Tag Archives: Poultry

The 21st Century Through Mirror Sunglasses

Posted on May 28, 2012 by | 3 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

For six days this Australorp hen’s been sitting on a golf ball and two chalk eggs.  Every day I go out and rob the real eggs from under her, stroke her, talk to her, listen to her grumbles, whines, complaints, leaving that golf ball and the chalk eggs to give her something to hope for.

Highly-bred hens such as this one are somewhat similar to 21st Century human beings in some ways.  They’ve had almost all the instincts bred out of them in favor of, either producing a lot of chicken-meat in the least possible while, or producing as many eggs as their bodies allow.  Australorps hold the world record for the most eggs produced by a single hen during the span of a year.

The cost, from the perspective of the hen, is they’ve mostly lost the instincts required to cause them to go broody.  The instincts required to survive as a  species.  Same’s true of my Americauna hens.  Great layers, lousy instincts.

So I’m prone to have a warm place in my heart for a hen when she goes broody, even though I don’t need any more chickens, don’t want any chicks.  It’s the mawkish sentimentality in me, I reckons.  I feel a lot of sympathy and tenderness for a hen trying her best to hatch clutch of eggs, even if the eggs are chalk and golf balls.

I try to simulate a pair of mirror sunglasses when I go out to lift her off the latest eggs, hers and those the other hens try to sneak in under her to give the species another microscopic shot at survival.

Those imaginary mirror sunglasses mightn’t be necessary to me to get through these final decades of my life, but they certainly make it easier to watch what’s going on around me.  Human beings sitting on golf balls and chalk eggs, allowing instincts to creep briefly into their behaviors occasionally, probably won’t hatch.  But it appeals to my mawkish sentimentality side and there’s no harm in it.

At least no harm that would be neutralized by me not indulging. 

A creature pays his money and takes his chances this lifetime.  Even if the creature’s a hen and the eggs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. 

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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Cunning, Intelligence and Free Ranging Chickens

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 15 comments

I don’t think this applies to caged chickens, but my experience with caged birds is limited.  All I can actually tell you is that free ranging chickens are some of the most cunning, cagy, calculating, communist creatures on the planet.

A free ranging hen can calculate to the second how long it takes my eyes to narrow, my jaw to clamp, pause listening, and spring out of my chair when I’m trying to do something on the comp and I hear a chicken on the porch.

A free ranging hen can judge almost to the inch how far and hard a person can throw a rock with any accuracy.  A free ranging hen can predict almost exactly how far and how fast a 70 year old man can run swinging a stick before he gives out.

A free ranging hen is able to predict within a few seconds how long and how loud it can cackle and raise hell just outside the window before it needs to start dodging rocks or running into the bushes.

A free ranging chicken recognizes a slingshot and knows the difference between a slingshot stretched as an empty threat, and a slingshot with just about a bellyfull of chicken games.

A free ranging chicken usually won’t eat ants unless it thinks a person would rather it didn’t, in which case it will.  The whole flock will stand on a red ant bed pecking, so long as the ants aren’t carrying off their feed to the ant bed.

A free ranging chicken will ignore hard cat food scattered around on the ground away from the porch, but it will sneak around trying to find some on the porch everytime it thinks a person’s in the middle of something needs concentration.

I subscribe to the philosophy the reason the chicken crossed the road was for practice.  Training dodging cars.  And motivated by some human being not wanting it to cross the road.  Try to get a chicken to cross the road and it’s going to stay home cackling under the window or crapping on the porch.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Poultry, Solitude, Texas

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Dancing With Roosters

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you made a swing by here.  I’m going to do my best to give you something to have read by the time you leave if the Coincidence Coordinators and the commie phone line will sit still for it.

I’ve about decided I’m going to have peace and harmony around here, and I don’t care who I have to kill to do it.  The roosters are driving me nuts with their sneaky non-harmonizing ways.

The Great Speckled Bird surprised me by surviving the winter, feeling better most ways than he has in a longish time.  But more crippled up than ever.  Not much use of the one leg anymore, one wing weak or useless.  So when he falls, the usual ritual is to lie on his back waving his legs around.  Struggling for a shift in reality to get into a position where the one foot can get a hold on something.

But even so, he’s out there ranging with the hens, doing what roosters are supposed to do as often as he can see his way clear to do it and he can find a willing hen.

But meanwhile I keep my bachelor roosters penned most of the day.  Mainly because they’re of a mind that if I’m not looking it’s okay to open up a can of whoopass on TGSB.  They can knock him down and peck the bejesus out of him in less time than it takes to tell it.

