Chicken Dinner ?

After we evicted the chickens out of the pole barn we had 2 roosters that needed to be dealt with. First thing out of the Chicken lady's mouth "Rooster for Dinner?"  The look on my face was priceless as she headed for an ax.

She would tell me childhood stories of her mother breaking the necks of chickens. All those stories came flooding back to me in that instant. At that moment I thought, what does she want me to do?? I've lived up here all of my childhood life, but I live in the city and buy my chicken at the store. I was looking for a quick out like maybe could go rake the yard or pick up sticks.

Well, I wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought I would be. After this, I feel I'm ready for a zombie apocalypse. I can kill my own food if I had to.

Not sure if my readers are ready for a picture of a headless chicken but its true. The body still moves without the head attached. It didn't run or walk around but it was still very much active for a few minutes beyond decapitation.

She cleaned the birds in the kitchen sink and I get a question that I didn't  expect to hear. "Have you ever seen Chicken balls? Um, well no. Never crossed my mind to think about chicken balls.

Since we are learning things here, chickens have some pretty big balls. Ranks right up there with chicken earlobes and wondering if they have them.

I googled it and there's a lot of recipes out there for the balls delicacy. Well, the dogs enjoyed them and as enjoyed our chicken in a roasting bag.

Chickens Evicted

Chickens Evicted: I'm headed up to help the Chicken Lady with her chores. I normally go up every 3 or 4 weeks to help keep the property up, the woods at b...

Chickens Evicted

I'm headed up to help the Chicken Lady with her chores. I normally go up every 3 or 4 weeks to help keep the property up, the woods at bay, critters from creeping and wood to cut. I don't mind as it's peaceful and it's away from the rat race. I can take the time to smell the flowers and see the sunset.

I've mentioned before about how her chickens lay eggs in the strangest of places. For example, find eggs in the recycle bin, on the porch swing, in a milk crate or in a bucket.

If she doesn't find all the eggs they hatch and surprise, we have little fuzzy tennis balls with legs peeping showing up out of nowhere.

You read the story about Courage and why she lived in the pole barn.
Well, it turns out she was renting out the place to 13 more chickens, pooping on everything. It's like they were throwing parties at night tipping things over, pulling things off the rafters, jumping on things, and making really big messes.

Spring is here and we needed to reclaim the pole barn back to get work done.

At night, chickens like roost in high areas. It's 10 o'clock at night, we head to the barn to capture chickens. Armed with a flashlight and a fishing net. I wish I could have recorded it because the blood curling sounds were chilling. I did put the video on my phone and put it in  my pocket. It sounded more like a a massacre was taking place.

At first, I was nervous as chickens are really loud and flapping wings flapping. I'm not around this on a regular basis  but as we captured a couple it was getting fun and I wanted to run around like a kid chasing chickens. I understand the concept now.
She showed me how to grab and carry them by the feet. They get real quiet that way I guess they sort of go to sleep.

We put the 2 roosters in a cage (for another story) and put the hens out in the coop with the rest of the gang.  The next day we began to put the place back together from the panicked crazy chickens.

The Rooster or the Snapping Turtle?

One constant battle when you have chickens is the wildlife things it free snack time. The chicken lady has countless stories of coyote, fox, cougar , racoons opossums and even a wp;f. Now include a snapping Turtle. This isn't the actual picture of the one she found, but we wanted to show you that they are not nice and will eat anything it can get a hold of. Ask the Chicken Lady for her turtle stew recipe.

Here is a story right from the Chicken Lady herself. I went out to collect eggs from the chicken coop and noticed that one of the roosters was way back behind the coop by the fence. The rooster seemed really agitated s he was alone and walking back and forth in a semi circle. It looked strange so I went back there to see what was going on. To my surprise, he was not alone!

He had a snapping turtle about the size of a dinner plate against the fence. more than likely he was keeping the ladies away. I picked it up by the tail and threw it over the fence into the swamp. It must have been hibernating in my pond and now that the weather is getting warmer it came out and crawled up the hill. But it could not get through the fence to get out of the yard.

Who says that roosters don't watch out for their ladies!

Do you have "Courage"

Every story needs a personality. The Chicken Lady's "pets" are no different.  Like people, our furry or feathery friends have their own stories.

To show you that the Chicken Lady actually exists we capture the story of Courage.

