A confession

I am a little bit grossed out by chickens. I know, it's ridiculous. I eat them and their eggs, and now we have six living in our house! But they just kind of give me the creeps.

In college I once house-sat for friends who had a flock of about fifteen chickens. One of them had been hurt the day before, so Jeff showed me how to keep her warm and separated from the group...and then showed me where they kept the chopping block and cleaver, just in case she took a turn for the worse. They were concerned about her well-being, really, and I pretended to be cool with the whole thing, but there was no chance in hell I was going to chop the head off of that chicken. I did end up having to spoon water into her beak and try to hand-feed her, and then, when she didn't make it, to dispose of her body. This sounds terrible, but touching that bird at all when she was alive was very difficult for me, and I really had to gather up all the bravery I had to pick her up and put her into the compost. Ugh. Poor thing.

But I don't think that was traumatic enough to make me feel this way; it's more just a visceral reaction to the feel of the skin (too reminiscent of a cutlet), the reptilian eyes and those scaly feet. Do you know, by the way, that people actually eat chicken feet? And I respect that. If you're going to kill an animal, you might as well use as much as you possibly can. But still.We took this little/big chick out today for some photo ops. The paper is there to catch the poop, of course - as they get bigger, their output gets bigger too. She screamed and flapped when I picked her up, and I shuddered some, but once I had her out, she calmed down, looked around, and was quiet. Jonah and I sat by her and she walked up to us and even let us pet her lightly. She walked under my legs and looked around interestedly. Buff Orpingtons are supposed to be very docile birds, friendly even, so I was relieved to see her conforming to type. I'm thinking that as long as I don't have to pick anybody up, we will all be happy.

This is one of the birds that we think could be a rooster, but I think some of the aggressive behavior is related to growing out of that brooder. Don't worry, all that "aggression" entails is a flying hop across the brooder and some loud peeps, just a big kerfuffle. But we'd like to keep things as peaceful as possible in order to set the tone for later relations. We have plans to expand their living space this weekend.

Another issue might be boredom, so I'm going to go out in the yard and get a clump of dirt for them to worry. It's warm today, so the dirt shouldn't chill them. I did some research and found it's really not safe to take them out for another few weeks yet, so this will have to do. Other than the crabbiness with each other, they seem to be doing quite well at two weeks old. Just four more weeks indoors!