Not quite the bird I had in mind...

We have all seen it, the knight, high on his horse, holding a falcon on his gloved fist. Or the gentle lady holding the sissy equivalent of a hawk, something weighing in a bit lighter than a 4 pound hawk.
And wasn't the thought of having a hawk ride your hand entirely COOL?

Early on in life, flying a hawk got on my list of “things-to-do-before-I die”.
Growing up in Germany, every self respecting hill has a castle in various stages of dilapidation on it. It seems that every knightly family had at least one member hanging on long enough to former glory to keep part of the burg in good enough repair to be semi inhabitable. If you were to bet on the burg being a cafe today, you would win about 99% of the time. For the climb/drive up the mountain you are rewarded with coffee and cake or dinner and a view. Now, near to where I grew up, one of the burgs was that 1% exception. The burg had a falconry. You got shown the falcons and got the obligatory educational talk. But what you really were there for was to see the guy with the leather glove holding a hooded falcon. I couldn't wait to grow up and have one of those for my own arm.

I grew up. Other things took center stage.

And then one day that falcon holding item on my to do list had moved up to the top 10. I made my inquiries. And yes, there are places where they indulge your fantasies for a few hundred bucks and a long weekend. Almost immediately the flaw in the plan became apparent to me: you are supposed to HUNT with a falcon. Meaning, some hapless little critter that just happens to hop/fly in the wrong place at the wrong time is going to be dead. Thanks to yours truly indulging her fantasy.

Well, the list is long, life is getting short. Scratch that one off.

And then the miracle happened. Call it chicken intuition.
(I have to digress here. Widely I might add.)

You all know about my “retirement coop”, where good hens go to live out their days and die. When I first set this coop up I had no idea just how long chicken retirement lasts. I thought maybe a year so after the first two productive years. WRONG! How about 8 more? Not everybody makes it that far. The length of a chicken's life seems to be directly proportional to the amount they eat. The more, the longer. The skinny little Leghorns lay eggs for two years like crazy and keel over dead in year 3. But one of those nice heavy breeds, like a Partridge Rock, she saves her health and lays only now and then, eats a lot and lives to a ripe old age.

Back to first setting up the coop. In anticipation of early attrition I only put up a small hen house. Good for a half dozen hens, o.k. for a dozen. Well that was the first year. Next round, came time to move the “old” hens down and make room for the baby chicks, things got a little crowded. I get a dozen chicks about every other year, so do the math.
Fortunately in the middle of the coop sits a gnarly old Scrub Oak. Some of the better flyers of the flock would work their way up the branches of an evening and go to sleep in the Oak. This arrangement worked fine for year.

Enter the drought in the southwest and human encroachment on wild life turf.
About 10 years ago the first raccoon came to visit, a few years later a couple of Great Horned Owls moved in.

I went into the “better fence building” business.
In 6 not so easy steps, accounting for the learning curve:
1. The fence grew from 5 foot to 7 with the top two feet leaning outward.
2. I added an electric strand of wire about 3 feet up from the ground.
3. I added bird netting over the top
4. I attached the bird netting every 6 inches to the fence
5. I added industrial bird netting over the top
6. I lock the chickens up at night in the chicken house

Just in case you ever want to defend your chickens against predators, just go the whole route in one fell swoop. No sense doing it the way I did, on little hopeful step at a time, thinking this one surely will do the trick.

