Hello Again Folks,

In my previous post I mentioned my Junkyard chickens. I forgot to explain why they are called that. The are actually Arconias, Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, and a couple of mixed-up breeds. But, the reason I call them junk yard chickens is because their previous owners let them free range in their auto junk yard. At night they were roosting in a "65 Impala. That is why I call them junk yard chickens!

Some of you may have interesting stories about your chickens, why don't you share them with everyone here on the forum. We could all use a good chicken humor story!

Sincerely,

Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), December 22, 2001

Answers

I'll share my first experience with chickens:

A friend of ours was moving and needed to get rid of two chickens and offered them to me. He neglected to mention that these chickens were as wild a march hares and wouldn't even consider going into the nice, warm chicken house I prepared for them. They had roosted in trees at my friends house and after he finally caught them and brought them to me they headed straight for the trees and we couldn't get them down. On the second day at our house, one chicken disappeared. Our paper girl informed us she had seen a chicken about two miles down the road but couldn't get near it. We never found her. On the third day, the second chicken disappeared so we figured she had followed her "tree- mate" and had gone down the road as well. Well, I still wanted chickens so we bought a dozen chickens from our local feed store. These babies were well bred and appreciated all the hard work I had put into their warm cozy house.

Almost three weeks after we lost the first two chickens, my husband was out stacking wood in the woodshed. He came in and asked me to come out because he thinks he's figured out what happened to at least one of the missing chickens. Expecting to see some grisley remains, imagine my surprise when I found the second missing chicken with 5 chicks and quite a few unhatched eggs! She had made a home in the back side of the woodshed. Now we had 18 chickens. We finally caught the babies and the mother hen followed them into the chicken house. That lasted until they got big enough for fly over the fence then they all preceeded to roost in the trees. That wasn't too bad except two of the baby chicks were roosters and enjoyed waking up the entire neighborhood at about 4 in the morning. We finally were able to catch them all. The wild roosters ended up in the freezer along with the mother. The wild little girl chicks were given to a friend who takes in all kinds of stray animals (she also didn't mind that they roosted in the trees). I've kept chickens for quite a few years now, but never accepted anymore "wild" chickens.

Wishing you enough.

-- Trevilians (aka Dianne in Mass) (Trevilians@mediaone.net), January 03, 2002.