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Wow! Has it only been 3 weeks since my chick buying binge? ( http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder/forum/20956091-middle-aged-expectations-vent ) Seems like the chicks have been with me forever. How did I ever get through a dawn or twilight without them? Waking up with them in the morning and putting them to bed at night has turned into a cherished ritual. The old hens treat me different these days. I think I have been promoted from Top Hen to Goddess of Fertility. They only lay eggs. I have a brood. . .
Three weeks is a long time in a chick life. All but one of them are sprouting actual feathers from their fuzzy down. The pepper/tomato/bean bed in the garden where I have kept them is looking somewhere between beat up and over-worked. As their scratch skills grow with the size of the talons, it is getting harder and harder to contain them in the soft edges of the raised bed. With the old hens scratching from the outside and the growing chicks scratching from the inside, it has gotten to where they can scratch their way out quicker than I can re-set the chicken wire. The chicks are not trying to escape. It is always a surprise to them when they fall through their newly dug hole. They are never able to find the hole they fell through and end up circling the pen, crying frantically to get back in while the old hens eyeball them as a potential snack. Is Kali (Hindu goddess of fertility) looking?
I moved their pen into one of my healthier stands of bermuda grass this morning. I nestled the chick house where they sleep into the branches of the Hot Lips Sage and pulled the bermuda grass away from the trunk of the plum tree for their shaded day-time chill space. So far, so good. No crying chicks yet. . .
Three weeks is a long time in a chick life. All but one of them are sprouting actual feathers from their fuzzy down. The pepper/tomato/bean bed in the garden where I have kept them is looking somewhere between beat up and over-worked. As their scratch skills grow with the size of the talons, it is getting harder and harder to contain them in the soft edges of the raised bed. With the old hens scratching from the outside and the growing chicks scratching from the inside, it has gotten to where they can scratch their way out quicker than I can re-set the chicken wire. The chicks are not trying to escape. It is always a surprise to them when they fall through their newly dug hole. They are never able to find the hole they fell through and end up circling the pen, crying frantically to get back in while the old hens eyeball them as a potential snack. Is Kali (Hindu goddess of fertility) looking?
I moved their pen into one of my healthier stands of bermuda grass this morning. I nestled the chick house where they sleep into the branches of the Hot Lips Sage and pulled the bermuda grass away from the trunk of the plum tree for their shaded day-time chill space. So far, so good. No crying chicks yet. . .
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I did the dumbest thing today. I charged my earbuds, unplugged the block and put the block in my little bag instead of the earbuds. I wasn't happy about that when I got to the gym. What a dummy!
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Ever since I stopped doing therapy because of insurance, I've been feeling that old tense and irritable sense of anxiety and stress. I hate that. I was making so many strides and changes during therapy, my therapist would acknowledge all of my progress and accomplishments, and I miss that reassurance. Today I thought about it, and I made those changes! She would always tell me that I chose to...
Desi, Does letting bi-gender chicks (you can't tell a rooster from a hen at this age) shit on you count as crude? I mean, I am "Assertiveness Trained," after all. . .
None of the old biddies adopted them? Huh. Grandma had a hen who'd "steal" chicks from other hens. You'd watch her flock them to her (and her chicks), then the mother hen came and chased them back to the proper spot and back and forth, but the chick-adopting hen always let them go. I think she was sad she only had a brood of two or three. She was a layer, however, and the other hens were setters, then when their girls got old enough, they'd be sold to neighbors (aka swapped for, say, something off their farm), and the young gentlemen... Well, not too fine a point on it, most were fryers.
That probably made no sense to anyone outside farming. *sigh* I am old, anachronistic, outdated. However, I will add this is one reason I went vegetarian among many as a small kid. Eating squirrel, named animals who I was expected to someday *eat*, and smelly-crapping things I was told were "food". I swore off eggs a long time when I found out what *they* were and how they entered the world. (My grandpa, with his usual eloquence, said, "They're poop." I walked around for a year thinking people cracked open chicken poop.)
Sorry to ramble, just... memories.... Not bad ones, just memories...
Enjoy the soothing clucks
I would LOVE to have a mini goat unfortunately I live in the city
The chicks left behind a Pee Wee pancake in the chick house this morning. Pee Wee was the chick who was way behind the other chicks, developmentally. I was beginning to debate if I needed to put him/her out of her/his misery. The other chicks seem to have made the decision for me. She/he was squashed flat as a pancake by the weight of the other chicks through the course of the night.
That leaves me with 12 of the original 20 chicks. Can I call them my 12 disciples without earning a "God Complex" dx?