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Muh boys

These are my two pekin cockerels. The one on the left is Mo, the one on the right is Sam (hatched on the Fourth of July). Sam is the dominant boy and king of the garden.

They’ve been raised together from hatch. They’re about eighteen months old now. They scrap and belly-bump a little, but nothing serious. I’m short of chicken runs, but luckily I’ve been able to house them together.

Until two weeks ago. The day Mo decided Sam had to die.

I didn’t know this. I came out to put them away and bossman Sam was missing. I called and called and he finally he slunk out of some hidey hole the saddest, muddiest, bloodiest rooster you ever saw.

Nothing serious. Comb and wattle injuries bleed like a bastard and he was pecked up good. I brought him in the house and gave him a warm bath in a bucket and put him in chicken hospital (a dog crate full of straw) until he’d dried out and recovered a little.

Now I spend the short afternoons making sure every boy gets some time to run free in the garden. Except they don’t; the free cockerel spends all his time trying to murder the captive one through the bars.

I have FOUR boys. Never again from the incubator!

Comments


Comment from thefritz
Time: December 12, 2019, 9:56 pm

Watching ITV live now. Sooo, which way is it going to go?


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:19 pm

Is this the live returns on British PM elections site?


Comment from thefritz
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:27 pm

yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBpXBxK1H2M


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:33 pm

The observant minion will have noted that these &^%$*£ chickens are in flower pots. Wot a badger uses to grow things in. When they are not occupied by chickens.

On a brighter note, the exit poll suggests the communists have been thoroughly stuffed and that Boris will have a large enough majority to finally extract us from the Museum of Socialism.

Whether he will or not remains to be seen. He’s as flaky as a rusty bathtub and as trustworthy as a bastard in a condom factory.

I’d say he has the moral fibre of a backyard chicken but that would be grossly unfair on Mo and Sam.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:35 pm

Uncle B will be up watching the returns. P’raps he’ll keep you posted.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:36 pm

But Uncle B!

He MUST, he did a Christmas Brexit commercial and everything!

Then again he could claim he was part of the Republican party here, the one that urges us to vote them in so they can not do the things they claimed they would if we voted them in.

“Stonking” – Gawsh I love the British English language.


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: December 12, 2019, 10:57 pm

Wow.
British TV fashion is designed for signalling ships at sea.
This is the funniest set of clothes since I don’t know when!


Comment from ron
Time: December 12, 2019, 11:13 pm

I have learned surplus roosters make lovely Christmas gifts.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: December 13, 2019, 12:54 am

Ron – Only to people you don’t like. Or that nice Mr Campbell… that chap with the soup factory up the road.

Looks like the Conservatives have won, from the latest results. I’d be overjoyed if they were actually conservatives but they ain’t. I was toying with a ‘none of the above’ spoiled paper till the last 24 hours but, in the end, I couldn’t let a maniac like Corbyn win. Voting just to keep one set of lunatics out of office, isn’t how it is supposed to be. Um, is it?


Comment from fuloydo
Time: December 13, 2019, 2:07 am

To quote Heinlen:

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong”

This is why I voted for Trump in 2016. I didn’t like him but the alternative was worse. I’m happy to say that I’ll be voting FOR him in 2020.


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: December 13, 2019, 12:43 pm

@fuloydo – the only election where the wife and I have walked out of the polling place – asked who the other voted for, and then both said – “what have we done?”

All things considered I don’t regret it now and will feel more comfortable about it this time around.

Except for having to endure a Best Seller plot in real time that could be called “3 years in America” instead of “7 Days in May”.
But the entertainment media in the US has more than prepared us for every variation of this actual plot over the last 40 years.

Meanwhile – well done over there across the pond! It was worth it just to see ManBearCow almost cry on TV – devious nasty little garden gnome.


Comment from BJM
Time: December 13, 2019, 5:05 pm

Just desserts were served as all the Defectors lost their seats.


