The Chicken Whisperer

Mother Hen's mom forwarded a new story about chickens in her local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

If we had known we could turn this whole experiment into a money making venture, we might've started earlier. With a chick costing around $2.50, you can guess what the profit margins would be when selling to soccer moms.

Chickens in the News

So what does it take to have an article written about you in The USA Today? Apparently, five chickens in your backyard. Maybe we'll add another hen in the Spring and see if any reporters show up. Until then, check out these Backyard Ladies on the West Coast. 

(Thanks to Mother Hen's dad for sending us the link!)

The Ladies and Vaseline

Tonight marks a new first for The Ladies, which means our first blog post in quite awhile. Nashville is looking at some record low temperatures and so we had some friends over after dinner to help us prep The Ladies for zero degrees. As you can see from the pictures, we're all dressed for the weather while out on the back porch. At that point, we were hovering somewhere around fourteen.

The part of the story you would expect is that we put The Ladies in Big Sister's former crate on the porch and covered them with a couple of warm blankets.

The part you might not expect is what we had to do for the combs. Each of The Ladies got a nice covering of petroleum jelly to make sure frost bite doesn't set in.  We'll see if they last the night.

War Wounds

We almost had our own Mike the Chicken today. The Rooster was inside the house working while The Ladies were outside pecking around for their typical afternoon promenade. Suddenly, Big Sister started whining at the back door despite having just gone out. The Rooster got up to investigate and saw only a large hawk perched about fifteen feet up a tree in the backyard, no chickens anywhere.

The hawk flew off but The Ladies remained hidden until The Rooster could coax them out with some scratch; you wouldn't believe how well camouflaged The Ladies are when buried in the hedge. We're not sure what happened, but Ringo seems to have engaged the avian enemy. Whether the interaction was offensive or defensive we'll never know, but Ringo will carry a couple war wounds.

There seem to be no lasting injuries, just a bit of bloody/missing comb and some ruffled feathers.  When returned to the coop, Ringo hid under the nesting box to recover more fully from the shock. Updates will be posted as information develops.

Mike the Chicken

If you know anything at all about chickens, I'm sure you've heard the Story of Mike. If not, read and be amazed. 

(There's also some video coverage of this story on the PBS documentary The Natural History of the Chicken, available at Amazon.)

Apparently, you can even buy Mike the Chicken clothing!

Chicks in a Video

Here's a link to some very cute chicks in a video. 

Of course, you have to watch the whole video to realize I'm not being sexist when I say there are cute chicks in this video.

Flat Chicken

A friend passed this picture along. Apparently, even Flat Stanley is interested in getting a close-up look at a chicken. How anyone got this rooster to cooperate is beyond me.