But I’ve digressed.  I was going to tell you about dancing with roosters, which is the only way a person can establish harmonious society with them.  A rooster isn’t long on understanding the ways of a human being, but he does understand who’s the cock of the walk.  And if he doesn’t understand, or he forgets, he’s forever trying to reassure himself about whether he’s boss, or someone else is.

A rooster has two main dances.  One he does for the hens, which I’ll describe some other time, though it’s important to know how to do it so’s to keep him and the hens on their toes.  But the one used to communicate “I’m a contender,” and “You want some of this?  Come get it!” is an absolute necessity.

The last couple of days when the bachelor roosters and TGSB were out concurrently I’ve had to do a lot of dancing around stiff-legged, acting like I was pecking the ground watching them out of the corner of my eye and flapping my arms threateningly.  Reminding them if they want to mess with TGSB they’ve got to go through the bull-goose-looney to get there.

I think where I slipped up was when the warm weather started I quit wearing my red stocking cap they considered a comb, and forgot I’m a rooster too.  Got thinking they could each be a contender.

Old Jules

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

News from the Middle of Nowhere

October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Nature, Poultry, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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Sunday Morning Newsiness January 22, 2012

Posted on January 22, 2012 by | 15 comments

Sometimes you can’t help being a little embarrassed for Old Sol, showing off just because he has a captive audience.

http://spaceweather.com/

But you have to admit, even the Chinese can’t do fireworks to compete.  Some things just can’t be pulled off with the combination of cheap labor and US politicians dancing for multi-national corporations and banks.

Old Sol’s got his own cheap labor, I’m guessing.

And if he does they’re not forever counting themselves up to calculate whether they could march four abreast into the sea without wearing thin on the patience of everyone else.

I’m in the doghouse with all the cats this morning, but especially with Hydrox.  The invadercat came in just at dark last night while I was feeding the can of cat food to the four belongers.  Sat there 20-30 feet off the porch just watching.

Irked the bejesus out of Hydrox, especially, because I was taking its picture and talking to it instead of running it the hell off.  This morning Hydrox is being standoffish and treating me with a disdain I rarely see in him.

But you’ve got to admit that looks like a pretty good cat, though I’m not going to let it stay around here.  I don’t need any more cats and it’s well enough groomed to argue it has a home somewhere, anyway.

Hydrox and the other can relax, once they’ve punished me a while for causing them a momentary doubt about feline population projections for 2012.

I’ve mentioned guineas a number of times here, but I suspect some of you folks might never have seen one.  They’re difficult to photograph because they’re constantly moving faster than you can realize until you try snapping a pic of them.

They look a bit like a cross between a turkey vulture and a pheasant.  Most biologists believe the species leaked over here from a parallel universe and they’ve never quite managed to get a grip on this reality.

The biologists might be correct, but my personal theory is that they escaped from a Larry Niven novel, one of the Tales of Known Space from the 1970s and 1980s.  Likely as not they were developed by the race that created the Bandersnatchi.

But what the hell do I know?

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, Poultry

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Shame and a Confession About Inter-Species Sex

Posted on December 26, 2011 by | 13 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you came for a visit this morning.  In case you’re experiencing post-Christmas letdown this morning I’m going to indulge in a couple of guilt-ridden confessions to provide you a measuring stick so’s you’ll realize whatever troubles you have aren’t all that bad.

First I’m going to tell you something dawned on me about the Communist Americauna hen.  All my life I’ve known about clucks.  Everyone who’s ever been around chickens knows about them.  Every flock of any size has a cluck.

Farmers and town folks who’d lived on farms when I grew up had an expression, “Dumber than clucksh*t” as a means of describing me, frequently, and others of my ilk, and everyone knew the exact reference in the comparison.  A cluck is a chicken that’s crosswise with the world, with humanity, out-of-step with the flock. 

I raised these chickens around here except for the Great Speckled Bird, either from hatchery chicks, or from eggs hatched by brooding hens.  I’ve always taken a great deal of pride in the fact I don’t have any clucks.  My flock is comprised of all good chickens.

But over the past few weeks something sinister’s been creeping into my mind.  I’m being forced to acknowledge the Communist Americauna’s a cluck, right here in MY flock.  Always has been.

So if you think you have troubles, if you had a war with your relatives over Christmas, if you bankrupted yourself buying doodads, if your dad didn’t like the gloves or socks you gave him, forget it.  Forgive yourself.  At least you probably haven’t raised up a cluck and had it right there in your life all this time without knowing it.

