'Cause you've got chickenality; walk, chickenality, talk; chickenality, smile; chickenality...

In my last post, I mused that I should write about each of the girls' personalities, or chickenalities but, alas, I needed to pass Chemistry class and birth a baby before chickenality blogging became a priority. Well, guess what? Baby has a few more weeks of cookin' to do, and passing Chemistry became an a equation that looked less like,

H2O + HCl +hard work + time + studying = passing grade

and more like,

CO2 + Fe + hard work + time +studying + miraculous intervention by Chemistry Fairy = passing grade, maybe

The Chemistry Fairy was no where to be found this week, and so, I withdrew from the class. I'm a Chemistry drop-out. But the silver lining is that blogging about the chickens moved up in priority. That's right, folks: I have no life.

So, the girls. Let's start at the top with the chicken leader, Tallulah: the Benevolent Chicktator.

She is definitely viewed by the others as the leader of their little chicken gang. Fortunately, Tallulah doesn't seem to be a bully; thus, Hubby cleverly dubbed her the benevolent chicktator. She's often first to tread into dangerous territory: she's willing to scope out whether I've tossed them tasty kitchen scraps or a grenade, or whether the dog's tongue is an instrument of peace or aggression. She also leads the other two into the coop when it gets dark. I've seen her do this twice. She'll jump up on the ramp, cheep a bit, then walk into the coop. The other two then follow. Speaking of cheeping, she's the most vocal of the three. She doesn't really coo or cluck, it's more of a wobblely-tune she sings. I can't describe it. Anyway, I will confess that Tallulah is my favorite.

Next up is Sydney: the Hen Buddhist

Sydney is pretty laid-back and go with the flow. She seldom gets ruffled, literally or figuratively, and while she doesn't seem to love being picked up or held, she'll just go with it and hang out quietly if I do pick her up. She's not very vocal unless being vexed by the dog or Dixie, but neither is she shy. She just does her thing and doesn't make a big deal out of it. It must be all the meditation she does.

Finally, we have Dixie, who could use some Xanax and/or some Whiskey to calm herself


Dixie overreacts. Dixies overreactss to everything. Sydney budges her out of the way trying to get to the kitchen scraps? Dixie will start a fight. I open the door in the morning to let them out? Dixie flys out and runs circles in the yard, flapping her wings and clucking bloody murder. I toss a worm into the coop? Dixie runs screaming from where the dangerous, blood-thirsty worm landed. In particular, picking her up and holding her will set her off. She scratches and screeches LOUDLY until the whole unpleasant ordeal is over, and she is released from the tyranny of the humans. Buff Orpingtons are supposed to be calm and docile. Ours is anxious and neurotic. It's like having Woody Allen running around in your yard. Only Dixie isn't funny.

So that's the girls. Very different chickenalities. They are quite individual considering their humble dinosaur brains.

We have the smartest chickens EVER

Granted, even if we do have the smartest chickens ever, they still aren’t all that bright. Harvardchicks is, perhaps, a misnomer. Although, Hubby and I could make a donation to the college and get them in that way…oh, wait. We don’t have that kind of money.

Moving on. Why are the chickens the smartest ever? We had been told that we would have to train them to go into the coop (from the fenced-in run) at night. Tonight, we went out to do that (meaning we went out after dark prepared to herd them into the coop) and the three of them were already stacked their chicken pile in the coop. Chicken rockstars.

That they were out in the run all alone leads us to the question: how? Well, another rockstar (Hubby) finished the chicken fencing this weekend. I need to finish putting rock around the perimeter to prevent break-ins, and it will be totally finished. But in the meantime, Hubby’s excellent prison-like design ensures no chicken breakouts; thus, the girls can be out alone during the day. Sweet freedom!

They are getting hefty, especially Dixie. She’s particularly large after I pick her up, hold her for a bit and then put her back with her friends. She puffs her feathers and struts about indignantly, preening herself to remove the human filth from her feathers. She’s also getting bolder; she doesn’t run away from Beanie the dog anymore. Instead, she pecks Beanie’s nose/tongue/paws until she retreats a bit. Sassy chicken…which reminds me, I should write a post about each of the girl’s personality, or chickenality. It’s interesting (to me) how they differ one from another.

So writing about chickenalities. It’s on the to-do list. Right after pass Chemistry this summer session and birth a baby.

Never give up. Never surrender! (even if building a chicken coop takes more time than you ever dreamed it could)

Hubby hard at work. Notice the happy look on his face.

TA-DAH! Finished!

I'm sorry that I've not posted in a month; the time has been eaten up by poultry-housing responsibilities. In the past month, hubby and I have spent over 100 hours combined on the chicken coop. I swear, it felt like 'cooping' was all we ever did. I despised the coop by the time we were done. Thankfully?, Hubby’s stoic sense of suck-it-up and willingness to endure, if not cause, his suffering came in handy in getting this project done. In fact, dear Hubby took ten or so vacation days in June and spent at least half of them working on the coop. What a trooper.

