Have Made A New Friend

Today I want to tell the story that I put off yesterday.

My nice neighbors Jim and Linda had given my phone number to a friend of theirs and said she would be calling me about chickens. I tried to explain that I don't have any hens for sale. I keep all my hens and try to sell off the extra roosters so there isn't so much fussing in the yard. He said just talk to her. I said okay. Well she called on Thursday. I could understand everything she was saying but she did have a thick accent. I couldn't place it over the phone, but once I met her I knew it was German. Turns out she lives just a few minutes down the road on the main highway through here. I went up to visit her and her chickens to see what kind of set up she had and what she would have room for. She is just the nicest personable lady you could ever meet. She is in her seventies, but has more energy than a 25 year old. She keeps a garden, and she still had lettuce growing! Beautiful lettuce. Also brussel sprouts and collards. She covers the lettuce with blankets and sheets and the frost hasnt gotten them. She also has beautiful flower beds with sago palms, banana trees, roses and all kinds of flowers. She had been raking up pinestraw down by the road when I pulled up. She was packing it around the plants in the flower beds to keep them warm. I have to say, by the end of the day I felt like we had known each other all along. She is just that lovable.

Her husband had built her a nice set up, a chicken coop house. She has had predator problems in the past and it got most of her chickens and killed them, so she was rebuilding her flock. She needed, of all things a rooster for her hens. I say it like that because roosters are a dime a dozen.

I asked if she would like to just come on down to my house and pick out what she wanted. Something not too aggressive, but not too mild mannered either. A few of the hens she has are white leghorn hens and they were picking at the last rooster in there. She told her husband where she was going and we hopped in the truck and rode to my house. She was just blown away at all the chickens, all the animals in general. She was just amazed with the emus. I ran in the house and got some bread (I always keep clearance bread off the Walmart rack for such occasions) so she could feed them. She said she wished she had brought her camera with her! Speaking of which, getting to that, I am going there again today and will try to remember my camera so that I can show you all that I am talking of today.

She loved the white crested polish roos. I have too many of those so was happy to oblige. Then she saw the sultans. I pulled a rooster out of that pen, she instantly fell in love with him. The only problem is, Sultans don't have a mean bone in their body. It is easy to keep Sultan roosters together, they don't fight at all. In other words, they would be to laid back for her hens. We picked her out a white crested polish rooster and she instantly took to him, naming him Carl the Third.

Getting back to her house and putting Carl in, he took right to the new digs and his new ladies. He is a lucky man now. He has his own harem with no other roosters.

She also has a small portion of the house partitioned off because she has a cochin, that we are not sure, but believe it is a rooster. The other hens were picking on him something fierce so she had to seperate them. It is young enough that it is still hard to tell for sure if its a boy or a girl. Cochins for whatever reason don't seem to find their crow voice for a long time, and there was no spur growth yet, which there won't be for awhile. She said the white cochin seemed so lonely and wanted it to have a mate. Being as it had been beat up by the other hens I thought maybe it was a hen also. Sunday I brought the Sultan rooster to put in with the white cochin. The white cochin immediately grabbed a hold of the poor sultans crest and then flogged him! We got the sultan back out right away. It was obvious this was not going to work out. After seeing the white cochins behavior I was pretty sure it had to be a boy.

Today I am taking one of my young black cochin girls over to see if the white cochin will get along with her. I told her, if it is a rooster, he will be just fine alone. I have many roosters that cannot behave themselves so they live in solitude. If I was hardcore I would have these roosters for supper, but I just can't do it. I had to kill a chicken once, it was a mercy killing. I don't ever want to do it again if possible.

Anyway, we will see how todays pairing goes.

I did make a chicken diaper outfit! It needs some tweaking though. The first model is just a test run anyway. Shelby says it looks like a little pair of overalls...lol. It does, sort of. I will take a picture of the test model, and then when I make the final one I will take a picture of Phoenix wearing it.

Its getting late and I need to get a shower and get out of here. Errands to run, school to do, laundry and cleaning, feeding and watering. I hope everyone has a nice day today. I bet tomorrow there will be much cooking going on for the following day. :)