Courage's mother was a small brown Bantam chicken that roosted in the apple tree at night. Because it's what chickens do. In late fall of 2014, she hatched out a nest of baby chicks under my porch. There were 7 of them and they were tiny. Then it snowed and she decided that they should all go up into the apple tree to sleep. But the babies were only a few days old. When it got dark she took them all through the snow to the apple tree. She flew up into the tree, but the babies could not fly. they were not even the size of a golf ball.

I was in bed and heard the babies peeping loudly, so I went out in my nightgown to see what was going on. There they were standing in snow that was deeper then they were tall. Mama was up in the tree calling them to come up with no success.

I put on my boots and started running around to catch them. Mind you, it's snowing and I'm in my nightgown. Unfortunately, 2 had already died from being cold and wet. I caught the remaining 5 and took them into the pole barn and put them in a cat carrier. Mama flew down, went into the barn and got in the carrier with her young and that started it all..

Mama and babies stayed in the barn all winter. The babies grew but never got very big. I think they lacked the sunshine to help them grow. They were about the size of a pigeon. They had never been out of the barn for the first 7 months of their life and have never seen the sun. When it warmed up, Mama started going back up in the tree. The babies still could not fly that high. They would stay under the tree until dark then all 5 went back into the barn to their bed in the cat carrier.

When summer finally arrived they would come out of the barn and walk around the yard with the other chickens, but at night they went back in. Courage never would go very far from the barn, she stayed by herself most of the time.

It turned out there were 3 boys & 2 girls. The boys remained very tiny and were only about 1/2 the size of a regular Bantam rooster, but they learned how to fly. By the fall of 2015 they could fly up to the rafters in the barn. All but Courage. She still slept in the cat carrier. She was the only one that grew to be white with speckles, all the others were dark.

One by one they started to fly up into the apple tree with Mama. Then Mama was gone. I think an owl got her. The young ones went back to the safety of the barn rafters. But in the spring when they came out again they started to sleep back in the apple tree with other chickens. One by one they disappeared. Hawks, Owls or whatever.

Courage had never gone to sleep in the tree and always stayed in the barn by herself. There is a foot problem with the breed of Bantam that she is. She has feathers on her ankles and grows calluses on her feet that cause her toes to get hard and sort of grow together with parts of them breaking off, making it hard to walk. Her nails get very long and I have to keep them trimmed and peel off the callus often. She has already lost part of one toe.

Josh my grandson named her Courage because she had the courage to survive alone after all her hardships.

Because I left the pole barn garage door open a little at the bottom for Courage, other chickens decided that was a good place to sleep too. The barn got the look like a chicken coop inside so, this spring all of the chickens that had taken up residence in the barn except for Courage were removed to chickens coops. But the first night after eviction from the barn they left the coops and all are now in the apple tree at night including Courage who has learned to fly up just like all the other chickens. I opened the barn door for her in the morning and she left it. She is now the first one to fly up into the tree every night.
More to come on the eviction story, stay tuned.

Duck Duck Goose

Now that Duckie the Goose is all grown up he is free to fly away. We don't know if Duckie is a boy or girl but he sure has taken up residence with the Chicken Lady. She has other domesticated geese but they don't want to have anything to do with him, so they ignore each other. He's free to do what he wishes but, I guess he figures that he doesn't need to wander far. He makes it a point to honk really loud if she is late opening the coop in the morning and at dusk, he waits for her half way up the path to the coop to walk her the rest of the way to close the door.

Not having any idea if Duckie the goose is a boy or girl I'm going to call it a he.

Afterall, Duckie was raised with the two hens, Custer and Brownie are all that he knows. Now that he's all grown up he's taken it upon himself to act more like a big brother. He makes sure they eat first, get the treats first and acts like a bouncer if any roosters get too close.

Custer, one of the hens jumped up on the porch swing and moved all the blankets around to make a nest. We had not seen any eggs from Custer or Brownie and were beginning to wonder if there were going to begin laying. She was making such a fuss, cackling, noises as she adjusted her nest. Duckie was all concerned with the noise and decided to stay on the porch close. Quite the comic relief to see a goose lose its cool with a squawking chicken looking for a place to lay an egg.

The reason the hen was even on the porch is because Michigan can have some cold weather. The chicken lady gets soft on her feathered friends and a couple chickens usually end up taking residence on the porch. They even have their own heated water dish plus it makes it easy to get eggs off the porch instead of the coop.