A Chicken Post

 

Yay for Fridays!!! It has been so long since I did a chicken post. My poor girls have laid all summer long. It is so hot in those nest boxes, I wish sometimes they wouldn't, it breaks my heart to see them working dutifully, panting because of the heat.

 

My little flock. They are such sweet girls. It has been cool enough in the mornings to take my hooking frame
and my current rug and sit on the porch and listen to them chatter and scratch. They all come up in the grass around my chair. I love the sound of their feet in the damp lawn and the sound of their beaks snapping off grass. I have one hen that comes and just stands and talks and talks. Her voice will even go up like she is asking questions. So I of course carry on conversations with her, until she gets every thing off of her chest.

I have one hen, I call her Jennifer. When I got new chickens I got one of those kind that I believe is an Asil breed. I thought I was getting two hens and one turned out to be this giant rooster. Since my rooster is a Silkie, I knew Mr. Asil was going to have to become someones dinner. My son and his wife took care of that for me. His hen though, has always been so wild. I have spent now two years trying to tame her. She remains alone. Hens will become friends with each other after a fashion. But not Jennifer. She remains alone and to her self. I was watching them the other day, and it is almost like she speaks a different kind of chicken language.

 

It breaks my heart. I don't know if it is the breed or her particular kind of personality of chicken. She is a good layer. She lays white eggs. With all of my brown egg layers, hers is always pristine. She is I think maybe my best layer too. I don't know if I would get that breed, just because she has never settled down. She also flies like a bird, and has flown out of the yard and spent the night out in the pasture, and I never even missed her until the next morning when I found her trying to get back in the coop. When I go out to feed and water she hides from me so that is why I never noticed she was gone. It just makes me sad though, because no matter how hard I try, I just can't reach her.

 

When I watch her, I always ponder how chickens are so much like people I have known. You have your friendly ones, and your shy ones. You have ones that would love to be your friend, but lack the courage to make the first move. But then there are people like Jennifer the hen. Who is afraid and unwilling to trust. Who seems to speak a different language and seems to not need any companionship.  Who run away, rather than stick around to see life from a different viewpoint. Chickens are good for sitting and being quiet. Listening and watching. I still think Fern from Charlotte's Web had it right. She sat on her stool in Mr. Zuckers farmyard, and learned every thing she maybe ever needed to know about life.

 

Have a lovely weekend.  Thank you for stopping in today and listening to me rattle on about my chickens.
When I have time to just visit with my hens, to me that is a perfect day. Not to mention, this is the last weekend in August. Come on September!!!

~Kim~

 

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web