a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Raising Chicks

  • Three Young Roosters

    These three young roosters are as colorful as the flowers around them. Young roosters spend most of their time together. They remind me of teenage boys who hang out together, too timid to ask girls out for a date, too insecure to be on their own. Roosters don’t come into their own until they are nearly a year old. Until they do, they seek each other’s company.

    Roosters come in so many colors, I wonder if they look at each other and think, “I wish I had his feathers.”

    YoungRoosters

    The Stewartia is still blooming. Their flowers are refreshing on a soft summer evening.

    NatsuTsubaki

  • Importance of Love

    Looking at two cats snuggled together on a chair, it’s easy to see that love is important to cats. In her book Animal Madness, Laurel Braitman states that animals think, feel, and experience the same emotions that people do. Live with animals and it’s as obvious as saying that the sky is blue.

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    It’s not only cats and dogs which thrive when loved, so do little chicks. They thrive under the watchful eyes of their caring mothers. When they are snuggled under their mother’s feathers, safe and warm, listening to her heartbeat, you wonder what they are feeling. And what is she feeling when there are little ones gathered under her wings? Is she feeling the same warmth a human parent feels when their children are snuggled in their lap, listening to them read a children’s book?

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    Researches warn against anthropomorphizing animal behavior. And yet, since we are animals ourselves, and have very distant common ancestors, just as we share many of the same physical characteristics such as hearts, lungs, legs, two eyes, etc., wouldn’t it be reasonable that we share many of the same emotions? For example, love is essential to the survival of every mammal and bird species. Without at least one parent’s concern for it’s offspring, all these species would quickly go extinct. Their offspring would quickly die off without their parents looking out for them.

    It would seem rather specious to think that many of our emotional states developed only after homo sapiens arose. It would seem more plausible that our emotional states go far back down the evolutionary chain and began hundreds of millions of years ago in the distant past. They were as important to the survival of distant species as they are to us today.

  • Strike a Pose

    Of all the chickens, Lucky is the most photogenic, and she seems to know it. She loves to pose. It’s almost as if she is saying, “How about this look? What if I move my head to the side?” She is also the first hen to come check what I am doing in the garden when I go out to weed. See Lucky’s story ~ why we call her Lucky.

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    On the other hand, brooding hens are in no mood to pose. They stay as still as possible, hoping that you won’t see them, and that you will move on and leave them in peace.

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    BroodingHenB

    In one of the hoop houses, the squash are starting to set. I”m not sure what kind of squash this is. I bought one several months ago. It was a squarish squash with a bit of a waist. I planted some of the seeds and will soon have a supply to last through the fall and possibly into winter. You can see the waist in the forming squash.

    SquashVine

    The two mothers sharing two chicks are doing fine. It’s been over a week since their chicks hatched. The chicks go freely from one hen to the other. Sometimes the hens scold each other when they aren’t happy with the other’s child rearing methods, but for the most part they get along.

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    Two Moms|Summer Musings|Interracial Lesbian Mothers|More on the Interracial Lesbian Moms

  • Summer Musings

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    Every evening, many of the chickens end the day grazing on the grass next to the chicken yard. This time of year when the sun sets after 9 p.m. and dusk lingers until past 10 p.m., the chickens take their time getting to bed, especially the younger ones.

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    Morning colors this time of year are so soft yet brilliant. Getting up early is the thing to do this time of year.

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    The two hens sharing the two chicks continue their shared co-parenting. At times, each one takes one of the chicks for some “quality time”. At other times they are side by side. It’s interesting observing them. Will this unusual child rearing make a difference for the chicks? Probably not, but time will tell.

    See also:

  • More on the Interracial Lesbian Moms

    The black and white hens which are raising the two chicks seem to be OK with the situation. The two chicks go back and forth between the two mothers. The two mothers haven’t gotten into any big fights. Sometimes if two mother hens get too close, they can get quite testy with each other. Mother hens can be fierce protectors of their chicks. I once had to rescue a chick which got trapped and the mother hen, thinking I was after the chick, attacked me ferociously. She came flying with her claws in front of her. I managed to rescue the chick without getting beaten to death by its mother, but barely.

    In the pictures below, you can see one of the chicks go from the black mother to the white one. So far, they haven’t ventured too far from their sleeping spot. They’ve taken the chicks to a sequoia tree close to the chicken yard. It will be interesting to see what happens when they start taking the chicks a long ways from the chicken yard.

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    Since the two hens bed down side by side at night, they must be used to each other. Chickens mellow out in the evening. Roosters who fight each other during the day, will often roost next to each other at night. It’s as if all is forgiven once the sun goes down.

    See also Interracial Lesbian Mothers and Two Mother Hens.