The Menagerie

Okay, well. . .not technically a menagerie, because domesticated farm animals aren't really wild and unusual animals.

Or maybe, in this day and age, they are becoming so. It is possible, I suppose, that more Americans own pet iguanas than they do chickens. Maybe the wild and unusual are becoming more domestic than the previously domesticated.

Anyway, the girl's chicken flock has grown right up this summer, and since they are more or less distinguishable from one another this time around, they have names. The Barred Rock, the beautiful black and white bird in this picture, is Rocky. For the girl, there is no reference to Rocky Balboa. But just saying this hen's name, well, doesn't it make you want to run up some steps while the funky horns play?



The White Leghorn is named Peck, and the Black Sexlink is named Falcon. The kids are in love with these birds. Honestly, I've missed having chickens more than I thought I would. They are truly very entertaining, and so far, have laid three tiny little eggs. It's all very exciting.

 We just started letting them free-range through the corral this past Sunday, much to the consternation of the pigs, who are so clearly trying to make a meal of these girls. It's disturbing, because the love of scratching through poop lures these girls dangerously close to the pig pen.

But you can have freedom or you can have total safety. It's a pig eat chicken world out there (this is actually from a For Better or For Worse comic, see July 21st), and we all just have to learn to survive, right? I really hope that if one of these pigs, or a hawk, or something manages to get one of these birds, it happens while the kids are at school. It would be much uglier if there were young witnesses.

 Our last hens were shameless egg eaters, and that was mostly because we were never able to figure out a simple, portable nest box system for them. Matty built this one out of 5 gallon buckets on Sunday, but I have yet to see a hen even go inside one. Those eggs you see in there are decoys. So, it's too early to evaluate this system. We will let you know in a couple of months whether the internets were right about these.

 As I was inside the chicken hut, taking that last picture, our cat Noodle jumped right up on the side of the tarp and climbed up to her favorite vantage point. It scared the daylights out of me until I figured out what it was. You'd think this would make her vulnerable to various raptors, but she seems to like it up there, and since I'd rather have her climbing the easy and relatively cheap to replace tarp than the far more expensive greenhouse plastic, I suppose it's all good.

And that's the news from the Little Farm this morning.