1. Had my friend weld outward bend extensions to the fence posts and added 2 feet of chicken wire. This went well for about a year.
2. I don't know how well the electric fence really worked. It scared me to death. That's for sure. And then one day a little Burrowing Owl had sat on it, touched the fence and fell off dead. Haven't run the fence since.
3. I bought a ton of bird netting and draped it over most of the coop. Keep in mind the Scrub Oak. It being about 8 foot tall and at the center of a 25x25 foot enclosure there is no neat way to drape tangly netting over it. Consequently there was an open spot at the very top of the tree. Which turned out to be the Achilles Heel.
I would wake up at night from a commotion out the back and race to the rescue. By the spray pattern of the chickens I could tell what had been after the chickens. If everybody was on the ground, an owl had swooped in on the tree roosting hens. If a hen or two had sailed out into the great wild yonder, something had worked its' way under the netting and was going to get a bite by climbing up into the oak.
This was not always a casualty free affair. Hence step #4
4. With twist wires I attached the netting every 6 inches to the fence. This will keep a raccoon at bay provided you go check the twist wires often. The rascals apparently are willing to spend a few nights undoing the twists until the hole gets big enough to slip in and get a meal.
5. It also turns out raccoons think nothing of tearing holes into regular bird netting. So I went out and bought industrial bird netting.
An athletic and helpful friend helped me do the draping of the netting. First I got a tarp and we shot it over the top of the Scrub oak. Then we pulled the netting over the tarp. Slip out the tarp, bingo, netting over a reluctant Oak.
The netting was a great idea, except.... the raccoon is apparently a high wire artist too. The beasty found out it could WALK on the netting.

So imagine the raccoon, set on dinner, climbs up the fence, launches himself about 8 feet with a little fancy footwork in the middle, and lands right on top of a sleeping chicken. He grabs the neck, end of chicken. And to top it off, he can't even take it home, she's under the net, he's on top.

Time for step 6: Lock everybody into the hen house at night.
And this is where we return to the story.

After the raccoon's trapeze act only about 3 chickens thought that sleeping in the tree was a good idea. Everybody else decided to head indoors at dark. Might I add, the house is lit till 10pm. So it's quite the place to be.

So after it is dark I venture out and check the Oak. One hen sits on a low branch, I grab her around the wings, and shove her into the coop. By this time hen number 2 has sailed to the ground voluntarily and heads indoors herself. Which brings us to number 3.



The reason for the story!

She's a brown and gold Araucana, and she likes to sleep up high. High enough to where I can not grab her. The first time I gently shoved my hand next to her feet and began to pry her toes away from the branch and onto my hand. She got the idea and rode my hand to the ground. Now we do this every night.



Flash back! Wasn't this what I was going to pay the big bucks for? Have a bird ride my hand?
Here I am, in the dark, in my house shoes, probably standing in chicken doo, in my back yard, no fancy lady, no knight hovering near, no entourage, no horse, but I GOT THE BIRD.

I'll be late, there's a chicken in my bed

Maybe you had to be there. Or better not. It wasn't funny at the time.
Remember the “mystery chicken” Well, this story is about a mystery chicken from the past. About 6 or 7 years ago. That year's mystery chick turned into a snow white hen. My ONLY snow white hen. Now I don't know if chickens see color, but they seem to be favor their own kind (I noticed, same colors stick together – how politically incorrect! ) So Miss Lilly-White was sort of an outcast. To give her more room and privacy I moved her from the laying coop to the retirement coop. (Yes, I have a retirement coop. Story to follow another time.) But she didn't seem to really fit in there either.
I have to go back a little in time, to explain the ever evolving Fort Knox of chicken coops.
Back then it still rained in Arizona, and we were not yet overrun by new residents who plastered the countryside with acres of housing cubicles. So wild life was still living in the wild, not pushed to live close to people. I didn't see a raccoon at my place until about 4 years ago. Hence, my retirement coop was not too well fortified. It had a 5 foot fence and was open to the sky. The coop is about 15 by 15 feet with one side being the fence between the chickens and the dogs (which reminds me of a whole other story : “Toss me that chicken, will you?”)
Now in the dog run right next to the chicken coop stands a large Pine. Miss Lilly-White discovered that it made a great place to sleep. Since I lock my dogs in after dark to avoid close encounters of the Skunk variety, the chicken in the tree was no problem. She loaded up into the tree at last light and came down at first dawn. I would stick my head out the back door, check that the chicken was no longer in the tree and then open the dog door.

