Rooster logic

There are two roosters in our flock:

Rooster 1 ("The Boss")

Rooster 2 ("The-Not-The-Boss")
(Yes, they are both white. No, they are not so similar.)

But you may have noticed that they are rarely mentioned in this blog. It's not that roosters would be too boring as a topic. In fact, roosters may be a bit too exciting company for their humans.  My daily encounters with them are usually so full of surprise and tension that I never manage to capture the moment on a camera. And without a picture, there is no blog post.

So I drew a cartoon instead. This is my typical morning encounter with a rooster:

That was rooster logic in a nutshell.

Chickens' new playground

Our chickens got new a playground for Christmas.

Chickens on their new playground today morning (December 27, 2015).

It's the best Christmas present they could get. (Not that they expected any.)

Long shadows. (December 27, 2015).

Chickens' new run is full of grass and seeds and bugs. They love it.

The first day on the new playground (December 26, 2015)

Admittedly, December grass is not exactly over-lush, and there would be more bugs in August, but well... It's still a virgin land never touched by chicken feet before (Okay, it was briefly touched by Christine Columbus the Explorer Chicken on her journeys, but nobody else). That fact itself makes it a wonderland full of treasures. Chickens wasted no time to start discovering.

Chicken tails - the sign of busy chickens (December 26, 2015).

Christine Columbus, as usual keeping distance from the flock (December 26, 2016).

Natchan the Goat didn't show any particular interest in her new neighbors .

A chicken enjoying herself in the new run (video taken today morning):

That's it for the Christmas news from the farm. I hope you're enjoying winter holidays as much as our chickens are!

Christine: almost recovered

After more than a week of sick leave, Christine has now almost fully recovered.

Christine back at the farm (Dec. 21, 2015).

For the last four days, she has been back at the farm during daytime.

For Christine's fans and for fellow chicken nerds lovers, here is the process of her recovery in more detail.

Phase one (First 3 days of her sick leave)
Christine spent most time in bed, that is, resting in her private room, not venturing out even if the door was open.

Christine in her private room.

Phase two 
Christine became more active and curious to explore her new environment.  She would talk a lot in fluent Chickenspeak, which unfortunately we haven't mastered that well yet.

"Interested in cooking?" "Naah." (I can relate.)

Unfortunately she's not potty trained, so letting her move freely around the house for too long would be a disaster.

Christine also became a bit hot, that is, uncomfortable with the room temperature. Our chickens are notorious cold lovers and the 20 -22 degrees Celsius in our apartment was a bit too much for Christine. 

This position of wings suggests Christine is being too hot and is trying to cool off. 

So the time was right for phase three.

Phase three
Christine moved to the balcony. Balcony is pleasantly cool (4-14 degrees) and offers some space for unrestrained exploration and poohing. 

Eating clover and grass salad. (Fresh from the farm. What a lucky chicken.)

Eating salad, in detail.

"So where's the soil? And the worms?"

But the balcony is admittedly a bit small, and it doesn't have the right floor (= made of soil and full of treasures like seeds and worms to discover). But by the time balcony turned too boring,  Christine was ready to move back to the farm.

Phase four

Christine back at the farm, eating komatsuna.

Christine back at the farm, from different angle.

Christine is back at the farm, but she's in a private run, separated from the rest of the flock. Reason:  Chickens as a society have some harsh rules, including the one saying that it is okay to pick on weaker members of the flock. You wouldn't want to be a chicken at the bottom of the pecking order. But that's exactly where Christine would be if we let her back to the flock now. After a few more days of rest, she will be fully recovered and healthy and will hopefully avoid "the weakest member" position. So far our chickens have been quite egalitarian and we want to keep that tradition.
Go, Christine, go!

Christine in her private run yesterday morning (Dec. 22, 2015).
The rest of the flock is in the back.

But with so much spotlight on Christine, the rest of the flock - 28 chickens and 2 roosters - is being unfairly sidelined (at least in this blog). So here are a few recent pictures:

Breakfast rush.

Breakfast rush from different angle.

Five minutes later: breakfast rush is over.

Yup, chickens are interesting folks.

Christine Columbus on sick leave.

Christine Columbus, the explorer chicken of our flock, is on sick leave. She doesn't have a headache or a toothache. As befits an explorer, Christine is recovering from an injury she got in a perilous encounter with a chicken enemy.

Since yesterday, she is with us at home, resting in a hastily repurposed dog portable carrier.

Thank chickengod, she's eating well and doing fine.

Her encounter with the chicken enemy happened last week. One late afternoon four days ago, I got a call from a neighbor informing me that there are a lot of feathers fallen on the road nearby the farm. Something might have happened to The Chicken.

I biked to the crime scene and found this:

Closer look:

These are indeed chicken feathers. But I was slightly relieved that there were no blood stains nor dismembered limbs spread around.

I found Christine, alive,  in the back of the farm. As Christine is the only chicken that regularly flies out of the chicken run, no doubt she was the one attacked. But she looked fine. She was standing on her feet, making her chicken poker face as if nothing had happened. There was no obvious injury.

So the enemy just grabbed her by the tail and she managed to flee -- I tried to reconstruct the scene. The enemy was probably a dog? It cost Christine a few feathers but that is acceptable price for all those days of exploration and freedom she has enjoyed.
Content that everything was fine, I returned Christine back to the run and I went home.