But as if that weren’t bad enough:

Now the inter-species sex confession.  That silky rooster’s always been a source of amusement to me.  Back when I had silky hens he fathered the other bachelor rooster here and was always good to the hens when he could catch them.

But now the Communist Americauna’s moved in nights with the two bachelor roosters this one’s become odd-man-out.  His filial son got the Commie.  When I turn them out he’s spending his time lying constantly claiming he found something good but the Commie and other hens aren’t paying him any mind. 

The same people who used the word ‘cluck’ to describe me had another in their arsenal they used on me a little later, and it applies to this poor old rooster, too, same as it once did to me.  “Hornier than a three-peckered billy goat” crept into the language as I reached young-adulthood, and here it is again referring to this silky rooster.  I, at least, stuck to my own species and the opposite gender.

The guineas here came from the hatchery with a rooster chick for every four keets, the reason being guineas are braindead stupid and the only way they can learn to survive until they have a chance is having roosters to teach them the basic tricks like breathing, drinking water and eating.  All but two of those guineas got picked off by predators over time, but the two remaining still venerate the Great Speckled Bird and these two bachelors.  They listen to the rooster lies about what they’ve found and come running.  And when the roosters fight the guineas try to be peacemakers, interfering any way they can.

The other day I was outdoors and noticed the silky lying to the two guineas, which he’ll do, but then he started doing his rooster-dance and quicker than I can tell it spang mounted one of them.  And she cooperated.  An unsettling sight.

But then, somewhat later, Shiva the Cow Cat was down in the meadow digging one of her holes to relieve herself in when I saw the silky approach her, dance a couple of steps and he was on her so fast it took her a second to react.  She couldn’t believe what had happened, and neither could I.

Next thing I know he’ll be trying to mount my leg like some poodle dog.

So whatever problems you think you’ve got in your life this morning, console yourself.  It ain’t that bad, most likely.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Homesteading, Nature, Outdoors, Relationships, Solitude, Texas

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Suspending Habeus Corpus Here

Posted on December 16, 2011 by | 8 comments

This cold and moisture is taking a toll on The Great Speckled Bird:

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

News from the Middle of Nowhere

October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

Every night someone, coons, deer, hogs, break into Fortress #1 where I keep the two younger roosters and the Communist Americauna, the Commie because it’s the only where she’ll sleep, roosters because daytimes they want to beat hell out of TGSB.

Every morning I go out and repair it before releasing the roosters into the pen and the Commie hen to free range.  And by mid-day the two roosters have usually found a way out, by which time TGSB is usually in the other henhouse anyway, stove up and just wanting to rest.

If they don’t find a way out, I usually let them out mid-afternoon because I don’t care for the idea of anything being penned up all time.  It allows them to run free for a few hours before bedtime. 

But they’re still a potential threat to TGSB, and they’re a nuisance to get back into the pen, will never go in until the Commie hen re-enters to roost.

Today I’m pulling a page from the immediate, current activities of the US Congress and Whitehouse.  As of today I’m going to fix that pen so they can’t get out.  Period.  Until I take it into my head they’ve been there long enough so’s I feel good.

Suspending Habeus  Corpus, I am.   Indefinite detention for anyone strikes my fancy.  Maybe if I decide I don’t like one of the cats I’ll put him/her in there, too.

Remember where you heard it first.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Politics, Poultry, Solitude

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Muddy muddy muddy etcetera

Posted on December 13, 2011 by | 4 comments

You’ll be happy to know Old Sol’s finally getting things under control up there.

http://spaceweather.com/
 
That line of misbehaving sunspots that were marching across above the equator so long finally got its comeuppance.  Today there are only three honest-to-goodness ones and the litter of little peckerwoods just coming around the horizon. 
 
Astrophysicists aren’t in agreement about what was getting out of hand up there, but many now assert it might be mud and all this rain that finally got it under control.  There’s been so much rain lately every stick of firewood here’s been soaked, and even though cooling down Old Sol with wet firewood would be a big job of work, eventually it was bound to happen.  Probably the reason for this cold snap, too.
 
But the other line of thinking among Hopi Elders, surviving Mayan track-of-time keepers, and the folks at BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES POIDS ET MESURES, ORGANISATION INTERGOUVERNEMENTALE DE LA CONVENTION DU METRE, believe there’s a more novel reason that line of sunspots dwindled.  They couldn’t stay in step. 
 
Time, they assert, is so screwed up it’s impossible to keep anything going with any regularity and the sunspots finally just got too frustrated to keep trying.
 
