Big Red continued to improve this week. By Saturday she was leaving the chicken coop and hanging out in the rose bushes (where the hens go during the hottest part of the day). By Monday she was going out to the far pasture with the rest of the hens. She loves going out there. The problem was she spends the whole day out there, and then she doesn’t have enough energy to get back to the coop.
In the afternoon, I walk outside with the bucket of scratch for the chickens, and they all come running. It’s pretty funny, watching seventeen chickens run from the other end of the farm. I feed them their scratch and clean their coops and gather their eggs. I normally close the gate to the far pasture at this point, since they're all in the coop yard. I do that so they’ll be close to home when the sun goes down.
But, Big Red can’t make that run for the scratch any more. So, for the past several days, I’ve had to go out to the pasture, pick her up, and carry her back to the coop yard.
She’s a Rhode Island Red. The only one we have of that variety. And yesterday I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere. Jan said we could look for her again after we fed the goats. We found her then. But, somehow Big Red seemed to have overdone it. She spent all of today sitting inside the chicken coop again. I took her some food and water, even gave her a tomato in the afternoon. But she’s not leaving her nesting box.
I became curious about the life spans of chickens. Of course, the shortest lived chickens are the ones who are bred for meat. They live about twelve weeks, although there are newer breeds that only live eight weeks.
The life span of egg laying chickens really depends on their breed. Plymouth Rocks are said to be the longest lived of all domesticated chickens, at ten to twelve years. Jersey Giants, on the other hand, only live five to six years. Rhode Island Reds are right in the middle of that span at seven to eight years.
So, our lovely girl is getting to the outer reaches of what we can expect for her. And she’s had a wonderful life. No one has ever told her what to do, she’s had friends, and vast areas to explore. She’s been safely shut inside her coop at sunset, and let out again at sunrise, and she’s gotten goat milk, and goat milk chevre, and good vegetable scraps. I hope she gets to run out to the far pasture one more time.
Meanwhile, look at this little guy who tried to come into the house and join us for dinner! I took him away and put him someplace where the dogs wouldn’t eat him. Jan said that if the dogs tried they’d spit him right back out. She’s seen it happen. Toads are not a good flavor for dogs.
And, of course, breeding season continues. Lulou came into season, and we took her back to Jordan’s pen. Sometimes it’s hard to take goats to a different pen, but Lulou nearly dragged us there, she was so eager to see Jordan. I think she was bred seconds after we shut the gate. We left her in there for a day, though. Partly because we wanted to put Ana in with Jordan, and Lulou is Ana’s mother. Lulou and Ana were happy to see each other, and hopefully Ana was more comfortable in Jordan’s pen with her mother there.
Lulou is back in the milkers’ pen now. No longer cranky.
Jordan’s pen, however, shares a fence with Leroy’s pen. Leroy and Jordan are both bucks, and when there are does around, they are driven to some pretty extravagant behaviors.
I think I talked last year about how bucks pee on their own faces in order to make themselves more attractive to the females. They also ram their heads into their common fence, yelling at the top of their lungs. Jordan has actually lost his voice. And poor Leroy! Jordan is his father. Lulou is his mother. Ana is his sister. But nothing trumps the insanity of hormones. Leroy isn’t eating, Jordan isn’t eating. They’re putting all their energy into posturing for the ladies.
Below is the fence between Leroy's pen and Jordan's. Leroy is on the left, butting the fence. Jordan is on the right, with Ana further to his right. He's keeping himself in between Ana and Leroy at all times.
We thought maybe Lezlie was in season, so we put her on the leash and walked her back to Leroy and Jordan’s pens. But, the bucks were completely uninterested in her, and she hardly even looked at them, so we took her right back home. If she had been in season, we would’ve let her go in with Leroy.
Meanwhile, Coco continues to visit the chickens every day. Coco is fascinated by them. Or, at least she’s drawn to helping them drink their goat milk (in the little silver dish inside the orange dish below). Coco weighed slightly over four pounds when we brought her home. She’s now over six pounds. Makes me think of that childrens’ novel “Harriet the Spy”, written by Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet’s dad asks her how much she weighs now. Harriet says, “Seventy Six pounds.” “Fat lady,” her dad says, “You tell ‘em, fat lady!”
