I once had a chicken with a small injury on its tail. I caught it, doctored it, then made a terrible mistake. I released it back into the large coop with the 15 or so other birds.
The next day the chicken was in a corner of the pen, alive, but barely. Its tail feathers and many on its back were gone and the small injury was now a gaping wound.
I stared in disbelief as one by one the other chickens went by and pecked the wounded bird. As if its spirit had been broken in 24 hours, it sat facing the corner of the pen cowering down in a defensive posture.
It didn’t even move when pecked, except when it winced in pain when another chicken hit the wound directly.
I did what I should have done the day before and separated it in a small protected pen, but it was to late, the chicken died shortly afterwards. Continue reading There Go I→
A quiet young man at work calls himself a “city boy” by birth, but is becoming more “countrified” every day. He bought a small chicken coop and put it in his backyard several months ago so he could have “fresh eggs”.
He lives slap dab in the middle of town and the four Rhode Island Red chicks he bought turned out to be roosters. Roosters don’t lay eggs, so in quiet frustration, he told me he was starting over this weekend with four pullet chicks from another distributor.
The roosters?
“Well”, sounding more like a tired old farmer than a young city guy learning the basics, “I think I’m gonna have some fresh grilled chicken.”
Have you slaughtered chickens before?
“Well, no. But I went dove hunting once, and it’s probably about the same.” He hadn’t decided if he was going to chop off their heads or wring their necks. I smiled at his conundrum, and a brain wrinkled memory flashed back.
Stories about family, faith, friends and funnies. Pull up a chair. Grab a cup of coffee and laugh, cry, ponder and inspire about ordinary events of this wonderful, ever changing, bubbling pot that we call "every day life".
RabBits 