Important Chicken Update
I don’t know how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but I can tell you how many chickens fit on a wooden chair: four. Okay, probably six in a pinch, but I’ve only got the four.
I swear I didn’t put them up to it. I went out the kitchen door, and there they were, looking thoroughly cheesed off with everything and everybody.
At some molecular level, they know Fall is coming. They’ve shut down egg production and they’re molting. Molting: their feathers are falling out. Great clumps of them. When I open the henhouse in the morning, it looks like they’ve been having pillow fights all night. They have bald spots and spikey bits where the new feathers are growing in. They look dreadful and they’re crabby as hell.
You know when they show pictures of rescued battery chickens, and they’re all bald and fucked up? The big farms dump battery chickens when they reach a year old, during their first molt. Not that factory farms aren’t dreadful, but those chickens look like shit for (mostly) perfectly natural reasons.
Blogging chickens. Not blogging politics. Politics was stupid today. Chickens are less stupid than politics. Even molting chickens.
Posted: September 18th, 2012 under animals, birds, personal.
Comments: 32
Comments
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 18, 2012, 9:58 pm
So America’s credit rating takes another hit. And the Middle East (Obama’s signature success story) explodes into chaos and ambassador-murdering violence. Romney is caught on hidden camera saying some interesting and true things behind the scenes.
And I’m supposed to believe the race is over, Obama won, the rest of us might as well pack up our yard signs and accept it?
Yeah. YOU fuck off.
Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: September 18, 2012, 10:07 pm
A vendor brought a very nice chocolate cake to the lab this afternoon. It was helpful.
Comment from David Gillies
Time: September 18, 2012, 10:13 pm
I had cheese, onion and fillet steak sandwiches in a nice sesame seed baguette for lunch. They were very tasty. The steak was still nice and pink in the middle because I only cooked it 3 minutes a side.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 18, 2012, 10:18 pm
We bought some eye-wateringly expensive cinnamon-honey cashews from a Middle Eastern vendor at a country show this weekend. They are the crack cocaine of snacks.
I’ve got a recipe. When I get a minute, I’m going to try it. I’ll let you know.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: September 18, 2012, 10:25 pm
A chicken post is very refreshing after all the muzzy crap…I’m sick to death of muzzies.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 18, 2012, 10:58 pm
On a sour note (what else) the cheapest, industrial-grade, vodka you can buy here has just shot up in price to £9.29, which that nice Mr Google tells me is $15.08 in your US dollars. And that, let me remind you, is for the vile low strength rats’ piss British strength variety, in piddly little 70 cl Eurobottles.
Meanwhile, our elected liars watch petrol, food and utility prices soar and claim ‘inflation is down’.
There is not enough rope…
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: September 18, 2012, 11:29 pm
There is not enough rope…
Time to fire up a still in your back yard shed 🙂
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 18, 2012, 11:31 pm
Oh. Well. Don’t get me started. I have a fambly recipe and everything.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: September 18, 2012, 11:48 pm
All right…let’s restart the family bidness! 🙂
Comment from Redd
Time: September 18, 2012, 11:53 pm
Do your chickens favor the chair because you sit in it, stoaty?
And, yeah, the price of fuel and food is ridiculous. Thank you, Obama and donks!
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:06 am
No, they favor it because it’s off the ground. And because…chickens. They love me, of course, but I don’t really sit in the chair, so that has nothing to do with it.
Quasi, they keep telling us in England that inflation is going down, even as the cost of living goes through the fucking roof. How is this possible? Well…they’re measuring inflation by things like the value of houses and the interest rates on our bank accounts.
In other words, inflation is going down because our assets are now worth jack shit.
AND our cost of living is going through the fucking roof.
So – they tell us things are getting better while they’re getting worse in two spectacular ways. <spit>
Comment from Joan of Argghh!
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:16 am
Yay for chickens! Hope you can still buy corn to feed them.
Comment from Anonymous
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:20 am
On a brighter note, as Ace put it: American flag decides to be totally awesome and kill [a jihadi] with the smoke of fiery liberty.
Comment from Oceania
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:21 am
Send me some eggs and I’ll test them for you.
