My poor poor chickies… poor things are molting.  Poor Buford has lost all his tail feathers and much of his mane.  The Girls pick on him… come up behind him and poke his little naked tail nubby.  His comb is flopped over most the time, he walks funny because his spurs are soooo long (expecting them to fall off any time like they did last year… look like little miniature elephant tusks, so cool… going to use them in some beaded jewelry of some kind one day)

And on top of it all, they’ve lost roaming privileges because of one of these.

I was out hanging clothes on the line, heard some chicken growling coming from the chicken yard.  A first year red-shouldered hawk was spread eagle (should that be spread hawk?) up against the chicken yard fencing having a little face to face discussion with Sir Buford.

No one seemed particularly impressed, except me.  They didn’t seem concerned that juvie hawk was bigger than they were and could have had one of them for lunch if that fencing hadn’t been there.  Juvie was only slightly annoyed at my presence, flying about 20 feet away to land on top of some trellising in the garden – then into a tree that overhung the chicken yard (there is netting over top too, so not to worry).  Blacky, the dog, didn’t like that at all and started yelling at Juvie… who promptly flew off to the wooded area south of us giving a squawk of disgust as it went.

I have knappy bad chickens… very naughty birds.  Here’s a picture of them caught caught caught… rolling around in the dirt taking a dust bath under a bush in the backyard.  Rolling around in the dirt taking dust baths is fine, it’s a normal thing for chickens to do.  But, these chickens weren’t supposed to be in the backyard doing it… they were supposed to be in their chicken yard doing it.

You see, my chickens like to dig.  I’m not talking about scratching in the dirt looking for tasty morsels, I’m talking about digging.  Holes.  Deep holes.  Deep enough for a whole chicken to get into and not be seen from up top.  Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked out the window at their house and yard to do a chicken check because I’ve heard a hawk or squeak or some other strange noise, and be missing a chicken.  Out I run in a panic only to find the missing one poking around in the bottom of a hole looking up at me with that “Wha?” expression on its face.

Sometimes the holes turn into mini-trenches.  And sometimes when those trenches are next to the fence, well, they just go right under, and so do the chickens.

They know they aren’t supposed to be out of their pen, unless we let them out.  Yesterday when we returned from an outing, we found the chickens running amok in the backyard.  When they saw us they froze, eyes got real big, then they all ran to the door of the chicken yard, ready to go back in, and feigning ignorance about how they had come to be on the wrong side of the fence.

Naughty naughty birds.

What a perfect Valentine’s Day present.  One of our ‘girls’ laid her first egg.  You can’t really see the slight aqua tint in the photo, but it’s there.  That tint tells me that it was one of the 2 Americanas.  A quick vent check leads me to believe that it is probably Blondie, the white Americana (supposed to be unusual)  Poor girl has a gimp foot but she manages fine and is beautiful.  The ‘girls’ (there are 3) are only 4.5 months old, still small, and this egg is small – just fills the cup in the palm of my hand.  I’m sure the eggs will get bigger as the ‘girls’ get bigger… they’re only young teenagers now.