Commitment II
For both better and worse, I took the proverbial plunge. The chicken coop is on order. I went for the deluxe cedar condo from a node on the very urban agriculture network which holds our own Urban Homestead. They are scheduled to begin cutting my kit on April 15th and estimate shipping for the 22nd. I mowed a test patch to hold the coop yesterday and used the mow mulch to mark a candidate spot on which to assemble the coop. So far, so good. I think. Maybe. Testing, one, two, three. . .
GS's feather babies have already outgrown Raptor's cage. Two weeks is a long time for critters who only live for 2 to 4 years. They are still too small to free range on their own, but they are already establishing their pecking order. The closed confines of a smallish cage doesnae give them much room for the often brutal process of establishing pecking orders. Chickens donae seem to have enough long term memory to remember last hour's pecking order. Poultry politics rapid-cycle with anarchist speed.
We see what grows. . .
Have I forgotten that I wanna be a river rat when I grow up? That ain't gonna happen on the Great Plains. Officially, there are quite a few local rivers, but they wouldn't qualify as creeks in the River Region.
Replies
Sounds like you’re getting a good start on the coop but also that April 15 may not be soon enough for delivery, my friend. I recall quite well how fast those little chicks grow.
Oddly I have a question for you regarding chickens. I had a pet on that was found hatched from an egg in the most unlikely of places, the middle of a city suburb where there wasn’t a single farm within miles just concrete and fancy houses. The odd thing about this hatchling is it was bright auburn in color. It acted as it grew up more like a bird of prey than a chicken and honestly at first we were sure it wasn’t a chicken at all. I’m used to the fluffy yellow and white chicks, but had never seen a sleek feathered auburn chick in my life and I been around chickens since my parents moved out west when I was 4 or 5.
Did any of GS’s chicks turn out to be red? The unusual color and lack of fluff alway confused me about Roken, my pet chicken. Roken until her becoming dinner for my parents (I was living that year with my grandparents) continued to act like it was a raptor breed from birth to death.
Just curious. I’ve never seen another chick like Roken in my life & we saw her hatch as red and sleek as a falcon or golden eagle.
Hugs, love and good luck with the new chick family condos, Arfie.
PS. If you ever need a vacation and a big river run, head up my way and maybe you can help me conquer my fear of water.
Hugs
City chickens are all I know, Mighty River. 100% of my chicken keeping experience has been in a major megapolis. I consider myself a founding mother of the "Urban agriculture" movement. You can google it. Life's endless ability to adapt is as evident in the asphalt jungles as it is in any of the Earth's extreme environments.
As for what species and/or breed Roken might have been? ? ? The possibilities are far greater than my knowledge. Like plants, dogs, horses, etc., etc., chickens have been breed world wide for most of human history. There are ALLOT of chicken breeds and several wild bird look-alikes. Since chickens are much tastier than dogs, it is possible there are even more chicken breeds than dog breeds.
These chicks are random Bantams. I have yet to determine which breed they were miniaturized from, but figuring that out is half the fun of buying random. I'm pretty sure none of them are any of the red breeds.
A river rat?!! Huckleberry Finn!!! Congratulations on the coop purchase. You have so many cool projects going on!!
Huck is, indeed, the very rapscallion who planted the seeds of my river rat ambitions. We had us a summer long love affair in the top branches of a wild apple tree when I was? ? ? Old enough to know I wasn't supposed to be climbing apple trees in skirts but young enough to wonder if I could be Huckleberry Finn when I grew up.
Cool!!!
Keeping my fingers crossed for the coop project and the pecking order. triple hugs~
Thanks for the feedback, Arfie. For the first year my mother was certain Roken was a chickenhawk.
I’ve seen many a red hen but never one of her coloring and she truly was a bird of prey at heart. If any dog decided to harass any of our animals, whether it was our chickens, goats, horses, or cats, or even our other dogs, beware the wrath of Roken. At the time we had champion Australia Blue Healers which are often larger than the American version. (O’Brien was as big as a black lab and pure breed.) Seeing large dogs cower before a feisty foot tall red hen was priceless. And somehow even though chickens really don’t fly, Roken could get up to the highest branches of our elm and apricot trees all on her own.
Anyhow. Forgotten memories walking.
Hugs & love, my friend.
A red tailed hawk is on my list of wild candidates for your description of Roken. That would be the variety of chicken hawks which *hunted* my urban flock with enough comfort zone to have started preening themselves on the bird bath on my urban half acre. BEST YARD ORNAMENTS EVER! ! ! The healthiest of the ones who preened themselves on my birdbath while planning their coup d'etat of my flock was not much bigger than the chickens. Might even have been smaller than one or two hens in that mixed breed flock. For sure my chocolate hen could have taken them down. That was a hen that didn't take pecks from nobody. She died of old age at 3 years old. Super nummy eggs.
For what it's worth, the folk name, "Chicken hawk" is often used for any of the birds of prey who enjoy a chicken dinner. That might be true for ALL the birds of prey, even the ones who arenae big enough to pick up an adult chicken. Chickens, themselves, enjoy a good chicken dinner. It's pretty amazing how fast they can pick a broodmate's bones clean and let the *chicken hawks* take the credit. Beware the humble hen. . .
Interesting, very interesting. Perhaps Roken was a chicken hawk. She certainly never acted like any of the chickens we were raising and if I recall correctly she was slightly smaller than our other hens. She loved to perch on my wrist or my mother’s for hours watching over everything. My dad used to joke she was the best guard dog we ever had, lol. She definitely ran our ranch and warning to any unwary intruders for Roken would attack first, ask questions never, lol.
I often wonder if our pets and/or the animals we rescue know what species they are. Human packs are all Persilly has ever known. I am not at all sure she knows she's a dog. Ditto for birds that have never known a flock, lions who have known a pride, horses that have never run with a herd, etc., etc.
There are tons of great stories and documentaries about the challenges of reintroducing captive animals to the wild. It ain't as easy as opening the cage door and trusting DNA to reprogram the human conditioning.
I have been told that, in spirit, birds of prey are closer to dogs than popular mythology. My precious little experience with them makes me think that is a simple truth.
At the dressage farm I worked at they had rescued a crow who would never fly again. He was the smartest non-human creature I’ve ever met. He would carry on full conversations, remember people by their faces and names. Granted they were simplistic conversations but he wasn’t at all like a trained parrot taught to mimic human speech. I’ve known several people who have had crows, as I hesitate to think of them as pets, who have had similar experiences with them. It’s hard to see crows as just birds after witnessing first hand for years how truly intelligent they are.
But I’ve always been partial to crows and ravens as they are part of my family’s old world traditions I was raised with from my maternal grandmother and then gain more respect after becoming a Crow Sister among the southwest tribes.
Hugs.
Perhaps the greatest consistency of my life is that intimate views are different from distant views. Do our views get any more distant than our views of wildlife? Even in my most feral years, I was still a homo sapient outsider looking in at my resident camp mates. I'll bet even your adopted Crow tribe lived in 20th century human houses with electricity and running water.