The Chicken Whisperer

There are lots of interesting folks in my family with lots of interesting hobbies. I had a conversation the other night via Facebook with my sister Caroline. By the end of it I was rolling! It was so funny I thought you, my blog readers might get a kick out of it. Plus this kind of thing is always neat to record for my progeny.
The conversation started out like any other with me asking "What's new?" I have omitted some "integrated conversation" for the purposes of sparing you all the details that I felt were outside of the main subject of my sister's chicken hobby but I promise you the "chicken conversation" is word for word(except for a few typing errors I corrected). I considered making it shorter and only including the really funny parts but it's also quite informative although it's probably more than you ever expected to know about chickens ;-) And really, Ive heard about the meticulous care she gave a few of her injured chickens which really does earn her the right of being called the chicken whisperer.

Caroline:

I have more biddies

that's new

they hatched last week

Rachel:

cuteness!

I have a friend here who raised chicks last year

Caroline:

there are 6 of them

I bought a mini incubator

it holds at most 10, it keeps the addiction under control

hatching biddies is WAY cool

Rachel:
it was too cold when they got them so they kept them inside in their bathroom. Then they put them out when the whether got warmer and now they are getting ready to slaughter them now that the weather is finally cold. Apparently even a chicken coup with a light can't keep chickens warm enough in this kind of winter
addiction hahahaha

Caroline:
I know Beya would love to hatch biddies

Rachel:
oh i am sure she would

Caroline:

I handled them and was able to see a little heart beat at day five

You can see them move around in the shell

Rachel:

pretty neat :-) So are u just doing it for the eggs or are you going to kill them for meat later?

what am I thinking?

You could never kill your own chickens :-)

Caroline:
HAHAHA are you kidding?

Rachel:

yeah I know

me neither

Caroline:
Michael asked me about that once
 I said "Do you want to see me cry? Do YOU WANT TO SEE ME CRY?"
 "If you want to see me cry, we'll eat our chickens"
 that was the end of that conversation

Rachel:
hahahaha
 Yeah mom told me about those two chickens you nursed back to health

 a diaper on a chicken... sheesh

Caroline:
did she tell you I was able to integrate them back into the flock?

Rachel:

yes yes

you are "Caroline, the Chicken Whisperer"

Caroline:

I was really excited about that

I still am

Rachel:
You should have your own show on A&E

Caroline:
Michael says I'm CRS "Chicken rehabilitation specialist"

Rachel:
no no no. Chicken Whisperer... that sounds more mysterious and marketable

Caroline:
I really like my chickens, better than our dogs

Rachel:

I know... I felt that way about our fish when we had them so certainly chickens also apply
If I could guarantee myself another Spike I'd probably try to get chickens at some point

(For those of you wondering Spike was a chicken we had growing up that was super friendly and followed us around like a dog. Very personable and full of personality)

Caroline:

I have a few spikes

they are hard to come by though

scarlet is like that, the chicken I had inside

she comes at the sound of your voice

Rachel: 

do you think you could house train a chicken?

Caroline:

I've heard of house trained chickens

but it would be pretty hard because they don't have a natural instinct to be clean

Rachel:
do they typically go in the same place all the time like horses or dogs?

Caroline:

No, they poop wherever

but I swear scarlet didn't like to go in her cage

because whenever I took her out she would make the biggest poo like she had been holding it

I really don't want an indoor chicken if I can avoid it, but scarlet was special and I didn't want to let her die
the first time I put her out with the other chickens I came back to find her head shoved under the side of the stall trying to shield it and a pile of feathers around her where they had been pecking her

Rachel:
mom was all like "I've got to put and end to that!"
she was genuinely impressed with your nurturing skills but thought you were terrible at engineering chicken diapers

hahahaha

Caroline:

well I didn't engineer them, I bought them

but the design I got was flawed

Rachel:
oh so were they baby diapers?

Caroline:

it would catch the poo about half the time

no they actually make diapers for chickens

Rachel:
*blink*

Caroline:
a lot of people are realizing what great pets chickens are

Rachel:
seriously?

Caroline:
YES!

google it if you don't believe me

it's a little wacky actually

some folks are just nuts over their chickens

I found this one video of a lady who called her pet rooster her soul mate

it was funny and disturbing at the same time

Rachel:

oh. my. wow.

chickendiapers.com

soooo can't you just treat them like any other bird you'd have for a pet and give them a cage inside if you had to have them indoors?

and then let them outside a couple times a day just like a dog?