Comment from BJM
Time: December 13, 2019, 5:15 pm

@Durned…Woody Allen’s “Bananas” is more apt than “Seven Days in May”


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: December 13, 2019, 5:57 pm

It is good to see that Britons have scraped the Corbyn off their shoes.

Oh, and well done Mr. Farage. You’ve been at BrExit a very long time, and have never given up. Congratulations on getting to the final stage where it looks likely to actually happen.

Once BrExit happens, and the USMCA goes into effect, I am looking forward to seeing Johnson and Trump stomp all over the EU globalist socialist elitist arrogant pricks and prickettes.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 13, 2019, 7:05 pm

The BBC always fascinates me…. I especially enjoyed this take

The hope in Europe is that Boris Johnson’s strong majority in parliament will allow him room to manoeuvre.
He will no longer be beholden to any particular faction of his party, including hardline Brexiteers, so fingers are crossed in Brussels that Mr Johnson will use that political freedom to work towards a softer Brexit – a closer relationship with the EU – carefully negotiated over time, rather than in haste over the next few months.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50777995

Somehow this doesn’t match up with my barely informed impressions – did I miss something somewhere?


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: December 13, 2019, 7:18 pm

@Some Vegetable – @Uncle Badger I’m sure will have a more informed explanation, but this appears to me to be a painfully transparent attempt by the BBC to ignore the actual likely effects of the stupendous drubbing “their side” got in the election.

I put “their side” in quotation marks because by law, the BBC must be neutral, so they obviously don’t have a side. *guffaw*


Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: December 13, 2019, 9:26 pm

I wish I could go and join the protestors who didn’t like the outcome! That sort of thing just makes sense to me!

It seems that if they sing some folk songs, tell everyone they like peace and brotherhood and tell their opponents they’re a basket of racist slugs who deserve a sound, but loving, thrashing, on Saturday Morning the “we heard you!” fairy will undo the entire election and they’ll get what they want.

Germy Dustbyn will become Prime Minister and Brussels will go on running the United Kingdom as is their right.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: December 15, 2019, 3:41 am

Caponise them!


Comment from BJM
Time: December 15, 2019, 5:32 pm

@ Bob Mulroy

The antifa yobs or the chikkens?


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: December 16, 2019, 9:14 am

BJM, Why not both?


Comment from musical mountaineer
Time: December 17, 2019, 4:09 pm

Not sure what’s going on here. Must have been the only open comment thread during the election, because I don’t see anything about chickens. Everyone very excited about the election.

For myself, I’m pretty excited about the chickens. I long felt that you were having an incomplete poultry experience keeping only hens.

I started my flock with five chicks, supposedly “sexed”. Apparently not everyone knows how to sex a chick, because we ended up with not one but two roosters in that first batch. One rooster was a big muscular red and we called him Greaser. The other was a Mad Prince, an Aracauna of fantastic plumage, a cross between Hamlet and Macbeth who somehow ended up with the name Timid Tina.

Greaser mostly dominated, but it was near-run and Tina was ready to fight all day. Finally Greaser destroyed Tina’s right spur, breaking the bone nib so the spur wouldn’t grow back. Tina then used his left spur to take out Greaser’s right eye. After that things kind of settled down.

The worst chicken injury I ever saw was a huge laceration caused by treading. A flap of skin the size of a playing card was separated. That injury healed with minimum care; no stitches, no vet. Not only healed, but remodeled: digested any scar tissue and returned all the feathers to their proper places.

Chickens are superior to humans in terms of immune system, pain tolerance, powers of healing, and powers of digestion. Their evolution has a LONG head start on ours. I really do admire those little guys and gals.


Comment from weasel again
Time: December 17, 2019, 7:22 pm

Stick around, mountaineer. I think I’ll do a “nine days of chickens” for Christmas and showcase my flock, to give myself a posting break.

I’m very fond of my roosters, but they are really busting out the testosterone lately and I spend a lot of energy moving them in and out of enclosures so they all get some free range time.

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