In which Chicken Math is still a thing here, and the number increases
Sometimes I ask Monica to tell me exactly how many chickens we have.
Then I watch her not count roosters because we aren't going to keep roosters, mostly,
and not count old hens because they don't lay eggs much,
and not count very young chickens, because by this point she knows
I've completely lost track of how many birds we are not counting....
And then, stuff like this happens:
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| Maya has at least 8 chicks--maybe more! |
We didn't realize that Maya had sequestered a bunch of eggs away. And we certainly wouldn't have encouraged her to make a secret little nest under the blackberry bushes right beside a rat hole!
And yet, somehow she has successfully hatched out more babies than any other hen on the farm thus far, bless her sneaky little feathered heart.
Given that the last two batches have been almost exclusively cockerels (drat them) I am hoping that a few of Maya's children will grow up to be hens--the kind that we can count.
And now this song is stuck in my head.
Since every day we are tormented by the shreiks of laying hens, I must ask you - are you also tormented? Of course her they are right out our bedroom window, so even if we close it, we suffer their screaming. I don't know how anyone can have such consistenly loud animals directly next to their neighbor's house. Closer by far to their own. My donkey can bray very loudly, and does so when I go out riding. But it's not this every day thing, throughout the day, this screeching. Like Chinese Water Torture in its repetition and predictability.
ReplyDeleteSometimes my man plays Queen on the piano and I sing and we do not bother to close the windows. But that is not every single day, repeatedly.
Tell me your thoughts as a chicken co-owner.
Chickens won't make noise at night. After dark they are mostly torpid,and literally incapable of moving around and vocalizing--that's how nocturnal predators are able to raid chicken coops so successfully.
ReplyDeleteDuring the day, though, hens have a lot of stuff to talk about. Some birds are more vocal than others--and some breeds are more vocal than others. When she is pre- and immediately post-egg, our hen Thirteen is really loud. She's a Barred Rock. The Swedish Flower Hens (the majority of our chickens) are chatty. The Orpingtons were quietest, but they both died in the Coyote Massacre of 2016, along with Chicken Twelve.
Roosters, OTOH, are loud and continual noisemakers, especially when there's more than one. Ours likes to escape confinement and crow under bedroom windows at ungodly hours--Monica suddenly became very diligent about penning up the rooster at night when he started crowing under HER window at 4:30am.
You feel about chicken noises the way I feel about neighborhood dogs! My guess is that the neighbors are not home at night, and leave their dogs out when they are gone, because one dog in particular can bark incessantly for hours. It's not the intense "emergency! emergency!" bark, but rather the rhythmic noise of a bored dog trying to be heard by his own people. My dogs are loud (SHELTIES BARK A LOT!) but they don't bark all day or all night. When we're gone, they are in their crates in the bedroom. When we're home, they hang out with us, and bark at specific stuff like the garbage truck.
omg back in west seattle next door was a dog like that, the HOURS of bored barking. the lady was a flight attendant and i actually was attended by her on a flight and told her i cannot sleep at night and she bought me a huge bouquet of flowers and locked the dog up from then on. maybe your neighbor is also a flight attendant.
ReplyDeletei'm grateful the chickens are quiet at night, and that the 4 roosters are gone, and their three dogs only start barking around 5 AM. but their teenaged son sits in front of his open window which faces our bedroom and cusses at his computer late into the night. i had to wear earplugs last night. our neighbors up the hill said, "What is going on down there with all the yelling?"
we have exactly ONE neighbor near us and they are the ones with chickens, 3 dogs, yelling teenager, and they play country music in their yard with no thought to our need for peace.
i seem to remember your barking shelties. lots to bark at on your street!
i know some think it's cruel but i have an e-collar for the donkey if she starts braying inordinately often. i don't wanna hear that, and i imagine the neighbors don't enjoy it. modern e-collars have a vibrate setting so it's like a cell phone in your pocket, uncomfortable but no pain. she shuts right up with that collar on.