{"id":527,"date":"2009-08-12T08:44:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T15:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:33:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:33:20","slug":"chickens-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"Chickens, part two"},"content":{"rendered":"

So in the mini-farm saga of my mother’s hippie version of my growing up years we left off at the arrival of the 100 baby chicks.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

They were quickly transported to the built coop of my mother’s friend, Karen Flinders.\u00a0 And they quickly became sick.\u00a0 The vet pronounced them sick with a virus that made them not want to eat so they would starve to death.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Undaunted my mother and Karen began a two family regime of force feeding food into each chick.\u00a0 Everyone took shifts and did their part, either to catch a new chick for the adult to feed or transport the fed one to a new area and try to keep these areas separated. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother said they lost about half.\u00a0 When they were older and well enough we took our share home to our house where Mr. Flinders had built us a long coop.\u00a0 It was an incredibly well thought out chicken coop.\u00a0 An adult might have to stoop but a kid could walk mostly upright inside.\u00a0 Either end of this long rectangular coup had double-decker egg laying boxes with ramps for the chickens because the boxes were about 3 feet off the ground.\u00a0 In other words, easy human height to open from the outside to retrieve eggs daily.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The new chickens were added to the original six, one of which turned out to be a rooster and we had our group.\u00a0 A motley crew for certain.\u00a0 The original six were the classic Leghorn chicken (picture Foghorn Leghorn, white chicken, white eggs).\u00a0 About half of the others were what’s known as Buff chickens.\u00a0 Large (although not as large as the Leghorns) fluffy light brown feathers chickens which laid brown eggs.\u00a0 Pretty common looking.\u00a0 Ah, but they were balanced out by the South American breed called Aracana.\u00a0 Mostly dark feathered birds but they always had incredibly individual markings.\u00a0 And they laid blue\/green tinted eggs.\u00a0 We even had some Banty chickens, littler than the others but feisty.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

And then they all matured and the males began to crow.\u00a0\u00a0 This is when I remind everyone we are smack dab in the residential area of Burbank.\u00a0 The noise is NOT appreciated.\u00a0 So, first we figure out who’s doing it and we pack them up to the vet.\u00a0 Because my mother has heard of this surgery called, “De-crowing”.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The vet says he’s never done it but he’s willing to learn if she’s willing to accept the possible results (death!) as he tries.\u00a0 She’s got a surplus of chickens so she agrees… since he’ll do it for cheap while he figures it out.\u00a0 After the sacrifice (death!) of several roosters he finally gets the hang of it and she’s left with several males who now cannot crow.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah, but THEY don’t know this.\u00a0 So it is a source of great amusement to bring over our friends and say… “Watch this!”\u00a0\u00a0 The rooster would strut about, flap his wings, stretch his neck out and go “huh, huh-huh, huh-huuuuuuuh!”\u00a0 and think he’d accomplished something.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hmmm… sounds like some men I know.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So in the mini-farm saga of my mother’s hippie version of my growing up years we left off at the arrival of the 100 baby chicks. They were quickly transported to the built coop of my mother’s friend, Karen Flinders.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-joy-of-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}