Chicken of the week: The Ladies

The Ladies were already two years old when we got them from a local farmer. This gave them two years' more "chicken experience" than us or the young pullets we got at the same time. People and pullets alike watched The Ladies carefully. But The Ladies disdained all this attention: they formed an instant clique with each other and established themselves solidly at the top of the pecking order. They are quick to peck other hens who might get in their way at the food trough. They even used to peck the Red Rooster, who was a jerk and deserved it.

Like all of our “named” chickens, The Ladies have more of a description than a name. I made a rule early on that we would not name any chickens, since at some point a few would probably get eaten by predators, or uncomfortable culling-type decisions would need to be made, etc. And yet we still notice their personalities and need to refer to them...and so these label-names like “The Ladies” evolved.

Here is one of The Ladies, and the other one looks just the same. They were sold as Ameraucanas, a breed that lays pastel green or blue eggs, but are no such thing. I guess they are some kind of barnyard mix. The Ladies are "ladies of a certain age"--they are our oldest hens--and they are a great favorite with our current rooster. He is an alert and chivalrous fellow, unlike the Red Rooster. They do not peck him.

Chicken in the bathroom...part II

If I were smart I would buy these before posting them here...because the pictures below are ORIGINALS! So once they're gone, they're gone. Yet this gorgeous original artwork is STILL under $20 per art. Let's get to it:


Chicken Bubbles. From the awesome item description: "What comes to mind when you hear the phrase "chicken bubbles"? Is it magical, transparent spheres filled with beautiful poultry? We think alike, my friend, we think alike." Also from the same artist, an excellent little ACEO 2.5" x 3.5" original called Awakening Chicken.




Another ACEO size (2.5" x 3.5") original that just blows my socks off is "One Was Left". Creepy name aside (are those hawks in the background??) what a sweet and effortless-looking, yet crazy-good pen and watercolor sketch.




Finally, here is the thing about rules: LITERALLY, they are made to be broken. If not for the idea that it may be broken, a rule would not even exist, right?

With that bit of sophistry aside, let's examine "Chicken House Road", which breaks a couple of rules. For instance, it does not feature a chicken, and costs more than $20. What is it even doing here? Well, hear me out: this painting features a chicken house, plus it features the WORD 'chicken.' (I love words; I am just as happy to feature the word 'chicken' as an actual chicken.) And it is just barely over $20, coming in at $22. It's my blog, and my bathroom, and I decide "Chicken House Road," with its wild splashy tree, is the rule-breaker.

Chicken in the bathroom...part I

"Blue Chicken Taking a Bath"
Until now, I have resisted using chickens as a decorating motif. To me, nothing says, "Pretend You Live in the Country, by T.J. Maxx" like a rooster-themed kitchen. But it turns out that I like chickens (also I like T.J. Maxx), and I would not mind seeing them around me indoors.

At least they would be something: we have lived in this big old house for 2 1/2 years, and there are still some rooms with nothing on the walls. (We've been busy, ok?) The downstairs bathroom is one such room, and I decided it would be a good place for chickens. But not crummy kitchen-rooster chickens--AWESOME chickens! And where do we find awesome pictures of chickens? On Etsy! Click each picture's title to visit the reasonably-priced Etsy listing.

The artists on Etsy have created some incredible original chicken artwork for under $20 per art. ($20 was my limit because I am thinking of hanging many, many chicken pictures.) Here are my very most favorite chicken art prints:


The puzzling "Faith". This one is favorite, because of the surprise factor. Why is this chicken on a boat? And how can the storm-tossed hero seem so unperturbed? It must know the secret of being at peace: “Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” I don't know how this chicken learned that, but I learned it from a refrigerator magnet.



The sweet "Her Favorite Chicken". Because I, too, have a favorite chicken.


Finally, remember my railings up top about chicken decor in the kitchen? Well, apparently I am both judgmental AND hypocritical, because this photo, "Mom's Kitchen", appeals to me greatly.

And those are my top four chicken prints for under $20--it was an agonizing decision process, let me tell you. See that ominous "Part I" above, though? That's because I'ma hit you with "Part II" real soon.

