The Days of Our Lives with The Combed and the Feathered
We definitely have a pet chicken now. She arrives at the camper early in the morning, shortly after the flock finishes their breakfast, and more or less stays all day. She stays under the camper when it rains, roams in the surrounding woods when it’s clear, and keeps an ear open for any comings and goings from the camper, upon which she will appear out of nowhere to lurk, staring up with her downturned beak/mouth perpetual chicken grimace. She happily eats of my hand, and if I put out a dirty pot or bowl, she’ll clean off any grains or vegetable remains (impressively well, considering she has no tongue), tapping out “chicken morse code”. We’ve deterred any other hens from hanging around our camper by chasing them back when they occasionally follow her out.
We’ve named her Friendly. The alternatives were Low Chicken and Baldy, because of her receding featherline. She’s bald to behind her ears because of being pecked on. Both options were rather unflattering so we went with some positive branding. She may be low, but she’s smart and independent. All the red full-size chickens are too look-alike to name, except for their feather patterns. There’s bald Friendly and Naked, the molter.
When her feathers return we’ll have no way of telling her apart. All of the chickens have unique saw-tooth patterns in their combs, but I am just not dedicated enough to memorize comb variations so they can have names. They only get dubbed according to their difference. There’s one with more white than the others (Whitetail), and for many days there was a chicken with one feather persistently sticking out at an angle (Wears One Feather Askew). Then three other chickens took up the fashion all at once and there was now more telling them apart.
Personally, I love the patter of chicken feet, but when all nine of them are hopefully shadowing my every move, back and forth, back and forth, it’s easy to feel mobbed. They curiously get in the thick of everything we’re doing, climbing in the trailer or on our tools and wood, or sampling the sawdust when we’re building. I can’t think of any good reason why eating (fresh, local, wildcrafted) sawdust would be bad for them, but it makes no sense why they want to eat it. Yet they do, enthusiastically.
H.W. gets upset with “them all crowded around, staring at me”, and threatens to throw his hat at them. His hat-throwing has made such an impression that he no longer has to throw headgear, just give it a cowboy swoosh over his head, and instantly the chickens turn as one and flee. Not the hat!!! Hilarious, and effective.
H.W. wants to put anklets on them some night. I know there are two hens that prefer to be on their own and hang out down along the driveway where it’s shady and kind of swampy. Often when I feed the flock an evening snack there’s only 7, including Friendly, and I always find two more lingering halfway down the driveway. There seem to be two that are always near the rooster.Updates:
Naked is growing feathers again, and just in time. It’s getting cold. She got worse before she got better, though, losing so many feathers she was just a mostly white fluffball of under-feathers, looking miserable on rainy days.
Naked regrowing, so fast! Good thing, it’s just in time. She’s been hanging around a lot lately with her shoulders around her ears, so it’s a good job her feathers are coming back. Now she is only Nearly Naked, and soon will be namelessly indistinguishable from the flock.