4th Of July Chicken Blogging...Aka. Even the Losers, Get Lucky Sometime....

Morning at the Rooster Ranch! Its July 4th, 2009!




Woostie overseeing the flock. he is very busy since Coo is gone and the frizzle roo is pretty useless for guard duty.

These are two of Woostie's babies that he had with the barred black and white hen, but I think the eggs came from an americauna, from how they are turning out. I think they are both hens!



Ducks are running around like crazy in the morning....and here they are with the a showgirl mom and a Marans mom and the chicksn that they sorta share and swap out from time to time.
This is the showgirl mom looking at Chicken Little, who is best friends with Little leggy, the leghorn at right. These two are from the incubator, so they have no mm to watch over them. I pair chicks like these up in a cage until they imprint on eachother, so they have a group to stick with...otherwise they wander and can disappear....Little and Little Leggy are the sweetest babies I have right now. They are not afraid of me and Leggy was actually stepping up and perching in the barn last night. Im afraid that Leggy might be a rooster from how he plays.





Ducks in danger!! Actually thats my lifesized, 3D coyote watching things, and scaring predators off!

This is one of woostie's girls taking a dust bath.



Coyote!! Oh My!

This Marans mom is co-raising Beauty the frizzle chick. This chick has unbelievable markings...Marans mom didn't hatch this one, but she has adopted it, so thats good...neither active, outside moms are really the best moms, so I try to keep an eye on it as much as possible. This is one special looking chick!









Little Leggy and Chicken Little Love eachother and they stick together. Chicken Little also loves the ducks so can often be found cuddling with them.










In the barn later on, Woostie and his hens....Turken hen is a particular facorite of mine...they are an old breed and they are at the root of what becomes showgirls (cross that with a silkie and voila! I'm sure its not that easy, but thats the general idea)....



This is the Japanese Bantam and her Japanese Bantam Aracuana chicks...she has six surviving from the original 9, which is pretty good considering that she had them in the woods and they lived there for the first couple of weeks of their lives! She has decided to move into the barn, which is better, but she sure is nasty to the other chickens. She is the chihuahua of the coop!


Here is the frizzle roo and one of my americuanas








Here are some young aracuanas. The black one is Coo & Mrs Coo's baby. In the corner to the right is one of the the ducks.
Beauty chick and her other mom...they are also sharing a black Japanese Bantam chick but he is very good at not getting photographed. he probably appears on the edges here somewhere.








Meanwhile, inside the house, inside the brooder, we have the Showgirl Show!...I am having so much fun hatching these little eggs that its hard not to pop every on under a broody hen or in the incubator! They are fragile little things, so I tend ot take them inside if they hatch in the barn...and I have a bunch in the incubator with my tolbunt frizzle polish eggs, waiting...waiting...




In case you every wondered what a Showgirl's butt looks like! Well their neck ain't the only nekkid thing on 'em!

Cuteness daily...Just hatched and not even photographed yet is a splash showgirl with a light yellow head and wings and a dark brown body. It still remains to be seen if any of these will frizzle. I also have a new silkie this morning in the nestbox out in the barn, under the frizzle mom, wh has been incubating for me all spring! She is a great sitter but not a great mom, because she ignores chicks that hop down and stays on her eggs. She is supposed to follow the chicks when they leave the nest, and then whatever eggs are left...oh well...or I put em in the incubator....
Thats it for now...Happy 4th everyone...enjoy your BBQ!

....I was so wary then
The ugly American
Thinner than oxygen
Tough as a whore
I said you can lie to me
I own what's inside of me
And nothing surprises me anymore
But forests in Germany
Kids in the Tuileries
Broken-down fortresses
In old Italy
And claiming his victory
Shrouded in mystery
He went running away with me

Back in our home New York
Walking these streets forlorn
We all in our uniforms
Black and black
Doing that slouch and jive
The artist must survive
We've got all we need we cried
And we don't look back
Thinking we had it made
Poised for the hit parade
Knee deep in accolades
The conceptual pair
But ever the malcontent
He left without incident
Vanished into thin air

Now I am always amazed
Words can fill up a page
Pages fill up the days
Between him and me
But the vows that we never keep
From bedrooms to business-speak
Make me remember how cheap
Words can be
And the letters I wrote you of
Were those of the desperate stuff
Like begging for love in a suicide threat
But I am too young to die
Too old for a lullaby
Too tired for life on the ledge

But I had a dream last night
Of lovers who walked the plank
Out on the edge of time
Amidst ridicule
They laughed as they rocked and reeled
Over the mining fields
Coming to rest on this ship of fools
But he just took polaroids
Of her smile in the light
Of the dawn of the menacing sky
And before they went overbaord
She turned and held up a card
And it said Valentine


-
Polariods....Shawn Colvin