There might be a lot to that.  I get the email reports from the Hawaii Konate folk, and the circular always starts off with the caveat:
 
“Coordinated Universal Time UTC and its local realizations UTC(k). Computed values of [UTC-UTC(k)]   and uncertainties valid for the period of this Circular. From 2009 January 1, 0h UTC, TAI-UTC = 34 s.”
 
Those uncertainties cover a lot of ground all over the planet and the people making a living trying to keep track of what time it is send out the Circular to advise interested parties of what time it wasn’t, mostly, any given day in cities of clockwatchers.  But even telling what time it wasn’t has a considerable uncertainty factor, which they aren’t ashamed to admit.
 
I don’t know why they even keep those people on the payroll if they can’t tell us what time it wasn’t.
 
I’m going to kick this around with the cats and chickens.  See if we can’t figure out a way to get a piece of the action on this timekeeping racket.
 
Old Jules
 

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Hawaii, Science

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Weird Thrift Store Haul

Posted on December 11, 2011 by | 18 comments

I don’t have a clue what this thing was originally intended to do.

Neither did the people running the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

I watched the value reflected in the price tag for about six weeks falling from the original $50 to $14.95. 

Every time I went in there I folded it, unfolded it, stood it up this way and that way, squinted at it trying to figure out what it was for, but seeing other possible uses the people who designed it never thought of.

This thing is a tough, expensive piece of work. 

It was evidently intended to lock something in, or out.

And clamp to something along one side.

Whatever it might have been, it’s about to become a part of something else.  I pointed out to the manager that it’s been there at least six weeks.

He picked it up and examined it every which way, same as I’d been doing.

“What do you suppose it is?”

“I figure it’s a way to block off the wind going through the chainlink door into my chicken house.  They just added a lot of extra parts.”

“Five bucks?”

“I’ll take it.”

“Bring me some eggs next time you come to town.”

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, Free-ranging-chickens, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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Blind Chickens, Talking Diamonds and Greedy Galaxies

Posted on December 4, 2011 by | 18 comments

I’m aware some of you readers keep chickens.  If you’re having problems with blindness among them you might be interested in joining http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_Ranging_Chickens/ where there’s an interesting discussion going on about the problem.  This was the beginning post for the thread:

Blind Rooster
Posted: Sat Dec 3, 2011 5:47 am (PST)
Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this. Monday afternoon, I noticed two hens on the wrong side of the fence, so went to retrieve them, and find the rest of their little band. Found all but one rooster. Couldn’t find him in any of the “regular” places, but they do have lots of room to roam. Figured I’d check again before bedtime, as he’s usually the first one in. Didn’t show up. Put everyone else in, and went hunting, for feathers if nothing else:(. Well, I found him by the fence, but inside. Just sitting there. He let me pick him up without protest, but he’s always been laid-back. Still, I knew something was wrong. Put him in a different coop, with shelves instead of bar roosts. The next day he was down on the floor, walking around, but bumping into the screening for the duck section, and sitting in corners/nests. Realized his vision was at least partially gone. Blocked him in, and started antibiotics, since I had no idea what else to do. That night he was back up on the shelf, so he must have some vision, I guess. Wasn’t eating or drinking that I could see, just walked over everything. Brought him into the Hospital Unit (a carrier in my bathrooom :). He began to drink, and finally eat. He crows (oh, swell) but his cue seems to be noise rather than light. Put him outside yesterday (in a big crate) afternoon for some sun, but he just sat there. Some of the other chickens did come scratch around him, but he seemed oblivious.
His eyes look odd, not whiteish, but the center (behind the cornea and inside the iris, where it should be black) looks “solid”, if that makes any sense.

Any thoughts?

Free_Ranging_Chickens@yahoogroups.com

Meanwhile, you readers involved in clandestine, extra-marital relationships might be well-advised to remove your diamond jewelry before checking into some seedy motel. 

In the quantum world, diamonds can communicate with each other

December 2, 2011 By Joel N. Shurkin

The vibrational states of two spatially separated, millimeter-sized diamonds are entangled at room temperature by scattering a pair of strong pump pulses (green). The generated motional entanglement is verified by observing nonclassical correlations in the inelastically scattered light. Credit: Dr. Lee and colleagues, Image Copyright Science|AAAS  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-quantum-world-diamonds.html

Elsewhere in the news, the 99% movement has suffered a disturbing setback with the discovery we live in a greedy galaxy, gobbling up smaller galaxies.  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-beast-tails.html

Barred Spiral Milky Way. Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA

The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighbouring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky.