Chickenomics

A recent New York Times article about self-reliance and chicken keeping got me thinking about my own chickenomics. The article's angle is that in tough economic times, chicken-keeping may fulfill a desire for greater self-sufficiency. But really, if you're trying to stave off financial insolvency, the Thin Feathery Line will not shield you for long. Between the costs of building a coop and the price of feed, it's cheaper to buy your eggs at the store. That's what the Times tells us. Our own chicken finances are organized via cash and receipts kept in a tea tin (above), and a spreadsheet kept on Google Docs (not pictured).

Here's how our chickenomics break down: Friends at work buy our eggs for $1.50/half dozen. (The hens can reliably deliver about 6 dozen salable eggs a week, and there is a waiting list.) Proceeds cover the costs of the hens' sundries (oyster shells, DE, bedding) and feed. Between kitchen scraps and the giant 'pasture' over which they forage, the hens' feed costs are not as high as they would otherwise be. The ladies are even managing to stay ahead of the curve and buy feed for the teenage chickens, who get copious garden weeds delivered frequently from our giant, weedy garden, but do not have access to forage. They are eating enthusiastically, as teenagers will, but it will be a few months before they are old enough to lay. And as fall and winter approach, the rate of laying will decline--and therefore revenue will decline--and the availability of forage will also decline--making feed expenses increase. So we are unlikely to cover costs over the winter. But in the Spring, laying will resume, augmented by the current crop of teens. We'll be able to whittle down that waiting list for eggs.

So, day-to-day costs are covered for now, but what about overall costs? The main chicken house (which is big) and the teenagers' house (also pretty big) were built mostly from free materials. BUT. Since we want to keep the hens separate from the garden, and from the dogs, plus separate the adults from the motherless babies/teens, separate sitting or ill hens, etc... we needed fencing. That means chicken wire, and a lot of it. The hens' giant chicken enclosures were far more costly than their actual chicken houses. Then there is also the initial cost of the chickens, which is a few dollars each. If a rooster is available, the chickens will take care of future chickens themselves... except that you probably don't want to line breed your chickens year after year after year. We just have the one adult rooster, Rooster Boy, who obligingly produced many motley offspring for free this summer. He IS the Boom King; I take back what I said before. We also ordered babies of a few different breeds--the current teenagers--from Randall Burkey.

I really like having the chickens, and their eggs are much better than grocery store eggs. I like that I can provide the tasty, local eggs from pastured hens to my friends, too. And if we got hit hard by the economic downturn I suppose it is a consolation that we could eat eggs indefinitely. But, the greater danger to our self-sufficiency would be that we would quickly be out of a place to live. So my plan for that eventuality is...{drum roll}...to go out and live in the chickens' big house. See? Pay no mind to the New York Times--the chickens will save us after all.

Chicken of the Week: "Red"

We have 18 adult chickens, and "Chicken of the Week" is here to highlight a few of the most notable. Red, Uh-Oh Chicken, The Ladies, and Mama Orpo are curling their hair and trying out expressions in the mirror for their big upcoming photo shoots.

This week's chicken is our Rhode Island Red hen. She is red. Since we lack any imagination at all, we call her...Red.* We got Red from a local farmer when she was just a youth. She was one of our first chickens--the chicken house wasn't even finished yet when we brought her home. Amy and Red are good buddies; Red likes to ride around on Amy's shoulder. She (Red) likes to sleep in a weird spot: the ledge above the door of the chicken house. It wasn't designed as a roost, but Red roosts** there every night. Red is the smallest hen in the flock. It makes sense that she is small: Rhode Island Reds are among the most prolific breeds of backyard egg producers. So Red has been bred to put more of her caloric resources into producing eggs than into developing and maintaining a larger body. Thanks Red!


*Actually, see next week's Chicken of the Week for the real story on names.
** “Roost” is fancy chicken-farmer talk. Like the word “perch,” “roost” can either be a verb, or the noun on which that verb takes place. The only difference between the terms is that perching means just sitting there, while roosting means sitting there and sleeping. See? Fancy talk.

Truuuuue colors

We number-banded a bunch of the little Reds a couple weeks ago. Now they are all running around with blue leg bands and white numbers and we can tell them apart. Every Red who I thought was friendly before was probably Hen 18. Hen 18 just can't get enough of seeing what I am doing.

Here Hen 18 has jumped onto my arm for a different angle on the apple core. (She has settled in, too, so we can't see her blue "18" band, sorry.) The buttery-colored lady on my foot looks like an Orpington--she fools me a lot--but she is an Ameraucana. See her green legs? She will lay pastel colored eggs; I can't wait to see whether they are green or blue.