Don’t consume NZ milk products
http://optimalprediction.com/wp/contaminated-yogurt-from-new-zealand/
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:35 am
@UB. Badger dude, spend a BIT of money and make (or buy) an activated charcoal filter system like the ones they build for homes with crappy water. It CAN improve the taste of that cheap rocket fuel called bottom shelf vodka…
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 19, 2012, 12:44 am
Stoatie, have you thought of doing the Islamic rage boy band with your chickens crapping on their heads? THAT would be worthwhile…..
Comment from Clifford Skridlow
Time: September 19, 2012, 3:10 am
Uncle Badger –
Do you have access to Monopolowa Vodka? Only $18.00 here in the states and I can’t imagine the shipping fron Austria is more there than here. Good and good for you.
Comment from Oh Hell
Time: September 19, 2012, 3:18 am
MS Weasel, go to Brigid’s site (Home on the Range) and try the “Range Nuts”. they are AWESOME!!!!
Comment from JeffS
Time: September 19, 2012, 4:16 am
Chickens shitting in a chair is a much better post than one about Obama shitting on us.
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: September 19, 2012, 6:08 am
Cliff: it’s mostly taxes. Gerry’s Wines & Spirits in Soho offers Russkaya (Russian) Standard Vodka for £14.95 / 700 ml, which is $34.73 / liter.
Binny’s in Chicago offers Russian Standard Vodka for $17.99 / 750 ml, which is $23.97 / liter, or $24.99 / 1.750 liters, which is $14.28 / liter.
The British price is over 40% higher in similar bottles; more than double the per liter price of the large bottle.
Looking at Scotch – Chivas Regal is £23.95/700ml at Gerry’s, $22.99/750ml at Binny’s – 80% more in Britain.
Incidentally, I have no idea how Binny’s can sell more than twice as much vodka for less than half again as much money.
Comment from Oceania
Time: September 19, 2012, 9:28 am
Oh this blog is becoming soooo string theory.
Now for something completely different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=Zp30rl9NnQE
Comment from Deborah
Time: September 19, 2012, 1:34 pm
I’m as grouchy as your chickens, with no expectations of improvement in the near future. So what do pet chickens do during the long dark English winter? Can they go inside Uncle Badger’s greenhouse?
Comment from cube
Time: September 19, 2012, 2:58 pm
Do your chickens ever get the urge to cross the road?
Comment from nightfly
Time: September 19, 2012, 3:18 pm
Thanks for this post. Right now *I* may start molting, that’s how ticked off President Feckless has me. And politicians should never have that much power over how a person feels in the morning… one more reason to break out the tar and feathers. Luckily for us, you seem to have a goodly supply of the feathers at an opportune moment.
Comment from AltBBrown
Time: September 19, 2012, 3:19 pm
Stoaty, haven’t you ever conjured in your mind a visage for Oceania? I’m guessing a no-contact order with the other “clients” (patients?) and one hour a day outside recreation under supervision.
I believe a smart phone was provided to discourage interaction with the staff.
Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: September 19, 2012, 3:43 pm
Yes, the chickens are definately coming home to roost.
My great Aunt Barbara was the moonshine Queen of Cadiz, Ohio. She made a lovely smooth potato vodka. As karma would order things, her husband was an heroic drunk.
Comment from Tibby
Time: September 19, 2012, 8:35 pm
Thank you all for a restored faith in humanity! And chickens! I know I didn’t really think it could happen – but it did!
Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: September 19, 2012, 8:53 pm
Why did the chicken cross the Mobius Strip? To stay on the same side!
Comment from Carl
Time: September 19, 2012, 9:45 pm
“…they keep telling us in England that inflation is going down, even as the cost of living goes through the fucking roof. How is this possible?”
The inflation rate going down doesn’t mean that prices are falling. It just means that they are not rising quite as fast.
Comment from mojo
Time: September 19, 2012, 9:52 pm
Can you still (no pun) make your own gin?
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 19, 2012, 10:57 pm
Hi Deborah – well, ideally chickens would stay out of a badger’s greenhouse. But what influence can I possibly have over Lucia, the head chicken?
I mean she even bosses the cats around and I am way below the cats in the natural order of things round here.
Comment from Steve
Time: September 26, 2012, 1:36 pm
Molting is spelt moulting.
Alright
Just saying is all.
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