Government and Wall Street Cray computers working on the problem tentatively estimate the 99 percenters are actually 0.000000000000001 percenters galaxy-wide.  Political and financial-industry hired-guns are working three shifts to prepare television documentaries and PR campaigns to assist in correcting the error.

In a related story, multi-national corporations and Wall Street banks have hired a team of astrophysicists and astronomers to study black holes in an effort to develop more thorough strategies and techniques to solidify and expand their holdings.  Additionally, the illustration on the right suggests black holes might also provide improved methods in the use of pepper-spray.

“An optical image of the sky showing the location of the black hole, Cygnus X-1. (Right) An artist’s conception of the black hole system, showing the black hole drawing material towards it from a massive, blue companion star. This material forms a disk and jets that emit radiation. Credit: Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

“Black holes are among the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity. A black hole is thought to be point-like in dimension, but it is surrounded by an imaginary surface, or “edge,” of finite size (its “event horizon”) within which anything that ventures becomes lost forever to the rest of the universe.”  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-black-hole-unmasked.html

The overall optimism derived from these stories was something I wanted to share with you readers to lift whatever waning spirits you might experiencing his crisp, rainy morning.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Politics, Poultry

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The Bullying Homestead Part 2

Posted on November 13, 2011 by | 15 comments

I want to do a post on human bullying, but yesterday and today I’m leading into it with more important issues, namely the way the creatures I observe every day interact and the shifting bullying behavior among them. 

I’m only going to skid across the surface of it, but I don’t want to digress and find myself up to my neck in human bullying issues without first briefly having laid the groundwork among the kinds of creatures people probably learned bullying from.  In this case, cats and chickens.

This is Tabby, daughter to Shiva, the Cow Cat.  Tabby’s the youngest cat around here, always reckless, always strong-willed and independent, always one to avoid conflict.  She’s always been demanding of attention and affectionate. 

But for the past month she’s suddenly become the bull-goose bully around here, beating the hell out of the older cats including her mother, Shiva.

This is Shiva the Cow Cat.  Mother to Tabby, probably hatched around 2000, wandered into proximity with me around 2002 as a stray.  Jeanne carried her to Kansas with her where she lived a few years and had a litter including Tabby.  Around 2005, she and Tabby drifted back into the mix in my life.

Shiva’s never wanted much attention, only a daily stroke and scratch behind the ears to acknowledge I knew she was around.  But her main joy in life was taking walks with me in the woods, sometimes accompanied by Tabby.  When there were cows on the place Shiva took a lot of pleasure helping me chase them off, sometimes almost getting underfoot of them in the process. 

But she was weakened a couple of years ago from some illness almost killed her and she’s never completely recovered.  Sometimes she’d still like to take woods walks, but Tabby’s put a stop to it, and generally with the walks with cats, by attacking her and driving her back to the cabin.  That ends the strolls for both of them.

This is Niaid, littermate to Hydrox, but without a contract.  The old friend who loaned her to me shortly after she was weaned was murdered a few years ago, so she’s in an awkwardly poor-relations status.  She’s part of a 1997 or 1998 litter, but she’s still the hunter/gatherer of the place.  Even travels through the woods up to Gale’s house as nearly as we can figure, to catch rodents in his chicken pen.  She was never a bully, but she could always take care of herself.  Now Tabby’s beating hell out of her, too.

This is Hydrox, littermate to Niaid, 1997-1998 vintage.  He used to have aspirations for being Top Cat, he and I both figuring he’d take over the boss-man job around here if I die before him.  But he’s sort of lost interest in all that the past year, become satisfied to just lie around and let things happen.  Aside from a daily hissing-swatting-spitting match with Niaid he doesn’t get involved in the social climbing and networking.  He’s the only one Tabby’s not bullying yet. 

As I explained yesterday, the chickens bully all the cats, though Tabby’s become more prone to put it to the test, locking eyes and playing out the last scene to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with them.  But she still backs off when someone has to.

Meanwhile almost all the deer have become a lot more aggressive, challenging both cat and chicken in standoffs they always win.  A cat sleeping out by the garden’s liable to find itself nose-to-nose with a deer, then shoved, then chased back to the cabin.  Or a chicken, deliberately knocked ass-over-appetite by a deer with a sudden urge to scurry off.

This is almost certainly a lot more information than you think you need to know about the animals around here, as well as the social life.  But I think some of it applies to how humans interact in human environments and I might use some of what goes on among these creatures as a platform for discussing human bullying patterns.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Human Behavior, Poultry, Texas

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