Also, speaking of different colored legs, you may notice in that picture that my left knee has a bandage on it. That's where I had surgery, and I make sure and wrap it up before I hobble carefully out to the chickens. Because even though they didn't SAY at the hospital not to let chickens get their poopy feet all around your incisions, I want to avoid Chicken-Poop Blood Disease. Also, this kid that Amy drew all around the stitches on my crazily swollen knee is like, "c'mon, chickens, c'mon...just try and walk on my face." He looks like he's ready to give a chicken a black eye.
So I cover him up.

Free tatas:

Or, as they are normally spelled, frittatas.

If you are plumb out of dinner ingredients, but you have some chickens and some plants, frittatas are here to save the day.

Tonight's tasty dinner frittata (hastily planned after a brief 'no-ingredients' freakout) featured the following home-grown goods: broccoli, red onions, basil, and eggs, plus sliced cherry tomatoes on the side. From-the-cupboard ingredients were garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese. And voila, a tasty meal was pulled out of my...hat. Out of my hat.

Only egg whites went into the frittata, per the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home recipe for Light Broccoli Frittata on p. 296. This did make the product admirably light and not too eggy, but left six extraneous egg yolks. These were fed back to the chickens when I went out to the garden to cut the broccoli. It's a little gruesome to the thoughtful person, but the hens with egg yolks are like me with ice cream. They get inexpressibly delighted, rendered incapable for a minute even of making their normal 'great food here!' noises. They peck and glug, peck and glug singlemindedly at the delicious, sticky nectar.

Mmmmm...you know what's good dessert after frittatas? Ice cream.

Mmmmmm...iiiiice cream. I have to go now.

Chicken Talk

There has been a chicken lull in my life recently. Oh, we still HAVE a number of chickens,* but I have not been out recently to pet them and feed them scraps, observe and photograph them, or plan a life of plunder and international debauchery with them on the high seas (or, again, fields).

Instead I have been lying indoors, recovering from knee surgery, awash in a sea (or, again, a field) of narcotic pain relievers. And though I have not been able to visit the chickens, I have had ample opportunity to put in order some thoughts regarding chickens and the English language. Granted, sometimes these thoughts haven't made a lot of sense (c.f. pain relievers, narcotic; above).

English has a lot of Chicken Talk. "Nest egg," "broody," "chickens will come home to roost," "cocky," "something to crow about"... But since not many people keep chickens any more, these phrases no longer evoke the images they used to. Now that I "chill with my peeps" though, many of these old phrases now seem fresh, fascinating and funny in a way they had not been before.

For example: after a hen lays an egg, she can be incredibly noisy about her accomplishment. "i did-a-EGG! did-a-EGG! did-a-EGG!" she clamors. And when one hen starts up, the others catch the urge too: "she did-a-EGG! did-a-EGG! did-a-EGG!" They chorus and walk around and carry on together for a bit. It is so loud that it is frankly alarming, up close.

Now, the other night Amy and I were recalling something ridiculous we had experienced together, leaning on each other and laughing in front of the kitchen sink. We were not unpleasantly deprived of air, but our breathing was definitely subordinate to the laughter. Our breathing patterns--similar, but out of sync--went, "'laugh'-'laugh'-'suck in air,' 'laugh'-'laugh'-'suck in air'," repeat. (...repeat...repeat.) The drawing-in of air was louder and harsher than the breathing/laughing sounds on their way out.

It occurred to me pleasantly in the middle of this laughter that we sounded a lot like the pleased, egg-accomplishing hens. "Laugh-laugh-BREATHE, laugh-laugh-BREATHE" sounded like "did-a-EGG, did-a-EGG." And right on the heels of this realization came the twin realizations that (a) the egg noise that the hens make must be called "cackling," and (b) Amy and I were "cackling like a pair of hens."

Whoa! I never knew what 'cackling' sounded like! Even when I heard the actual sound, from the hens themselves! The word "cackle" sounds like "crackle," so I assumed that it must describe a crackly sort of laughter. I imagined it was a slightly pejorative term, relevant mainly to witches and crones. But is it instead a neutral to positive word, describing pleasant gasps of amusement, shared in company? The dictionary would tell us, probably. But in my current state the dictionary is much too far away to help us.

