The past few days have been a whirlwind of sustainable food sources, wayward chickens, and stupid non-farming dogs! It all started when I found some 1 year old Golden Sexlink chickens for sale in our local paper. I decided to buy six of them for eggs until my young flock starts their own egg production. Then it will be the best eggers win by staying out of the stew pot. Anyway this old woman we got them from also had a rooster, who she said was a little ornery, if his hens were messed with. We decided we would take him also to teach our little dog to stay away from the hens. The old woman was so happy to see him gone that she threw him in for free! Norseman and I kinda looked at each other and thought *crap* he must be really mean.
Norseman calming a hen by tucking her head under her wing.
Chicken hug!
This is our rooster named Braw. The idea came to me thanks to something my sister Britt always says.........Come at me Braw! I thought it would be funny to say it to him when he challenges me.
One of the girls.
It is very cool seeing our coop with chickens in it!
Hurry chicken!......Lay some eggs before Norseman eats you!
After taking all these cool pictures, we decided to introduce our dogs. First with started with Skathi our mild-mannered coyote dog, who was interested in trying to sniff them. Them we showed Saga, our old mother dog, and she could have cared less about chickens. Then came our (I should say my) little foo foo dog, who this whole time had been trying to get of her chain to get to the chickens. I decided to muzzle her before I let her go, I figured 1 or 2 whacks from our rooster would change her mind about being too eager. What a HUGE mistake!!! She came full speed at the chickens, every chicken we had jumped the fence to get away from her, including the rooster, he was the first to go. She chased 1 poor unlucky hen into the woods and then caught her bout 100 feet away from us. Norseman and I both went tearing into the woods after them. We came upon our dog slamming her muzzle into this chicken over and over, it was a very vicious attack. The hen was unhurt, thanks to the muzzle, but was completely freaked out. I am at a loss on how to correct this behavior, except by giving her away to a shelter. Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated, I have had her since she was a pup and will be very sad to give up.
Apparently when all hell broke loose, our coyote dog joined the fun of chasing chickens. She didn't hurt any of them, just chased them happily all over our woods. Norseman, baby girl and I then spent 2 hours chicken wrangling. Baby girl caught all the hens and Norseman and I chased that rooster for hours with no luck. In the afternoon we seen him again and gave chase with no luck, and then in the evening we seen him coming up the road and he jumped in our neighbors yard. Norseman again chased him all over hell, and even the neighbor joined in trying to cut him off with his four wheeler. Still no rooster :( The next morning, he was no where in sight, and we figured the coyotes got him. That afternoon we all got in the truck to drive to the city, and down the road a ways we came across a guy carrying the wayward rooster, looking for his owners! Our rooster was so pissed off at Norseman for chasing him that the first thing Braw did when he got close was pecked Norseman on the hand! :)
While playing chicken tag with the neighbor, Norseman was offered a couple of wild raspberry bushes, if he wanted to dig them up. So we went over to get a few and was told we could take the whole patch if we wanted. Our neighbor had transplanted what he wanted and planned on mowing the rest down. We of course took the whole patch!
Readying the ground for raspberries!
The 1st of 2 full truck loads.
Took all day transplanting.
They took up the whole back and one side of the fence.
Surprise! Chickens were also working hard.
Norseman has figured out the age old question, what came first?....the chicken or the egg?
After all our hard work, we treated ourselves to an ice cold beer :)
Also that day we had the kids school carnival. I think we cleaned up rather nicely, you would never know that we spent the day casing chickens and planting berries.
Angel :)