But the next day, Christine was limping.  One leg was causing her pain when walking, so she wouldn't move much and would often sit down.

The sticky feathers between the wing and the leg are the only visible
part of a larger wound hidden under the wing. 

Christine sitting in the mud. It's very unusual for chickens to sit in the mud.
A chicken would normally find more comfortable and drier place to rest.
Unless she's wounded and walking is too tiring.  

Christine sitting outside in the mud again .

I checked Christine again and found the wound under her wing. The wound didn't look very serious, but if it caused her so much trouble walking, it must have been more serious than an amateur eye could discern.

So we took Christine to the vet.

"I weight 1.75 kilos!" ("Does it mean I'm slim?!")

After the doctor cleaned Christine's wound, we could see an exposed chunk of pink flesh, torn apart deep inside. No wonder she was limping.

Fortunately, there was no damage to internal organs nor any broken bones, so if only the wounded muscles recover, Christine should be fine.

Christine exploring the surroundings of her 
private room (in our home).

Nothing fun to peck in here.

See the egg? Christine keeps working 
even on sick leave.

Christine will spend a few more days with us. (I was promoted to a chicken nurse.)
After that, let's hope she'll be able to go back to her flock. (And I will be demoted back to incompetent sales manager.)
And hopefully Christine will remember this lesson forever and won't fly out to fight with chicken enemies anymore..

New run: a never-ending story

As I promised in this post from October 31st , we are building new run for our chickens so they have access to the green grass outside of their current run. This is a progress report.

To start with conclusion:

New run is not completed yet. But we're approaching the finish line. 

Considering that the pledge was made 6 weeks ago, we're progressing at very slow pace. But everything has a reason. This post is mostly a collection of excuses why the finish line has not been crossed yet.

Building new run basically means building a new fence. This sounds like an easy thing to do, and indeed it is not difficult, but it requires quite a lot of time and, preferably, two pairs of hands rather than one (which limits available time to weekends.)

Progress proof: Wire mesh attached to wooden stakes. Now it at least looks like a fence.

Putting up new fence consists of several activities:
1. Design - Where exactly will the fence be? Where will the door(s) be? How will the chickens get from their coop to new run?
2. Calculation: What materials do we need and how much of each? (And how much will they cost?)
3. Shopping for materials - stakes, wire mesh, timber, nails, hinges. This is done in several rounds. Recently I visit home centers more often than a grocery store.
4. Hammering wooden stakes to the ground.
5. Attaching wire mesh to the stakes.
6. Building door (3 doors) and installing them in their respective places in the fence.
7. Trying to predict all possible escape routes from chickens' perspective and take measures to block them.
8. Let chickens play in the new run. (Repeat No. 7 if necessary.)

Current status: Simultaneously working on steps 5 and 6 (about 80 % completed.)

Second door in making (Sunday December 6, 2015).
It was cold and grey day, hence my not-so-happy expression.

Second door installed (=the wire mesh in the front of the picture).
Nobuo in the background: Yay, we can go home now!

Now the list of excuses why it took us 6 weeks and the fence is still not ready.
Excuse 1: a lot of rainy weekends in November.
Excuse 2: some weekend trips. Absolutely necessary and of the utmost importance.
Excuse 3: a few overslept mornings.

Excuse 2.

This sounds like a solid alibi to me. But that doesn't change the fact that chickens are waiting.

Meanwhile, Christine the Explorer continues her daily adventures. We gave up trying to stop her. Neighbors keep giving us reports of her journeys. Our reputation is ruined but Christine is happy.

Morning stroll (December 6, 2015).

Christine exhibiting interest in the scent of sasanqua flowers.
(December 6, 2015)

And the fence... Let's make a realistic prediction for once: The never-ending story will hopefully end before the end of the year.

One year since the start: summary in pictures.

A week ago - on November 27, 2015  - exactly one year passed since our Power plant Oo started operation. A lot of things happened in the past 12 months. Here's summary in pictures.

START:

November 2014

Interconnection day (November 27, 2014)

December 2014

Finally a shed for storing tools!

January 2015

How birds see us.

February 2015

How we see us.

Karube (right)

March 2015

Ume the Plum.

April 2015

Digging a well.

Building a coop DIY. Never again.

This is not a sugary Easter card, these are our chickens!

May 2015

Growing fast.

Building chickens' first real perch. Chickens playing around don't make it easier.

Still a lot of space...

June 2015

Chicken teenagers.

Natchan and Nobuo on a weeding mission.

July 2015

Afternoon siesta.

Power plant-turned-pond.

Pink bucket fetish.

Material for the new coop!　(Not DIY anymore. We learned our lesson.)

August 2015

Extending water line to new coop.

New water line. This was hard job.

New coop, just before finishing.

No artistic aspirations.

September 2015

Installing chickens' new carpet.

Once upon a time, there used to be a lot of grass ...

First egg!

Do Not Disturb.

October 2015

Our hens' eggs in the local produce store.

Christine Columbus on her way back home.

Workplace chat.

Natchan the Goat, chickens, and some people.

November 2015

Flying chicken.

A chicken and a bicycle.

November 27, 2015. 

And finally, two most recent pictures from today's morning (December 4, 2015).

One step at a time, and in a year it's huge change. In the past twelve months, a *solar power plant* fully transformed itself into a farm with some happy chickens and a goat.
Let's see what new transformations are awaiting for us in the next twelve months.