Here's a recap of the last month:
1- the chickens got bigger and were booted from the baby's room onto the three-season back porch.
2- the chickens got to go outside in a small dog kennel and poke around in the grass.
3-our dog loves the chickens; our cats want to eat/maim/kill them.
3-Hubby finished the coop last weekend (yay!) but the fence is not yet done (boo!).
4-we have decided that we are never ever building animal housing again. Ever. Never. No way.
5- the chickens poop a lot. I mean, a LOT.

So indeed, the chickens got bigger; they turn seven weeks old next Monday. Currently, Dixie is in the lead. She's about the size of a small cantaloupe. Sydney and Tallulah are more large-mango size. (I receive emails about "your pregnancy this week"; each week, it uses some food to describe the baby's size. Grape tomato early on, avocado by week 17, last week she was a cabbage and this week she's a cauliflower. I can't wait until she's a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream...yummy baby.) They are all feathered out now; the ugly teenager stage was worst for Dixie. Cute, fluffy yellow down and more severe-looking, pointy tan-buff colored feathers don't mix well. If she was a person, looking at her you would have thought the poor, disheveled thing needed some help from social services. Tallulah and Sydney were a bit more graceful in their feathering out. Once everyone had her feathers, I decided that the stinky things could survive on the back porch. I moved them out of the baby's room two or three weeks ago. Since it was consistently in the 60s at night, I also took away their lightbulb. They seemed to be fine with that; they slept in a chick-pile to snuggle and stay warm. Usually, you'd only see two of them unless you startled the box; then the third one's head would pop up from underneath the other two.

Moving to the back porch also meant getting yard privileges. Like hardening off plants, I figured the chicks should be introduced to the outdoors before they permanently moved outside. For the past few weeks, while Hubby and I were outside 'cooping', I'd bring the girls out and lock them in a dog kennel that our dog outgrew (the humane society adoption staff swore up and down that there was "no way" our adorable pup would get so big as to outgrow that kennel...uh huh). Their first outing was interesting. Dixie just stood looking shell-shocked and didn't peck around at all. The other two peeped happily and ate a variety of grass, creeping Charlie and the occasional dried leaf. The dog also met the chickens that day and was quite exuberant in her greeting. Tail wagging, running circles around the kennel, the occasional 'woof', and then finally, plopping down next to the kennel--exhausted and panting--and licking any chicken derrière that got too close to the bars. That pretty much still describes the dog and chickens relationship, with the addition of the chicks pecking at her tongue when she does a Gene Simmons and extends her tongue as far into the kennel as she can. I really glad that Bean (the dog) likes the chickens. It's surprising that a bird-hunting breed would be so gregarious with feathered creatures but I'm not complaining. The cats are a different story. They are indoor cats and have only met the chicks once. Briefly. Their relationship is more like Syria-Lebanon. Crazy, (power) hungry cats stalking and threatening a relatively stable chicken state that makes good hummus and pita bread, or eggs in this case.

Beanie loves her chickens!

Speaking of predators, last week a skunk dug under our neighbors coop and killed one of her chickens. Poor Penny. Our neighbor heard a ruckus about 3 a.m. and got outside in time to save her other chicken and scare the skunk off. So predator deterrence is what we are currently trying to figure out with the fence. I'm not worried about the coop since it's up almost a foot off the ground; however, the fence is another story. I didn't bury wire when I put it in and am trying to decide if a 2-3" deep and 4-6" wide layer of landscape rock around the fence perimeter would be sufficient. Our house's previous owner loved her ferns and plunked them in a oh-so-natural-and-visually-stunning garden of landscape rock; I've been digging it up by the wheelbarrow-full but can't find a sucker to take it off our hands so I may as well find a use for it.

Once we felt the coop was secure, we moved the girls in. It was time. Sunday morning Rich went out to the porch to discover a mass breakout had occurred since I had left a few hours earlier. The cardboard box walls had been breached. It was chicken pandemonium. I was not home so Hubby was left with the task of recapturing the girls. I really wish I had been home because Hubby's exasperated description of trying to catch the little buggers made for a good visual image; I'm sure the live performance was that much better. Hubby was successful after 10 or so minutes and many failed attempts, and all was well by the time I returned home... with exception of the clean-up. Hubby generously left me the task of cleaning the many, many, many piles of chicken poop off the back porch carpet. The girls couldn't have been free for more than two hours but had pooped like they'd taken Metamucil after a month of constipation. Good grief.

So. That's been the last month. You are up to date in the lives of Tallulah, Dixie and Sydney. And since it is dark outside and they have, no doubt, fallen asleep, so should I. Happy evening, all! I promise the next update is less than a month away.

No, I'm not answering the chicken-phone or listening for the ocean. I'm triumphantly holding up Tallulah before flinging her into her new coop.