Dyslexic Roosters

When I walk out the door in the morning, I am assaulted with the neighborhood roosters and their loud greetings of the new day. Our neighborhood is more or less rural-suburbia, with folks having one or two acre lots. On those lots they can have chickens or horses or cows, and god knows what else…  I guess most of my neighbors have chickens and choose to keep roosters. I on the other hand, I choose to not have roosters. They are beautiful, I admire them, and that’s where the attraction stops; and after concerned painstaking effort on my part to choose chicks which were hopefully female, I ended up with FIVE beautiful Roosters and Nine hens. I was awaken one morning with a horrific squalling, squealing, and hooting weirdness coming from the direction of the chicken yard. Stumbling to the door I peered outside in that general area and proudly attempting to crow was one of the new pullets. You could hear him trying to form a crow but the noise was a pitiful example of crowing. Continue this progressive morning scenario for two weeks: The family who lives the next road over must have several roosters, and I watch the little gray one I have listen closely as they one after the other, crow with a vengeance. Then he begins to attempt a mimic of their crowing. Except his crow was totally backwards… I was hoping and praying this was just an overly testosterone laden female crowing (they occasionally will attempt to mimic). The days following however, proved me wrong. Dayam!  The little Gray Roo pullet who is attempting to crow is a Blue Ameraucana (Not really blue). Here’s a photo of a Blue Pullet.

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Most chickens when they crow make a Urt Urt Urt Urrrrrr sound. This little dude hit notes nothing like that. I busted out laughing… Ouuuuu-Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urttttt!  Ouuuuu- Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urt!  I could see him with a face which said, “No that’s not quite right”!  He kept practicing and practicing, his face contorted with the effort. He even bent his neck sideways trying to squeeze the vocalizations just right.  This kept up for about two weeks. Then suddenly another one popped out with a tentative crow. Oh God…. More Roosters! That week and the week that followed I counted a total of FIVE Roosters! They were promptly packed up and driven back to the breeder who guaranteed that they would be hens. If I ended up with any Roos’ he’d take them back. He was good to his word, but he was really surprised that his method of sexing them had failed so badly. I told him that the Blue Ameraucana crowed backwards.  He figured they just had baby crows and had not quite got the crowing down yet. Then as I stood there talking to him, the Blue let out a healthy, Ouuuuu-Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urt! The man turned quickly at watched him let out another Dyslexic Crow and he laughed saying, “Well I’ll be Dang” The little guy does crow backwards!”. Skip (the chicken guy), ended up showing him with the 4H kids.  I wonder how a Dyslexic Rooster fared out with the 4H judging? The Chicken Mama

One of the Girls

Do you ever get to the point that your chickens think maybe you are just one of the more heavy-set girls in the flock?  I think mine are getting that way with me. If I grow feathers, someone call the doctor!

Lately, I’ve been about living in the chicken yard, fixing this and moving that. Then starting new projects and working on stuff, bustling around, trying not to step on birds.

The mulch piles are in the chicken yard. That means repeat trips to drop in compostable items. They ladies are somewhat disappointed when I drop the bucket of stuff overboard in the mulch area. I can almost see them pout. Of course I keep some prize tidbits for them and that seems to redeem me in their eyes.

My decision to place work areas inside the chicken yard, was as much for me as it was for them. With me alongside them so much of the time, behavior and health issues are quickly noticed. Today Flakey, a lovely fat White Orpington had wet bottom. I don’t know what happened there, except maybe I over did the scraps yesterday…  Her vent was pretty messy.

Flakey Makes Me Laugh

She seems to hang around my feet a good bit, so I picked her up and looked at it. Hum… Nothing obviously wrong there. So, I went ahead and took the hose to her bottom. Sounds sort of harsh, but the weather has been very warm here; she got a nice warm spray bath on her bottom end. Nice and clean now, so I dried it off a bit. Then of course she heads right into the dust bath area and fluffs up.  Now she looks like a mucky-butt bottomed, mud-encrusted hen.  Oh well, I figure she’ll dry off and that stuff will go with it when it does dry (crossing fingers).

Do your hens move out of your way when you work? I’m wondering if these are normal birds at this point. A few of them I totally have to dodge! Some of the chickens, I have to down-right bend over and pick up, then move them over. They just don’t get it.  I have about six out there who feel it their god given right, to be under my feet.

Today I put in a small garden area. Yes, in the chicken yard. Why not? The mulch piles are in there, so is the ready compost pile. It stands to reason that the  garden spot should also be in there too. I really didn’t want to plant much this year. Just a few tomatoes, cucumbers and whatever else I use in the salads. Fresh salad greens sound lovely.

Future Garden

Smart chickens should feel threatened by the tiller so loudly moving the earth, but my really spoiled girls are just wondering what the heck that big “snoring machine” is? They (even with that thing) are dangerously curious, so I shoo them into the hen-house and shut the door. It’s quite large so there’s plenty of room, but they are not happy with me. I could hear Maw’s protests from inside. She’s livid. How dare I shut her inside. She wants so badly to dig into the newly tilled soil and find grubs.  I’m such a naughty Mom…

This is Maw. She wants me Dead

However, it’s going to be in the 20s by beginning of next week, and here it is March 1st! So much for that planting situation I had been dreaming of.  Inside my house sitting in tubs waiting on the weather to decide what it is doing, are two Satuma Citrus Trees, and One nicely growing Concord Grape Vine. I’ll wait on buying the tomato plants. I could start them now in a seed planter, but I have no room in the house for flats of germinating seeds.The new area has 8 feet walled fencing. Mostly because of Victoria who can jump 4.50 feet, standing flat-footed. Ask me how I know. She clears my yard fencing, which is that tall. Now, with that resolved and hoping she does not scale this fence, I hopefully will have a nice little garden patch in a few weeks.

Oh well, when this cold mess passes you can envision me in the nice fenced in planting area of the chicken yard, putting down tomatoes, cucumber, green peppers and a few squash plants. I’m excited about the prospect! With all the composed chicken poop anyone could want… If anyone would have told me that chicken poop would make me smile ear-to-ear, I’d have laughed them out of the house.

The Chicken Mama