And that is just episode ONE of Chicken Talk, which was quite a bit longer than I thought it would be (narcotic pain relievers = trouble editing down prose? or tightly plotting a story?). So, we will end here. Vaya con pollos, chicken friends.

* n = a million

Yarrr, matey!

There is a lot of cultural interest in pirates these days, what with news about the real-life Somali pirates, and also the dashing Pirates of the Caribbean (fake pirates who enjoy commensurately more public sympathy).

And the swashbuckling young Orpingtons want in on some of that pirate-themed action! Now, not to toot my own pirate horn, but the Orpingtons are very lucky to have me here. I currently have a bum leg--hopefully it will not come to a peg leg--AND I can do a very respectable pirate voice. I even have a pirate name generated for me by a website many years ago. With a chicken riding around on my shoulder, all I need is a machete and a boat...soon chicken and I will be the terror of the high seas!

Or, since I do not particularly like to go on boats, maybe we will ride on a horse, and be the terror of the high...fields.

In the meantime, watch for my new line of children's books about horseback chicken pirates. 10% of the profits will go to buying overripe plums, which--the young chickens discovered today--are extremely amazing and delicious. A good way for a young pirate chicken to fend off scurvy.
It's a pirate's life for us!

No, THIS is how we snuggle.

Last year, I spent a lot of time patiently explaining to the crop of little chicks, "Nooo, chicken, we're snuggling." By and large, those chicks remained unconvinced.

This time around, I have been spending more hang-out time with the chicks, bringing them treats, watching them run around, and just generally chilling. The Orpingtons are the friendliest of the bunch, and they like to climb into my lap, where they are content to be held and stroked and snuggled a little. When they really want to settle in, though, they clamber along my arm to my elbow, and wriggle their heads insistently between my arm and my body. They'll fall asleep like this, or go for a ride as I walk around.
Often a second Orpington will also have a snuggly feeling, and it will want to snuggle in the crook of the SAME arm. Not the OTHER arm, no no no! No, the second Orpo will get right in there with the first one, wedging its way in, smooshing the other chicken, often stepping on it. Both chickens seem happy with the setup, even though it looks uncomfortable. If I try to separate them so they each have an elbow to themselves, my help is not appreciated.

They say, "Noooo, lady, we're snuggling!" and go back to how they were.

Well. I stand corrected.

You put your weeds in there, man!

Step one: Fill a garbage can lid with weeds from the garden. It should take less than a minute to fill the lid if your garden rows are niiiiice and weedy.

Step two: Deliver the lid to the Post Office Chickens in their "playpen." (Remember 4 weeks ago when they were itty bitty?) Spread the weeds around. Many chickens (the Reds, Welsummers, and Ameraucanas) will run away from you and your crazy lid, all the way to the opposite side of their yard. The friendliest chickens will stay around to see if this setup might be edible. What kind of chickens will do that? Mostly Orpingtons.

Step three: Allow the excited nasal piping of the weed-eating chickens to alert their peers that something is AWESOME. Observe as the aforementioned peers creep warily or flap excitedly over.
Step four: Inter-chicken weed tastings. Harmony and happiness.

One MEELION feets

One of the duties of a Mother Hen is to occasionally call all her babies over for a warming snuggle. The babies come toddling and scurrying over in response to the call, and Mama flaps her wings and shuffles her feet and scoops them with her head until they are all tucked underneath her. Quickly, the scene changes from hen-and-chicks to...just hen.

During all the hustle and bustle, it is sometimes possible to see what is going on beneath the hen. Once the babies get under there, the vast Mothership is right above them, still moving around a little to gather everyone in, and the little guys have no idea which way is forward. So all the babies just stand around under there, stock still, facing any which way. Their bodies are obscured by the hen's feathers, and only their legs are visible. So on the whole, the Mama appears to be standing on one normal-sized pair of legs and about 16 tiny, string-sized, additional legs, pointing in all different directions.

And then she sits on them. Ploomp!Given the astonishing quickness with which this all happens (not to mention the awkward angle, and the fact that the hen never wants to do this right up close to me), I have yet to photograph the elusive Many-Footed Hen. The closest I have come is this picture. The hen's wings are already down, giving the chicks coveted access to her wing-pits for snuggling but blocking their forest of feets from view. Only the chickie in the veeery front has visible legs...but there are seven MORE sets just like that under there, and it is hilarious. Picture it...now.

