"When the chicken comes home to roost."

With a brain the size of a pea, or to be generous, a Lima bean, you wouldn't necessarily expect chickens to be all that bright; and they're not, really, but they do manage to prove the old adage right by showing up at the coop in the evening ready to roost for the night.

Free Range Biddies

Jenn lets the chickens out to roam around and forage during the day where they typically wander all over the yard eating weeds, bugs and grasses. Although we usually herd them into the coop in the evening, if we are home late, the chickens will have done it themselves. I have wondered, too, what this must look like, this self-imposed curfew: does each chicken decide when it is time to head home, like a good party guest, or; do they participate in a mini-migration, en masse, to the coop? And if it is a migration, who instigates it? What if the instigator is lazy and is just looking for an excuse to sleep? Would all the chickens follow if it were mid-afternoon?

One day, Jenn let the chickens out and thought she saw her favourite chicken, called "Fuzzy-Head", take off toward our lower field. Since the strawberries were out, Jenn thought that the chicken was off eating them and paid no attention to her day long absence. It was only when the chickens were to be corralled and put in the coop for the night that Jenn noticed she was short a chicken. Her favourite one, too. And so began "The Lament for Fuzzy-Head: a tragedy in two parts." (Part One was Jenn losing her favourite chicken; Part Two was having to tell Hunter, who also claimed Fuzzy-Head as her favourite.)

Fuzzy-Head

Jenn waited for Fuzzy-Head to come to roost that night and we looked for Fuzzy-Head the next day. I expect Jenn was looking for the bird; I was, however, looking for a pile of feathers since we have foxes and weasles, not to mention hawks around. Neither of us found any sign of the chicken. It was probably day three or four that Jenn finally gave up on ever seeing Fuzzy-Head again however, if you ask her, she'll tell you that she didn't expect to see the bird from the night it didn't come home.

It was this past Friday that I found the bird, though, a whole twelve days later. Intact, even. She was sitting on a nest of eleven eggs, under a hawthorn shrub not ten feet from the back of the chicken area fenceline. I guess I should cut the grass more often. She was well disguised and I don't understand how she'd been able to go unseen for so long. It was only because I was out gathering the chickens to put them away for the night that I found her; and even then, it was only because there were a few chickens in her vicinity clucking away. She was thirsty and she went straight for the feed trough after (do chickens bloat, I wonder?) but other than that, she was fine. She had gone 'broody' on us and I guess she was looking for a quiet place to hatch her eggs, even though they were unfertilized, and I expect she'd have been there a long time if I hadn't found her.

The next day, Jenn let the chickens out as usual and Fuzzy-Head made for the same nesting spot where I had found her the day before. Jenn put one of Fuzzy-Head's eggs in a nesting box in the chicken coop and that seemed to keep her around for the day. Now she is roaming with the rest of them again, so I guess it's all back to normal around here.

Here are the variety of colours of eggs we get from the chickens. I would have a white one, too, but Fuzzy-Head was not around to donate for the photo.

New blog title being considered: The Biddy Blog, on account of us having almost as many chickens as dogs now.

Since we are new to the world of chicken raising and egg production, it should come as no surpise that we are learning new things just about daily. I mean, I knew there were 'fancy' chickens out there; I've gone to a few agricultural fairs in my day, but I didn't know that there were a group of fancy chickens that are called 'easter-eggers' as a result of their laying coloured eggs. Although they are called 'easter-eggers' however, they don't lay the eggs with stripes and zig-zags. They do, however, lay mottled eggs and so far with us at least, eggs that are blue and eggs that are pink. Neither of these colours are vibrant, being more muted and pastelle-like, but still, a pink egg from a chicken? I didn't know it was possible. It would seem like a good spot to post a picture of the eggs but I haven't taken any yet. Maybe next post.

At first, we thought the colour of the eggs was a result of them free ranging around our property and eating all the grass, clover and insects. Jenn did some research, though, and discovered this whole sub-culture of chicken folks and immediately decided that we needed to get our own flock of easter-eggers and so, Saturday we went to a local chicken raising guy (what do you call them, anyway?) to buy five more birds. These ones are extremely fancy: two have feathered feet, like a ptarmigan, some are mottled and most look more pheasant like than chicken like. I think that they have been crossed with some sort of game bird becasue their eggs are smaller, considerably so, and they can really fly. This new batch is fairly shy and skittish, though, so it was hard to get a picture of them. Below is the only good one I managed to get.

The new biddies.

Today was the go-get-fish day and since Jenn was not scheduled to work, the three of us went down to Killarney. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, having stopped to get a coffee, we noticed this one-of-a-kind motorcycle/car thingy. I said to Jenn that she had to get a picture of it so over she went. I could see in the mirror that she was talking to the driver, then I saw her taking a picture and heading back to the truck. "I sat on it!" she said before she was even in the truck. She was excited enough to have managed to forget to ask the name of the driver, who, she found out, built the thing himself.

The cool rig.

Jenn sitting on the cool rig.

Just to finish off: a few people have asked me what sort of fish we get when we go to Killarney. It's the pin bone fillet that comes off the regular fillet. Even though it is considered 'bone' it is still mostly meat, just annoying enough for people to eat so it's discarded. Herbert Fisheries gives it to us and our dog love it. We pick up two packers at a time, since I don't have enough freezer space to freeze more. This is what it looks like:

Fish in Packer.

Then, I transfer it to the cut-off bottom of a Rubbermaid container, freeze it and then cut it into dog-sized chunks.

Fish in the Rubbermaid flats.