Chicks

Earlier in the year we got 12 chicks. The idea was that we’d keep them until they were grown, and then eat them.

It may not sound like the nicest thing, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather eat chicken that has been looked after properly, fed well, and allowed to free range all over the place, rather than supermarket chicken that has been kept in a small cage and injected with water to increase the size of the bird.

Horrible Dogs

The chicks were doing really well until one day when our neighbour forgot to shut the barn door and their dogs got in.

It wasn’t a very nice sight, but amazingly, three managed to survive by hiding behind a bale of hay.

We decided we weren’t going to eat the chickens after that, and so we revised the plans, deciding to keep them for eggs instead. Two of them were hens (Diva and Cher), and we had one cockerel (Sonny).

Cher is on the left, Sonny in the middle, Diva is the black one on the right, and those are some incredibly loud and annoying ducks in the background.

Anyway, the chickens were doing really well and they were slowly getting used to doing lots of free ranging amongst the other hens.

Horrible Dogs Return

However, a couple of months ago, as we were about to go out for a walk, we couldn’t find them. After looking around, we found feathers where it looked like Diva had been taken, a lot of Cher feathers in the hen house, and Sonny in one of the barns. It turned out that the terrier next door had gone on to kill Sonny and Cher. We found Diva hiding behind a wall in the hen house, alive, but not in great shape.

Sherry and I were both very upset and angry, to say the least. We didn’t want this to happen again so we decided to put up electric netting out the back so that our chickens (bantams + Diva) had space to run, without the fear of the dogs getting them.

This has been working really well.

Oh Dear

All of the chickens seemed to be getting on quite well. Diva had integrated with the bantams, and it seemed like things were all good. One morning I was sitting at my computer, Sherry was at the back door, when she said, “Oh no.”

I got up, ran to the door, and looked out.

Diva, our lovely hen, was on top of one of the red, egg-laying hens.

“Oh dear,” she said. “It looks like Diva is actually a Dave.”

Distraught and disturbed, I realised it was true.

We now have a cockerel called Dave.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Animals, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.