Happy Birfday

This weekend was my birthday, and also the birthday of a chicken! It is the birthday of the chicken that concerns us here.
Early this morning we checked all the eggs, and found one that had pipped, meaning it was smooth all over except for a tiny crack at one end. The little crack had been hacked from the inside with only the teeniest of tools: a baby beak about the size of a pencil lead, wielded with all the wet-spaghetti force of a baby chicken's first movements. The chick was resting after its efforts; the egg was still and silent. We carefully replaced it under Mama Orpington.Later in the morning, we returned to find that the little chickie had made a lot of progress! Its whole beak was out and it was cheeping and peeping. The outer shell was crackled, but was still attached to the membrane in most places. The membrane was kind of tough and rubbery, not papery as I expected. I could feel the chickie move and struggle around inside the egg. When the chick was resting, the whole conglomeration heaved in and out as the chickie breathed, HARD. (Speaking of things that were hard--it was really hard not to peel the rest of the shell right off! Or at least peel a bit back so we could see the chickie's face. But according to...everything...you should not help the chickie out of the shell.)

And right before we left for birthday lunch at Harney and Sons, we found that the little chickie had finally busted out of the majority of its shell. It was SO TIRED. We took advantage of its exhaustion to snap the iconic picture of "Baby Sleeping Peacefully In Giant, Tender Hands." Only in this picture, the baby is a little stuck inside its poo-encrusted membrane and shell. Baby photo faux pas!! I do like how it looks like the chickie is wearing one of those baby towels that have a hood, though. You know the ones; sometimes they have a frog or a duck face on the hood. Totally for babies and children. I certainly don't have a duck towel like that. (...shifty eyes...)
And once we returned from the Land of Teas several hours later, the chickie had dried out and gotten fluffy. It now looked straight from the Cute Factory instead of the Wet Little Alien Bird Factory. The craziest part at this stage are the wings. They are just little flaps, only about the size of Guinea pig ears. Check it:

Happy birfday little chickie!

Faver-whats?

Of all the chicks in the brooder, the Salmon Faverolles are the chillest little dudes. Little downy puffs under their eyes give them a relaxed, squinty expression. They are described variously as "docile" and "genteel." If there is a chick lying down while eating, chances are it's a Salmon Faverolle.

They other thing about Salmon Faverolles--besides being called "genteel" and enjoying breakfast in bed and sporting little eye puffs--the other thing is that they have crazy toes. This little guy and his buddy came inside recently to sleep through the end of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. (The movie is fascinating but a bit deep for baby chickens; I wouldn't recommend it for your own chicks unless you think they will sleep through it too.) Anyway, click to enlarge if necessary, and check out the multiplicity of toes in the background. Faverolles have five toes, giving them one up on their four-toed compatriots.

But I have saved the best for last: the MAIN thing about Salmon Faverolles is how they look when they grow up. Prepare yourself, if you can, FOR: The Minister of Silly FACE!

Where to pick up chicks:

The Post Office!
In fact the Post Office is the only place to pick up chicks; they can't be sent FedEx or UPS. Last week, the new chicks arrived at the post office, and were duly picked up in the wee hours of the morning. They looked like they had been out all night at a punk show.
The first order of business was to get everyone a drink of water. Chicks don't need to eat or drink for a day or two after they hatch, because they are still absorbing the rest of their yolk nutrients. It's a smart setup, because it might be 48 hours or so from the time the first chick in a nest hatches until the last emerges. Early hatchers can just wait around under Mama for their brothers and sisters to be ready to go. At the end of that time though--BOY are they thirsty.As each chicken was placed in to the brooder, we'd dip its little beak in sugar water to make sure it got right down to business. "Oh, wow!" thought the chicks. They'd glug some water down, toddle off, and hurry back for more. An hour or so later, the post office dropped off a whole nother box of chicks that some negligent person failed to pick up for more than 24 hours--and we did the whole routine again. Now we have a million* teeny chickens.

Once everyone was in the brooder, toddling and scurrying around, pecking and drinking, some chicks started to get tired. They had a tough time deciding what to do then: on the one hand, this eating and drinking was so exciting! "We've never done this before!" they enthused. On the other hand. . . so . . . so . . . tired . . . . Not yet knowing what else to do, they fell asleep right where they stood. Some of them managed to sleep standing up, or drooped gradually into a naptime squat; others slowly tipped over, startling themselves awake when they hit the floor. It was enthralling. A box full of baby chickens is better than a TV.

