The pullet. She seems really sweet and friendly.
The cockeral with Silky. I wonder if she knows them. She seemed very interested, more so than to my birds. Maybe she'll bond with them. His type is a lot like the buff roo that died out in the yard last month...bigger and leggier. I was told he's pretty sweet too, except when it comes to his hen.
That's Poochy on the other side of the fence. There was much posturing and strutting on both sides of the fence. This will probably be a problem when I let these new birds out to free range, and the barred's larger size and seemingly extra testosterone worries me.
Yummm! Corn on the cob! The sweet lady who lives up the road from me brings me stuff. These days it's sweet corn from the farmer's market. It's more than I can eat so I give some to the birds. Shhh, don't tell her.
It's an odd situation. She sneaks up the drive and leaves it on my car hood. She always manages to do this when I'm not looking or I'd thank her and let her know I can't eat all she brings me. But I never catch her! For a 75 year old woman, she moves pretty fast! Whipper doesn't usually bark at people who come to the house so he doesn't alert me. I look out and it has magically appeared on my car. She often leaves magazines like Reader's Digest because a glitch in the subscription department sends her 2 copies. I do like those.
Chickens are apparently related to vultures. Wait, what? Back up to a few days ago. Until now, the white Japanese has been the underdog and outsider. He wasn't allowed to play in any chicken games. Suddenly something changed and he went after the alpha bird spot. He and Poochy got into it real bad, and Poochy was not holding his own. He came away covered in blood, which in the above pic has faded to yellow stains on his neck. I put Pooch in the pen to calm down and recover a bit in peace, and kicked the Jap out of the yard that evening. I wasn't having that, and I don't want him covering my hens anyways. I actually took him "up north" (back of the property by the woods), but he came back down the next day. He's currently living in the front yard. As long as he stays there, I'm ok with that. I set out a bowl of water for him, but he gets nothing else from me. Didn't take him long to discover the bird feeders in the front garden provide quite a bit.
The vulture reference? The cat left the remains of a rat in front of the porch yesterday morning. Gee thanks, Abby. I scooped it up and tossed it out into the front yard (the part where I don't go much). Sometimes she finds it and finishes it off. The Jap found it first. I looked out later and there he was picking at it. He spent quite a bit of time on it. Yeah, he was eating carrion! I saw him return to it throughout the day. Who knew?
It cooled off nicely for several days and rained a lot all that time. Now we're heading into another hot spell but so far not looking to be hot as it was. The rain sure did kick up the humidity!
tnt
