Housemate Jacob recently said it best: “Keep up the good bok.”
Tag: hens
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Hens added to the flock
After our house meeting last week we mucked out the coop to get it ready for some new birds. Maggie knows a lady outside of town with roosters and hens who agreed to sell us a few full grown layers when she heard about our recent tragedy with the pitbull. After cleaning out the coop and installing some perches made out of down limbs from the yard, a few of us went chicken shopping.
These two chickens are mixes of different breeds; on the left mainly Araucana, on the right Wyandotte. The breeder had a small operation and kept all her birds together creating eclectic mixes of colors and patterns. Before we had 4 Rhode Island Reds that were pretty much indistinguishable, which left us with no answer to the common question, “What’s this one’s name?” We made a point to pick out very different looking birds and have since begun the process of observing their behavior and choosing appropriate names.
We also got around the hanging up the feed dispenser, which seems to greatly reduce waste. More about the chickens to come. To see more photos check out my flickr stream starting here.
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RIP, chickens
On Thursday, February 4th 2010, a loose pitbull entered our yard and killed six of our chickens.
Among the casualties were our alpha-hen, Ginger (pictured above), Stegasaurus, Lucille, and all of our Rhode Island Reds. The pitbull was picked up by animal control and the owners have been instructed to compensate us for the loss.
It’s hard to put into words the emotions that this incident created. We’ve lost chickens to predators and disease before, and we had plans to butcher several hens this Spring. The mental image that causes me the most sadness, all the hens watching in terror as the dog kills one after another of their flock-mates, is hard to push out of my head.
The flock is down to four chickens, three leghorns and an ISA Brown. We plan on getting more hens soon, stay tuned…
La Casa Grande Colectiva 