* a million = 52

Splish Splash, I was takin a dirt bath

This weekend, we let Mama Chicken and her six chickies (four of her own and two fosters) out into a grassy pen for the first time.

At first, Mama followed her by-then standard procedure of scratching and pecking the ground, to find food for the chickies. There was great peeping and excited pecking. Foraging was thrilling--and much more successful in the grassy pen than it had been in their brooder box.

A big plastic-wrapped board was lying on the ground; it had been lying there in the pen since the previous spring. I lifted it up and rested it against the fence, hoping that the moist earth underneath would contain lots of good bugs for the chicken family. It was surprisingly dry under there, though, and no bugs were to be seen. "Too bad" I thought.

But it turned out I had given Mama the best present someone who hasn't left the nest for 4 weeks could want. "DIRT BATH!!!" she all but shouted, rushing over to the barren ground and elaborately proceeding to toss dirt all over. She hunkered down and scratched the dirt up with her feet; flapped it under, over, and all around her with her wings; rolled on her sides and rubbed her neck in the dirt; shook her tailfeathers and snuggled down into her dirt bath hole before starting the whole routine again. She kept it up while I went to get my camera, and by the time I came back was alternating between "DIRT BATH!!" and more foraging for the chicks from her comfortable position in the "bathtub." Keep an eye on the yellow and gray chick in the upper right--by the time I returned with my camera it had already learned to copy her. The whole scene was a big hit for the human "chickies" who were observing the scene closely.

Chickens don't drive tractors!

It is a well-known fact that chickens do not drive tractors. But for some reason, a portable, self-contained chicken habitat is called a "chicken tractor." And this weekend we* built one.

In Stage One, the chicken tractor just looks like a bunch of wood and triangles. This triangular, wooden theme will be maintained throughout the chicken tractor's construction.

In Stage Two, you can see the roosting area has been built. It opens at the back for human access, and at the front for chicken access. It looks like a house that is going skiing.

In Stage Three, the tractor has become incredibly long and heavy.



It is in two pieces: the heavy piece with the house, and the long piece with the chicken run.











Finally, Stage Four: Home Sweet Tractor.




*while I say that "we" built it, "my" major contribution was taking pictures.

Triple Nerd Score!

I would like to submit one more type of chicken expression (in addition to the two we have previously discussed). This hen looks neither outraged nor content. Not even "contentraged", an emotion that---let's face it--is probably apocryphal.

No, this hen looks like she is...brooding. Over her brood. Of chickens.

Turns out the chicken is the magic link between brood (the verb) and brood (the noun). This nerd-tacular insight is one of the most exciting parts of chicken-keeping so far.

The brood increases

Four eggs have hatched! Besides yesterday's fuzzy yellow hatchling, we now have a yellowish chick with gray chipmunk stripes, a darker gray one, and a black one with a yellow bottom. (That means "yield.")

Also, Little Chickie Yesterday has revealed its parentage! Those fuzzy pantaloons cannot tell a lie: this chickie's mama is a Brahma.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being...

...Borned.

Our Lace Wyandotte has been sitting on her (well, someone's) eggs assiduously for the last 3 weeks.  Yesterday afternoon the first chick struggled its way out of its shell.  Here it is!  What kind of chicken will it be?  Hard to tell. The only rooster is a Lace Wyandotte, so all we know for sure is that it's at least half Wyandotte.  The poor mama--who also happens to be a Wyandotte--got supplanted on a couple of nests before we set her up in a brooder box with some hastily-gathered eggs; only one of those eggs may have been her own.  So all we can say for sure is that their daddy is a Wyandotte, and their mama was a Rock N Roll Band. I mean, some kind of chicken. Barred Rock, Orpington, Wyandotte, Brahma, Rhode Island Red...

And here is the mama regarding me suspiciously once I have put her little nugget back in the brooder box with her. It is going "Ehnnn!  Ehhhnnn!" jumping up and trying to burrow back under.  Unfortunately, 'jumping up' and 'burrowing under' are mutually exclusive. It is borned with great cuteness, fluff, and surprising mobility, but some things (difference between belly and neck?) just have to come with experience.