Roosting!

This is a 29 day old chick.



They reached another exciting milestone overnight...

They flew up to roost instead of sleeping tucked under their mother.  This means they are growing stronger.

They took up an important position -- right beside Simon.








Angelina took the opportunity to move her lot into the main chookhouse in the barrel Alice had vacated.  It really is a juggling act here at the moment with all the clucky hens, mothers, chicks, layers, roosters...


The number of cluckies grew by one today. Dottie decided to sit for the first time.  She has a secret hidden nest in the ivy.

I occasionally hear this excuse that people HAVE to use incubators because they want to keep a breed that is "non-broody" -- as though that is some excuse to be cruel and give them no opportunity to be raised by a mother.

Well here's proof that that is utter nonsense...

Dottie is a silver spangled hamburg a supposed "non-broody" breed and here she is sitting on eggs! Her sister goes broody, her mother goes broody... chances are her chicks will go broody.  So this proves it's not impossible to undo the damage done by breeders from generations past.

Serious chook breeders do other weird things that do not make sense and are not in the best interests of the chooks.  For example, I was reading about ways to stop your hen from laying -- strange I know but wait until you hear WHY they do it...

Because a hen that is laying is the wrong shape!  Imagine that -- if the hen is laying it will not attract high points in competition because it's body shape will be wrong?! Who in their right mind when determining the 'right shape' and setting the "Standard" for all breeders to try to emulate would be a shape that can only be achieved if the hen isn't laying?!

Another example is when you see ads saying 'tail feathers have been removed for breeding pruposes'.  So in an effort to make the chooks look pretty they have been selected and selected to the point that their tails prevent them from being able to breed without the feathers being removed!

These things are just as  crazy as breeding out the ability to sit and incubate eggs.

People used to dock the tails of certain dog breeds without giving it a thought or pausing to consider why -- it was just routine. Now that battery hens are frowned upon I wonder how long it will be until we go  astep further as a community and see machine incubation as a cruel and unnecessary practice.