Friday, May 11, 2012

Buk-buks

Tis a fine morning. I've fed the dawg, the chickens and myself. I've watered the garden in preparation for planting seeds today. It's supposed to be warmer and warmer by the weekend. Yesterday I sat in front of the coop and watched the chickens. They are Lucy and Ethel, Betty and Fiona. Lucy is bossy and bitchy. 'Pecking order', now I understand. Lucy is a bit bigger than the other gals and pecks their backs if she wants the choicest bit of greens or the primary place at their feeding bucket. She's pushy and I already want to spank her and say 'share!" However, I think this is the way in the chicken world. Deb and her son Simon, dug post holes yesterday for the fence. Felix goes and stares at the girls. Hugo rolls around in the dirt in front of their coop, showing off his canines.

I think that, when they're bigger, they'll be able to whup his ass. Raccoons, another matter.

8 comments:

Radish King said...

Oh Beth isn't it a strange week? Freezing in the morning the warm and I crave summer so bad. I haven't done a dang thing not a dang thing for months. All I want to do is go swimming. My garden keeps surprising me with perinnials (sp?) even though I completely ignored it last year. Page has cleared the back yard all around the perimeter of the yard so now my huge back yard is appearing once again. I wish I had a table so we or I could eat outside. There is something about eating outside that I love and I don't know why except maybe we went camping so much when I was a kid and then when I was married and then when Page was little. Maybe that's it. Food is so good outside and I'm rambling and my bath is getting cold. My brother is coming to our reading. I can't wait for you to meet him.
love,
Rebecca

beth coyote said...

Your brother!

Yes, I just ate a wee sandwich on our deck in the sun. (With chicken talking in the background.

Watching them is like watching a campfire. I might sit all day and watch them. Brilliant they're not. And Lucy is a bossy woman.

Sabine said...

I'd love chickens but as I don't eat eggs, I kind of worry what to do with them. Will they all hatch? Or is there a way to have chickens and not have eggs. No, thought so. Then again, I have been thinking about ducks, there is a certain breed that adores slugs above all things.

Ajax said...

Now you are Beth Mother-clucking Coyote. It suits you.

Someday i'll have chickens. I was care-taking at a place that had chickens and i loved it. A group of rafters gave me a huge pot of spaghetti which i ended up giving to the chickens. To this day i regret not having a video camera to record the noodle jubilee. I would play it back in slow motion repeatedly. I wonder if they still cluck about the worm grains.

I love your blog here. Hope you don't mind my lurking all up in it.
It's been a delight.

beth coyote said...

Sabine-they won't hatch, no rooster! Gawd, a rooster would annoy the neighbors no end. Just eggs but these girls are too young yet. we'll have eggs galore, enough to give away, eventually.

And Ajax-welcome! Stop by here again, you can lurk all you want.

Ajax said...

Oh wow! Thanks for taking a gander at my fledgling blog attempts. I won't lie- the whole idea of it stirs up a bit of trepidation, but y'alls are so inspiring, imma give it a go.

Also, the mother-clucking bit may have come off a bit different than i meant it; not that you're a mother clucker by any means, but that you'll assume the attentive, nurturing role of chicken tender (wah) rather naturally.

Ajax said...

Sabine, I love the idea of ducks as biocontrol agents. I'd like to get them some dapper slug patrol uniforms. I'd feed them donuts to no end to never pick a slug out of the strawberry patch again.

Young at Heart said...

I would like chikens but in London we have too many foxes.....go figure!!