Diary

BlancheRSS feed

Posted: Monday 28 July, 2008

by Rosemary at 11:14pm in Poultry Comments closed

We don't normally name our chickens - the closest we've got previously was "Mrs Green", Mrs Red" according to the leg rings. Now we have Blanche.

Blanche is a Black Rock with distinctive white "earrings" - she's quite young and was in the batch of Black Rocks I bought at Stirling a couple of months ago. Actually, I'm not sure BR can have white lobes but that's another issue.

She's always been tame-ish and bit of a loner, but over the last couple of days (bribed with dried mealworms) she has become quite tame and I rather like it! She's also very vocal and if you talk to her, she "talks" back. This evening, we spend a happy 10 minutes in the garage, with the dogs excluded; I fed her some mealworms and caught her by one leg (!) before lifting her on to my knee. Once there, she sat quite contentedly for a few minutes before heading off quietly on to the straw bale next to me where I was able to stroke her.

I should really have been busy doing "useful" things like weeding but I enjoyed it so much that, buoyed by my success, I set off to tame the 10 week old BR and Chip. Boy, are these girls bold! Poor Chip must have a life of Hell!

Two of them are big girls, and cheeky. I have a slice of brown bread in my hand and offered them a wee bit - one of them grabbed the whole slice and, had she been a bit bigger, would have been off with it. Within a couple of minutes, I could stroke one of them and when I caught her, she sat on my knee for a few minutes before heading back to the rest.

I threww in small pieces of bread and soon all were taking it from my hand. the BR were eating it; Chip was picking up bits and running around with it in his beak; pick up another bit; run around; pick up another bit; run around - never eating it. Eventually, he had so much in his beak, he dropped it all the the girls ate it. Just as well we're keeping him for his good looks and not his brains!

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