When I have a moment and look out the window I play ‘spot-the-chicken’. I have one chicken who has seceded from the flock. She clearly cannot deal with climbing that social ladder of the pecking order, doesn’t want her feathers messed up by cranky turkeys or amorous roosters, and she wants to go to her personal roosting spot each night. She had been foraging more and more outside the chicken field until she finally started sleeping by herself in the spare coop. She eats what she finds and drinks from the stream.
I have to hand it to her, she knows her mind. Her chances of survival are decreased. No one is watching her back out there in the wilds of the garden. But she’ll live the life she wants for as long as she has it. I might name her Annie Oakley.
She doesn’t lay eggs anywhere I can find them but she also costs me nothing in feed so it was a wash. . . .that is, until she started destroying my freshly-straw-mulched cutting flower garden. Then I wanted to sell her.
But then my daughter pleaded her case and now I have to set up the 5″ x 5″ nylon pea and bean netting about 10″ above the ground and parallel to it. So, more labor for me but I still get to play ‘spot-the-chicken’. Kind of like Where’s Waldo for grownup farmers I guess!