Caroline:

well, a dog can be trained to hold it till they are let out

chickens are much harder or impossible to train in that respect

Rachel:
yeah but I mean other pet birds that are domesticated live in cages. So why does a chicken need free range of a house?

Caroline:

and it's nice to let them wander around without worrying that they'll poo on something

well because they can't socialize with you if they are always in the cage

scarlet likes to sit on your lap and be petted, but you wouldn't want her to poo on you

that's where the diaper comes in, but I like her much better outside

Rachel:
ok so but... do you WIPE them when you change their diaper??

Caroline:

no lol

it just goes directly in the diaper without messing the feathers

Rachel:
sounds like a queer bit of diaper engineering it does!

Caroline:
the problem with scarlet was sometimes it would slip down below her butt, so when she pooed it would go outside the diaper

Rachel:
what did SHE think about the diaper?

Caroline:

which was about fifty percent of the time

I don't think she liked it

she would constantly preen around it, like it itched or something

but I don't think the design I got was made very well

Rachel:
were they disposable or washable?

Caroline:
I was looking at other diaper designs, and contemplating building her her own mini coup when I got her in with the rest of the flock; a huge relief

Rachel:
yeah i bet

Caroline:

they were washable

they came with a semi water proof lining

daisy was so cute with her

Rachel:
I feel my mind has been blown in the realm of the advancement of chicken domestication

Caroline:
she called her brock brock

Rachel:
haha cute!

Caroline:
scarlet was so tolerant of getting picked up and held by daisy, it was quite sweet

Rachel:

I think I'm going to take a transcript of this conversation and put it on my blog

spread some chicken love awareness :-)

Caroline:

yeah, I hope eventually people will start making a change in the way they are raised

for food and eggs and such

chickens are treated the worst out of any livestock

Rachel:

yes I wholeheartedly agree

that's why we only buy free-range chicken if we buy it at all

how many total do you have?

and what do you do with your roosters?

Caroline:
33 total, including the 6 biddies in the garage

Rachel:
gee golly jeepers!

Caroline:

the last roosters I had, I put on Craigslist for free

 

Rachel:

hahaha... out of sight, out of mind, eh?

do you get rid of them before or after you raise them up?

 

Caroline:

I had an email the next day and a day after that someone came and got them

I don't think they knew what they were doing

I got rid of them because they were mean

so they were of a fair size

Rachel:
oh well that's pretty much how roosters go most of the time

Caroline:

No not really

roosters can be very sweet
but certain breeds especially Rhode Island Reds are prone to being people aggressive

Rachel:
to you? or to the hens? Because I remember how "sexually abused" the hens were that dad had

Caroline:

I've decided that I absolutely will not keep a mean rooster

oh haha yeah, they do that, even the sweet ones

but you know they make chicken saddles

that help protect the hens from losing their feathers

Rachel:

i can't stand to watch a rooster go after a hen over and over and over and over

what the heck is a chicken saddle?

oh dear

Caroline:

It's a cloth that sits over their back

to prevent the roosters claws from hurting them

roosters always have favorite hens

I'm planning to use them for the hens that seem to get the most attention

but I don't currently have any adult roos, just two teenagers

Rachel:
*shaking head*

Caroline:
I bought a few chicken saddles the same time I bought the diapers, so hopefully the saddles will work better

Rachel:

so how did you find out about a "hen saddle" did you google "how to stop sexual abuse in the hen yard"?

i'm sorry... this is just hilarious

Caroline:
lol no, I forget how exactly

Rachel:
i think i'm going to cry I'm laughing so hard

Caroline:

but I do a lot of reading about chickens to find out how to cure various ailments and such

It's ok, I think it's funny too

but in all seriousness I hate to see hens loose their feathers because of an over zealous rooster

so either I get rid of the roosters, or I fix the hens

Rachel:

it's probably pretty insensitive of me to be taking your "trade" so lightly. I just never imagined that people were putting this much thought into raising chickens

oh dear. What would dad be saying about all this I wonder

Caroline:

dad loved chickens too

I think that's where I got it from

but probably not quite like I do

I can only imagine what he would have said about chicken diapers

Rachel:
well all I know is once he was talking about a necklace for a jersey cow... so I don't suppose chicken diapers would be wholly out of his chicken toolbox

Caroline:

it's ok to think they are funny, I laugh at them everyday, it's part of what makes them so enjoyable

one day I was watching the biddies and heared one of them let out a sharp distress peep, so I went to pick it up to see what the problem was and realized that it had pecked and held on to it's own toe thinking it was something to eat

they are just constant entertainment

So there you have it folks. Consider yourselves... educated!