Lesson 478 – Some of the pitfalls of owning chickens

First of all Charlie is doing better and better each day. I’ll post a picture of her feet (along with some pictures of her growth) tomorrow.

But first I want to talk about some of the pitfalls of owning chickens.

The Northeastern Poultry Congress was all about fowl. It was about selling birds and judging them. No admission was charged.

So when you go to one of these things, the considerate thing to do is to at least buy tickets to the Chinese lottery (you buy 20 tickets for 5 dollars and drop your tickets into the bags hanging in front of the items you’d like to win.) It’s a way for them to raise money. You win, they win, we all win.

We have a very winning family. So much so, that my kids are actually disappointed when we don’t win something, not because we didn’t get the item but because we didn’t WIN. (Hey once, we even won 2114 jelly beans.)

One of our strategies during lotteries like this is to drop tickets into the bags with the fewest tickets. You get a better chance of winning, right? (I justify this by claiming it’s a lesson in probabilities for my kids.) It doesn’t matter what the object is, we say, it’s the odds that we are playing.

At 3:00 when they started calling out the results of the lottery, who was the first person to win something?

Me.

This is what I won.

Lesson 466 – Blanche the Bumpy Chicken

Today’s lovely chicken object comes from Marc’s mother: Phyllis who has seen our chickens and has heard all the stories (many times over, I’m afraid.)

This little beauty came with the following card:

Blanche has never been one to blend in with the rest of the hen house.

She’s one funky chicken who dances to the beat of her own drum.

Her prickly spikes and purple feathers makes this hip chick one of a kind.

Her proper name is “Blanche the Bumpy Chicken” (which I think may be a poor translation of some French phrase) after we passed her around on Christmas morning, however, my kids (the older ones who are home from college and those who have seen youtube documentaries) have instead renamed her –

Blanche – the LSD Chicken.

I’ve heard back from the Police department, I’ll have an update on the rooster harvest story tomorrow and will let you know what we are and are not allowed to do with out chickens in our mid-sized (live free or die) New Hampshire town.

Lesson 465 – Gnarled inspiration

Guess what? When you have chickens and write about them it makes getting gifts for you very easy. I’ll be showing you some of the most incredible chicken items ever that I was fortunate enough to receive this holiday season.

The first item comes from a very good chicken friend Lauren Scheuer. Lauren is an illustrator who specializes in kids’ books, games and puzzles. She’s done a whole slew of books for American Girl, and her clients include Boston Museum of Science and Roger Williams Zoo. On her blog she draws some of the most amazing pictures of her flock (which includes 7 chickens and one small white dog.)

My favorite by far is Lucy (I know, I know, I don’t really have a favorite, I love them all) Lucy is a special needs chicken, a survivor of Marek’s disease (a tumor producing virus) and she has the most beautiful feather display.

Here is a picture of Pigeon (who was rescued from a cage) with Lucy. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Pigeon and Lucy Photo credit: Lauren Scheuer

And just look at what I opened up on Christmas morning –

Lesson 396 – The power of one chick

We’ve had a lot of rain up here in New Hampshire (we’re just starting to see some glimpses of sun this afternoon). Rain makes for wet ground and chickens don’t necessarily like getting their feet damp. They’ll try to get up high away from it all, When it rains, you’ll always catch most of the birds roosting on whatever they can find, as long as it’s not on the ground.

That includes our littles.

Here is a picture of one of the babies roosting.

brilliant chick

What you don’t see but what is truly amazing is that this particular roost is about 3 feet off the ground. At some point this little bird had to make the decision to fly up to a skinny stick way, way, way over her head so that she could sit on it to keep dry from the puddles gathering below. The very first time she tried must have been incredibly frightening. But she did it anyway.

That’s some leap of faith.

Lesson 332 – a good day

God it’s hot and muggy. We had a passing thunderstorm last night that only seemed call all the mosquitoes from their hiding places wake up, it’s dinnertime!

The floor is sticky, my chair is sticky, the keyboard keys cling to my fingers longer than they should.

Addy forgot to take her money in for a French cheese party at school, Emma got frightened when I tried to point out a deer in our yard thinking that perhaps instead I was warning her about a possibly rabid raccoon that had been spotted in our neighborhood – she had to take large gulps in order to slow her heartbeat down, and Griffin took the last of a large bag of grapes as his lunch – enough food, he thinks to sustain an 18 year old for the duration of the day.

Sigh.

But then I go out to the coop, and this is how I am greeted:

(click on the photo to get the full effect)

My peeps are happy to see me, they cluck, they chortle, they race over to get closer making me feel like the rock star I am capable of being.

Today’s gonna be a good, good, day.