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| Buttercup of the big eyes. Photography by F L Campbell |
Bush eggs: one. Nest box eggs: none. Feed hopper: full. Dreams involving Grey Gun: not telling.
Buttercup is a strange but compelling hen. She is of such mixed parentage that she has the feather markings of a mallard duck and the big-liquid brown eyes of a cow, all in the body of a smallish hen. It sounds like The Female Person at the place where Buttercup was born firmly believed in hybrid vigour and cross-mated all her chickens, which resulted in some pretty fantastical (but extremely healthy) chooks. Buttercup reckons the only breed she ever really had problems with at the long paddock were the roosters with Araucana blood, who were, almost without exception, the most arrogant and nasty lot she’d come in contact with.
Buttercup said that she herself was such an unusual looking chicken that even she had no idea who her parents might have been (she was raised in a hot room with a bunch of other chicks and no mama), but that they were definitely chickens and not ducks or cows.
I resisted the urge to go and see Grey Gun by writing this poem:
A poem about Buttercup by Ruby
Buttercup Buttercup
Eyes of a cow
Markings of a duck.
Quite clearly I was distracted…
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