Same routine every morning, ditto on this fateful day. The last thing before departing for work is always a turn around the back yard, check everything is the ways it should be. Passing the retirement coop I notice the lack of my glaringly white chicken. I look up in the tree, no chicken. OK, if she can fly into a tree, she can also sail off over the fence and be doing a walk-about on the back 40. I check all over, no chicken.

Did I ever mention that I see things. Like things that are about to happen before they do. OK, that sounds loony, but I have on a few occasions in my life seen something happen just shortly before it did. Not always, Thanks God! Anyways, I'm checking the back yard for Miss Lilly, and suddenly I remember seeing my dog Blanca, when I passed her on the way out, and she looked ANGELIC. The picture of innocence! If you knew Blanca, you would also know that neither of the afore mentioned qualities are part of her makeup. And at that moment I have a clear vision: the chicken on my bed!



I race into the house, run into the bedroom, and there atop my day cover is Blanca, happily de-feathering the chicken.

Oh boy! The chicken is a gonner, but I can't leave the place like that, I need to clean up before going to work. And besides, It will get real gross in a minute! I pick up the phone and try to compose a sentence that will make sense to a non-chicken-owning colleague. Something about some urgent maintenance chore or some such. Out comes: I'll be late, there's a chicken in my bed.

That having been cleared up, I take the chicken away from a very unhappy Blanca, shortly raising Rocky's hopes that I might plan to give it to him, and head down the hall, strewing feathers in my wake, to the cabinet where I keep my trash bags. Of course trash bags at my house come in the convenient roll of about 2000, which makes pealing off the first 500 or so a two-handed job. Giving the dogs a stern warning to not even dream about touching the bird, I put Miss Lilly on the floor, so to wrestle off a trash bag from the roll. And guess what!? She's not dead after all. With an ear spitting “gaaag” she takes wing, well sort of without feathers, and proceeds to race down the hall, two dogs and me in hot pursuit.

To end the story, I won the chicken race and the job to kill her. I got the job to remove four zillion feathers from the bedroom and my bedspread. Miss Lilly got the three-trash-can-lid-salute, and I felt my usual wretched self, for not having been a better protector of an animal put in my charge.

So of course time having passed, and all wounds having healed, and being someone who adores situational humor, I feel - this story needed telling.

The Mystery Chicken

Everybody loves a mystery. My hatchery, Murray McMurray has figured that out, and with every order of baby chicks they include THE FREE MYSTERY CHICK.

The chick is an unusual to rare breed, male or female. No clues given. Obviously no matter that the chicks you purchased are the reason for having chicks in the first place, the one that gets the most attention is, you guessed it, the mystery chick.

I have found myself many a times over the years sitting in the coop, studying the catalog, looking if I can find out what breed my little mystery is.

This year someone at the hatchery got carried away and added two little mysteries. Or maybe they had a bumper hatching of this breed, or maybe someone felt sorry for all the little roosters to be. Since most people buy their chicks sexed, there are a lot of little males with no home to go to. Unless they are lucky to become someones mystery.

Over the years my surprises have mostly been pleasant ones. First there was Pretty Boy Floyd, a Silver Spangled Hamburg. He, being my first mystery chick, and also my first rooster, had me a bit flustered at the beginning. How would I deal with an upety, mean rooster? As it turned out Pretty Boy was the sweetest soul alive. Never once in all his years did he even try to make a pass at me. And he also was very nice with his hens, always stepping back from the treats to allow them first choice. Pretty Boy Floyd lived a long and happy 8 or so years. I tend to loose track. Not that he didn't have some close calls. Floyd's spurs grew big, fast. They formed the perfect upward curve, remarkably like a hook. And hook they did. Many a time I found Floyd hanging by a spur upside down from a branch or the roost. I guess it's natures way to get rid of the old guys. Hang em, and that's that. But after the first couple of incidents I learned to check every morning that Pretty Boy had exited his night's sleeping spot in an upright position.

Eventually the spurs grew to a perfect circle biting into Floyd's legs. This called for the hacksaw. I read up on the web to see if sawing off a spur could be done. Not much information there. But it had to be done, so we went at it. Armed with a fresh hacksaw blade, peroxide, and some trepidation, it went remarkably well, and I have the trophy spurs sitting on my mantle. Along with some seashells and other odds and ends such as mesquite beans. Maybe not your usual decoration.

