Foxy and Feisty

Feisty’s a very pretty chicken. We had a good photo shoot before dusk:

If you catch them at the right angle, which isn’t hard to do, Silkie hens look like they have no eyes at all.

Foxy is irritable. Her chicks are at that stage where they ignore her until they need her, don’t pay attention, and want to stay up too late. I’ve still no idea how many days/weeks it takes for them to hit these chicken stages of development, like pants, reluctance to go to bed, independence, rooster hero worship, exploration/getting in trouble, and modeling on older chicks, but I recognize the stages in every set of chicks. They all go through them.

So Foxy is at the grumpy harassed mother stage. The hens have corresponding stages of development – different degrees of patience and concern and energy. It evolves from Take me! I will die before you get them! to Enh, I don’t even know them. Mmm, no, don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. And it’s mutual. Although chickens can remain bonded with their “friends” or siblings for life, the attachment to their mother seems to completely vanish in time, which is interesting.

I’ve left one chickery out and propped open as Foxy is conservative and likes to return to the chickery as home base.