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Lately I have seen the darker side of raising chickens at the paws of chicken thieves but tonight as I put the remaining chicks to bed I realized that I could still smile and be thankful they are in our lives. They are truly each unique little people which actually makes the loss of them even more difficult but it also makes it more rewarding. We have one tiny bantam Rooster named Coffee (his hens are Cookie, Bisquit, Cupcake and Sweetie Pie can you tell my children love food?) who for some reason we can not understand does not like flapping clothes. I wear long dresses quite often and each time he encounters me in the yard he attacks. Thankfully because he is a tiny 22oz rooster this is more funny than bothersome. But to tell the truth he does scare the dickens out of me if I have my mind on other things and forget he is around,. Just this morning as I watered my earth boxes he snuck up on me and attacked my ankles yet again, well he got the hose full force in his little rooster face this morning. The kids who were watching from the back porch got a big kick out of the morning's entertainment. For the remainder of the day Coffee found better places to be when I was in the yard. As for the other chickens, well we have come to discover that the youngest of our poultry crew are afraid of the dark. We first discovered this while closing them in for the evening about a week ago. It was close to 8 o'clock and the rest of our chickens had already been tucked up their roosts for over an hour while they were all awake and cheeping frantically at the front of their coop crowding as close to the door as they could get. At first we equated this strange behavior to the trauma they must have experience when twelve of their friends were devoured in front of them but after further thought we realized that they had been roosting up by the front of the coop way before the recent incident. With the loss of so many already I wanted to be sure that they were roosting somewhere safer so I decided to place them on their roost at the back of the coop. However as soon as they were put in the dark they became even more frantic so I turned on the light in their coop to see if their was something back there, as soon as the light came on there was peace in the valley almost instantly. So every night if we want the chicks to roost where they are supposed to we have to turn on their "night light" and as soon as we do they jump right up and go to bed. We then have to leave the light on for about an hour so that they are properly roosted before we can safely turn off the light. I tried turning it off as soon as they were all on the roost but they started to jump back off rather quickly when I did that, so after trying several different intervals we found that about an hour was about right. I wonder how many people out there would believe that chickens can be afraid of the dark? My daughter who has always been difficult to put to bed has recommended that classical music would help them feel better since it has worked for her. I am hoping we will not have to go that far but it would at least keep some predators away. No matter what, I now know that even after such loss we can all still find something to laugh about. Chickens with night lights, who whould have thunk it? |
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