While Floyd was still young, mystery chick number 2 arrived with the next batch of chicks. This one also was a rooster. The kind of rooster I had expected the first time around. In short order he was called the Pitbull Rooster. And I have know nicer pitbulls. The minute I turned my rear to the sweetheart, he was on the attack. One of my rules in life is that I will knock myself out for you if you are nice. Give me grief, and it's bye-bye. With the County Fair imminent in the first fall of the Pitbull's life, I saw my opportunity to part company. This rooster being a Light Brahma was a bit on the humongous side. With his welding gloves and a jacket for protection my friend muscled the rooster into a cage made from to milk crates strapped together. Once we got to the fair the transfer was held up by the fact that a large enough cage had to be procured. Maybe the rooster was not the nicest animal you ever met, but he still deserved to be able to stand upright for the duration of the fair. My parting gift was a nice little sign on the cage: FREE ROOSTER. And wouldn't you know, the boy won first prize! A very happy (I don't know why) 4-H Kid took home the prize winning Meany.

Now looking at this year's two mystery chicks, I have visions of a repeat performance. Fuzzy feet, white feathers with black trim. I DO hope they are hens! I really don't want to enter them into the fair again.

After the Pitbull came a lovely white hen. Sweet as can be. But no one liked her. Too different? She just was never one of the crowd. But her short live made for a heck of a story to tell. Watch out for: “I'll be late, there's a chicken in my bed”.

In the following years there came a few unremarkable hens. They blended in, some are still with me, some have died from old age.

Then came Luke. Luke Skywalker with the long, long legs. Luke is a Partridge Rock. Big heave dude with a nice disposition toward me. A bit bossy with the hens at a younger age. But that has gone by. Those long legs turned out to be his nemesis. They don't hold up his big body too well anymore. So Rudy sits a lot these days. He hasn't gotten lucky in ages, since he's so easily outrun, even by the oldest of hens. Not that he's not trying. He lingers next to the little door of the coop in the mornings hoping to catch a hen as she sleepily ducks out into the light. But hens are not that dumb either. They know he's there and dash right past him. He also tries the old clucking “looky here... something special to eat” routine. Then hopes to catch a hen engrossed in looking for that special morsel, unprepared for escape. But even for that he's too slow,or too obvious. Gotta be a chicken to know which.

Next came Rudy. Rudy was a huge Rhode Island Red rooster. Not a very special chicken at all, except for his meanness. Within the shortest time he had to move to separate cage while I was lining up a new home for him. Not even the hens seemed especially heart broken to see him go. Unfortunately a raccoon discovered Rudy's' cage and went to work one night. Raccoons see nothing wrong with keeping their food fresh. No need to kill, just chew a little. So I had to send Rudy to chicken heaven or wherever they take mean roosters with a chewed up legs. He didn't deserve this fate. A cook pot yes, but not a raccoon. I learned from that and if I have to cage someone, the cage goes inside the chicken run, to be protected.

So back to this year's Mystery Chicks. At first the chicks looked like White or Blue Cochins. However, they are now developing to be mostly white with some of the feathers being laced black. They are going to be Light Brahmas, like it or not. Now I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for hens. Or maybe at least one hen. Or maybe the Pitbull was an exception, and this is really an nice breed. Or maybe I just get lucky.

Excuuuse me! I'm not dead, this is how I sleep!

Day 27 in a Chicken's Life - The Punk Stage

The punk stage, no longer a cute fluffball anymore.

Yes, I was born yesterday.

Born on February 4th, 2007

The long awaited baby chicks arrived from the hatchery.

25 little Peepers, a mix of brown egg layers.

15 will stay with me, the rest go to a friend with a deluxe chicken coup.
(we are talking heated water fountain here - not the carry-out buckets of warm water provided by your truly at 0-dark-hundred hours in the morning)