Month: September 2012

Leilani drew herself drawing…

For Dr Nick’s drawing competition

After we read the rules…

Leilani loves our chickens, but sadly we can’t keep them all.

I made a flyer and put it up at the garden supply store and the 2 health food stores.

Other than insects their favorite foods are coconut, eggs (hard boiled only) and white bread, but they eat lots of leftovers and compost.

One of the hens is smaller than the others. When I carry her to the compost to fatten her up with some yummy bugs, she will methodically work through the compost, starting by probing a batch with her beak, then scratching it towards the middle, turning it over, when she is all the way on the right she scratches the middle pile back onto the right, without really looking at it again, and then repeats it all on the left. But coconut eating is easier. When Andy opens the coconuts and they are loose, I need to guard him and the nuts with the hose.

It doesn’t show up really well on the photo, but the black feathers are all the way iridescent…

The rooster on the right is Clovers. When they are in the coop he is the only one who crows, and even though the other roosters fight among themselves, nobody fights him. One funny thing I noticed: When chickens eat something messy, they have a need to repeatedly wipe their beaks on the ground to get it clean. Not Clovers. He wipes it on the chicken next to him. I guess it’s good to be king…

I should be more positive and not call them Terror and Devil (Teufel, actually, tt for short), Leilani renamed them Nightstar and Brown-something. But today they ate my kale and earned their former names back. I don’t remember if I wrote about these 2 already, but we found them as day old chicks when the others were about 2 months old, and decided to keep them wild. We got one of the teenage hens to be their “mother” and once she figured out what’s expected she did a really good job. She defends them against the other chickens who peck them, and shares food with them, and when they were little she sat on them or let them under her wing… but boy, while the others are so sweet, these 2 are a challenge to my patience. Oh, and the chicken-shooting neighbor had to move back to the mainland :-))

And one more funny thing I remember from our camping at Saltpond in March… We saw a rooster with 2 hens, and I showed Leilani, “Look, the rooster has 2 wives” She replied “Two wives???? That is not possible. One is his girlfriend”