September 22, 2010
Nothing very eventful lately, except that Raven laid her fifth egg yesterday and this morning, laid a sixth egg, so the first time she has laid back to back versus skipping a day. Goldie did the same when she started laying, laid a bit sporadically and then laid daily. I wonder if Raven will now lay daily and then go broody like Goldie? I hope not because I don’t want her to get picked on too. Goldie has never recovered her former spot in the pecking order and is now subject to pecking from the larger hens and doesn’t get her choice of the food as well. So strange, the behavior of these birds. Do they attack based on perceived weakness or do they attack on non-conformity (i.e. Goldie stopped sleeping in the coop and slept on the nest) ? Hard to tell.
I was hoping by now that the standards would start laying, but maybe they were not as old as he told me they were. Ellie was showing interest in the nests for awhile but hasn’t lately. The only one showing interest is Farrah and her interest consists of eating the wood shavings, nothing more. Farrah has become a bit of a bully, perhaps making up for when she was the lowest girl on the totem pole. The other day, I found a different type of weed in the yard, a small shrub with black colored berries on it, not a polk or a blackberry plant, but something else. I put it in the run and they happily stripped it of all it’s berries both black and green.
Also noticed that something may have tried to dig it’s way into the run. In the front of the run, there was a small indentation where something had obviously been digging. Must not have been a very large animal or perhaps it was scared away mid-process because it didn’t get very far. Still, not a nice thought thinking something is trying to get them. I’ll have to start a daily walk around the run to look for weak spots and digging activity. Bob said most animals are not smart enough to start digging at the wire and then keeping going backwards to figure out where the wire ends, however, this animal started right where the wire ended, so I’m not sure about his theory...I’ll have to hope for the best. I sat up last night thinking of ways to electrify all around the run....ugh, not something I really want to do. Brian asked me last night, “You really do love them don’t you?” I said, “Yes, they are my pets now. I never thought I would like chickens so much, but they are fascinating creatures.” I think he is starting to understand that they have and are helping me through a rough spot in my life and that their existence on this earth has a merit of it’s own.
You know, it is interesting that when Goldie first started laying, Raven was very aware of it and gave Goldie moral support, but since Raven has started laying, it’s as if Goldie is oblivious to it and has not appeared to offer the same concern. Raven is a nervous Nellie too, she frets constantly, talks constantly and runs the length of the fencing and makes a circular run underneath the nesting area, then hops on a cinderblock, then onto the wooden platform, then onto a nesting box, then into the upper nesting box and will repeat the circuit several times. I don’t know if this means she has superior intelligence (I’d like to think so since she has always been my favorite), or if she is just mental. The only other one that does anything even remotely similar is Ellie who will chase squirrels down the length of the run.
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