Her Side Funnies

Ken’s from the city.  He thought when I said I wanted fertilizer for the flower gardens that I meant for him to buy a bag of the stuff at the local garden center.  Silly Ken.

In the world of chickens, the Buff Orpington variety are big, fat hens that are hardy and lay brown eggs.  They are the Rolls Royce of chickens–in my humble opinion.  There are other breeds which are equally enchanting, but my personal pick are the Buffs.  They are docile and fun to watch.  We got them at the end of February and they promptly became dining room fixtures. 

Ken would come down from work for lunch and I would find him gazing into the make-shift water trough we were using to house the newly hatched chicks.  Soon, they exceeded my relaxed approach to housekeeping (with feathers and dust flying everywhere) and they had to be booted into the outdoor shed.  The cold nights made us nervous a couple of times, but the chicks did fine and continued to grow under the watchful eye of the dingo pup.  

Dingos, or blue-heelers, are great stock dogs, but with young, flapping, squeaking charges, there is the continual worry that the dogs will lose perspective and confuse chickens with dinner.  Ken held one of the day-old chicks up to show the dog not to eat it, but literally in a split second, before Ken could even wind up his lecture series, the pup had snapped at the head of the chick leaving us one less chick for our flock.  Ken was horrified–and I was not sure he would ever forgive the dog, but I am proud to report that the dog has been accident-free for over a month now and our flock of eleven is doing great.

Some people do not realize that chicks take several months to gain enough age to lay eggs.  We will not have eggs until late July, if that early.  The first eggs will be small.  Then, if we do not add lighting, the chickens will drop off of laying during the winter months.  Truly, eggs from the store are cheaper, but for the sheer thrill of seeing them grow, and the sheer comic enjoyment of seeing Ken lecture the dog about the relative merits of dog food versus the relative demerits of chickens, nothing quite compares.  They are a bargain at twice the price.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Animal drama, Stuff to do when you're over 40. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.