Day 340.

Bush eggs: none. Nest box eggs: none. Feed hopper: a pinch of pellets for the pecking.

Another nasty piece of rooster work that lived here briefly was Minor (an Araucana – explains a lot?). Major liked him but he was the only one, even Valerie his Araucana hen, thought he was full of himself.

Major and Minor did have a fun trick though. Major was normally a very polite and respectful rooster but Minor bought out the naughty in him. They used to get up real early in the morning, sprint to the back of the people house and crow loudly under the male and female person’s bedroom window. Sometimes it was still DARK when they did it! Though maybe it wasn’t so smart in the long run because not long after a particularly early session Minor was Sent Away, given to a man in a taxi that had an alarmingly hungry gleam in his eyes.

We really have had quite a few chickens come and go over the years. The Female Person is getting better at choosing good-quality chickens that are healthy and intelligent, not just pretty. She is also very perceptive and Sends Away any disruptive members of the flock. It is always a bit tense re-establishing the pecking order after a chicken is Sent Away, but this ‘cleansing’ of the disruptive elements in a flock is worth it for overall harmony.