One of the ornery Daughters of Henery disappeared for a few weeks in late Spring.
Well good riddance, Owl Bait, I thought to myself. Her sister had just become taco filling after murdering three of our scant crop of turkey poults, and her personality had not been notably better.
Three weeks after she dematerialized, she reappeared out of the shrubberies with thirteen gorgeous chicks in tow.
She declined to take them back to the coop, and instead raised them as she had incubated them -- as wild chickens. Wild chickens that got fed corn and soybeans twice a day along with the meat birds and flock of guineas, up by the summer goat shed.
The meaties mobbed their feed troughs pretty completely, and were each quite a bit more substantial than the little half-Hamburg biddy.
But DoH's kids always got their own trough.
She may be ornery, noisy, and barely domesticated, but she raised all thirteen of her brood to full-feathered "fledging." No other hen has done so well, and with such little care. I didn't do as well with my first incubator experiment this year. She has earned tenure.
"Ornery, noisy and barely domesticated" - in other words an excellent example of natural selection in action ;-)
ReplyDeleteOn that note, EDoH is half silver-spangled Hamburg and half silver-laced Wyandotte -- two breeds that allegedly never go broody.
ReplyDeleteAin't genetics a gas?
Great story.
ReplyDeletei thoroughly enjoyed this post
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of meat birds are those? I'm trying some of Moyer's mysteriously named "K-22" cockerels which sounds like they are some kind of undercover spies. For what I am afraid to know.
ReplyDeleteMegan, those are Freedom Rangers from JM Hatchery in Lancaster County.
ReplyDeleteVery satisfactory birds for pasture raising.