SWAP!!!!!!

I went to a swap out at Gillmanor Farms this weekend. 

My friends Connie and Dave went too--Connie in the role of "sponsor"--as in AA--only this was CA (Chickens Anonymous). Bea went too--another chickaholic. Bea got up extra early so she could go (she's a farmer and gets up at the crap of dawn anyhow but for a swap she got up waaaay before dawn even thought of crapping). I wanted one baby Silkie. I came home with a Silkie, a Mille Fleur and a buff Cochin. Bea got an Indian Game hen--very old breed--a Langshan, three Spangled Hamburgs, and two Muscovy ducks and had ten dollars left over for breakfast. Dave said he was buying breakfast so Bea went back and got two Rhoad Island Red pullets. She WINS!

Connie failed in her role as sponsor. She not only took the alcoholics to the liquor store but helped pick out the liquor, pay for it and carry the bottles to the car. 

If you look at the picture, Sam is in front (she's the Silkie), Millie is the little speckled girl--she's a Millie Fleur d'Uccle, and Buffy is a buff Cochin. This morning they got their little feathered feet washed and any poopy feathers trimmed off. They'll be in the brooder box till they get used to me and I'm sure they're healthy then they get to meet the other gurls and find their place in the pecking order.

Sam is Sam cause I told the guy I got her from I had to have a hen--NO roosters ABSOLUTELY! So I got the teeniest of the hatch and we scrutinized the rest of the bunch, declared her female, said a prayer to the god of chickens and tucked her in my jacket for the trip back to the car, Passed a grarley old lady who said "need a rooster?" I told her I couldn't have roosters and I hoped my baby wasn't one and she said " well, you just hold em up by the scruff here and if they flap their feet all around, you got a rooster and if them feet just hang, you got yurself a hen." So she grabs my baby by the scruff of the neck and those feet go crazy and I'm really disgusted cause I just KNEW she was a she. Then I asked her how she held her up so I could go back and make sure I got a hen and she picked my baby up and those feet hung like a couple of wet noodles. We said we'd settle for a hermaphrodite and named her Sam.

If you're wondering what the heck a swap is, it's sorta like a big yard sale only with animals

Addendum: Sam is a rooster. I can get him neutered for $1,500. NOT! Wonder if Estrogen therapy would keep him from crowing. Sure is a cute little bugger.

Um--Buffy is a rooster too. Both of the boys crow. Rats!

Out on the farm

My face is sunburned and my farmer's burn will be a farmer's tan in a week. I put the boys in bins for a trip to the farm about 11:30. Got home after 9. My sweet roosters live on the farm now. They can crow all they want but their days in the luxury of the poultry palace are gone. This winter there will be no heat lamps for the boys, and while I put up some screens to block the worst of the sun, no fans. Still they will live a decent chicken life and I can visit them whenever I want to. 

I have very good friends but Bea is an exceptional friend. A very good friend will take you to pick up your car or help paint your house. An exceptional friend will take your roosters. Phyllis is now Dr Phil and has three little hens and a bunch of wild turkeys sharing the same enclosure. They were hatched from eggs that were almost crushed by a hay bailer. They seem to calm right down when Dr. Phil walks around with them. Goldie has his own three hens in the turkeys old enclosure. He's still a sweet guy who sits on my shoulder and pecks around at my feet when I go to visit. 

 So we were going to do afternoon feed and go to the ol Hickory Notch for dinner but on the road back to the highway we met some folks wondering if Bea was missing a bull. She was. You know bulls are BIG--and Black Angus bulls are VERY BIG. Seems Romeo went to see what was on the other side of the fence. Took a bunch of folks and the rest of the afternoon to get Romeo contained so he wouldn't wander onto the highway or somewhere he wasn't welcomed.

An animal who doesn't know most of the people running after it isn't likely to cooperate. After Bea chased him through the woods for a mile or so, Romeo was corralled with a bunch of cows on a lady's property up a narrow dirt road. One neighbor went to get the truck to haul the trailer. One neighbor stayed with Romeo to make sure he stayed put. We went back to get the trailer and some fencing that Bea keeps around her truck to keep the goat off.  With all of us folks Romeo didn't know waving sticks on the perimeter, Bea herded Romeo through a makeshift chute made from that fencing into the trailer. How the neighbor got that huge trailer up that road bordered on miraculous. He did tho and got it turned around so that one VERY big, VERY hot, VERY thirsty bull loaded up safe and sound. He was happy enough to drink gallons of water and munch on the hay we tossed in for him while I kept Bea company checking out the fence line just at dusk--didn't want the other 26 cows to go walkabout. All cows safe and accounted for and the gate to the back pasture shut. Romeo spent the night in the trailer and first thing next morning with the help of a neighbor--the neighbor who drove the trailer, he got where he belonged.

Romeo's happy to be back home. Bea was covered with seed ticks--she was the one chasing through the woods and in the tall grass. A week later her ankles are pretty much healed up. The gate is still shut since she hasn't had time to walk the fence line in the back pasture. She also said one of the neighbors--the neighbor who followed the bull and stayed with him while everybody else went to get the trailer-- had a heart attack on Labor Day. She took a card up to his house--you know--a "thinking of you" card-- but the lady that answered the door said he'd died.  

Gimpy-one-leg

Nature's pretty amazing. Gimpy was one of six peeps I ordered online from a place called My Pet Chicken. She was broken--her leg mangled--don't know how, but My Pet Chicken managed to screw up half my order and poor Gimpy was one of the screw-ups.

Gimpy shouldn't have lived. She was hurt, she was tiny, she was on the bottom rung of the pecking order. Everybody in my little flock stepped on Gimpy--or pecked at her bad leg--that stuck out at a not at all natural angle. When she wasn't being picked on she was left behind. In the chicken world that's worse. Birds that get left behind die. Rough start for a little puff of feathers that didn't register on a postage meter. 

Then Ma Nature stepped in and durned if Gimpy didn't beat the odds. The bad leg fell off--or was pulled off by one of the other chickens--and as soon as that dead weight wasn't there any more, Gimpy began to thrive. Three months later the Gimp flutters after the other girls, wings flapping, gimp leg skimming the ground--a ball of determined chickenhood. She can't scratch, but she can poke for goodies with her hawk beak. She has to work three times as hard to get half as far. She's tiny and still peeps. Who knows if she'll ever cluck like a proper chicken--or lay an egg. I'm guessing yes. I trust Gimpy to beat the odds again.