, I had a breakthrough with Gaia, who has suddenly decided that humans are ok and humans who come bearing grass are more than ok.  I got her to take grass from me, which was a big success for me, since Adam has gotten to be the first one to feed all the other yaks by hand.  But Gaia is my favorite, and I'm glad she warmed up to me first.  It also helps that she's a clover addict.  Humans with clover are her favorite.

Sometimes I have a little help from Thora

who has taken to her role as a farm dog as well as any newfie could.  She particularly likes supervising mucking out the corrals.  (I think it's all the new and exciting smells to roll in.  Very gross)

Adam had a much bigger breakthrough though, as he got to feed Eirene and Gaia for the first time from inside the corral.  No fences, no barriers.  It helped that Pullo was inside the barn at the time as he makes pretty much everything more complicated.

Adam and Gaia

 and Eirene

Afterward we got the lavender beds by the corral planted:

and took a nap on the porch. 

Chicks

Monday morning, at 8 am on the dot, I got a call from the post office.
"Hello, this is Beach Lake Post office.  We have chickens here for you."
Me:  "Oh... I didn't know that they'd be in so early."
Her:  "Yes." 
Long pause.
Her:  "You can pick them up at any time.  Any time."

Baby chicks are cute, but they are also very noisy.  And noisy baby chick peeps apparently do not enhance the environment of the local post office, particularly on an under-caffeinated Monday morning.   

Since this is my first time mail ordering chickens (you really can get anything off the internet) I had no idea how exactly they'd show up.  How do you ship live chickens through the mail?  In a small chicken sized box, with holes punched in.  And if you order baby chicks through the mail, it is perfect acceptable to walk up to the mail counter and tell the clerk that you would like "six stamps and a box of chickens please".  It's a little strange.

So we have 25 baby chicks of the "Feather Footed Fancy" variety from Murray McMurray Hatchery and they are settled in and doing nicely.  We added two more heat lamps as it got cold last night and there seemed to be a baby chick shoving match under the single heat lamp.