Chicken Dance

We have chickens again! .... of course that's totally not horse or writing related, but what the heck. :)

They are in a pen for now, but once they get used to the area we'll start letting them out. I got my first chickens a few years ago for natural fly control. They scratch in the horse poo -- that kills the fly larva and it breaks the cycle so we have less flies in the barn. They really do a better job than anyone can imagine that hasn't had free range chickens at the barn. (So see! ...this post is horse related, and writing related as well if you're writing about horses that would be in a barn.)

And the eggs! We were totally spoiled with fresh eggs and have been missing them terribly. These girls are young but have started laying already... and, yes, I'm already licking my lips... fried eggs, scrambled eggs, egg salad sandwich -- yumm!

We won't mention that they were delivered to me in a dog crate at the Last Hoorah endurance ride... or that one immediately escaped ... or that me, my son, and Thomas were running around chasing the chicken at the ride camp...

oh no. we won't tell any of that because silly (stupid) crazy stuff like that never happens to me. oh no. not me. *sigh*

5 comments:

Leah Braemel said...

LMAO at the image of you guys running around after a chicken.

And interesting about how they reduce flies too ... would never have guessed that.

Becky Burkheart said...

HAHA! Yeah, chasing around was pretty funny. We never would have caught her, but we had the bright idea to put the crate with the other chickens in the horse trailer and open the door so she'd go in there. ... well. It didn't work. She kept going toward the other chickens, but then she'd go under the trailer instead of in it. SO we piled flakes of hay under the back edge of the trailer and she finally hopped right in.

that's my story and I'm stick'n to it. :)

and yep, they're wonderful about reducing the flies. They also reduce the worm load the horses can carry. I worm mine routinely, but we travel so much, picking up new populations is always a concern.

L.A. Mitchell said...

:) Okay, the poo thing, while informative and entertaining, made me think twice while munching. LOL. And the idea of you calling them your "girls" is just too funny. The whole egg thing to females is bonding at its finest. Love hearing your stories :)

Val said...

Man, somehow I missed all that excitement (musta got there too late). We lost another Fat Chick last week, whom I cried over worse than Zach -- thought a 3rd one was going down last weekend but she has rallied. [Take-home lesson: NO MORE CHICKS PURCHASED @ TRACTOR SUPPLY]
I gotta figure out my camera so I can post some poultry pix! (one of the little bantam hens will fly up to your shoulder & perch there quite comfortably)

Becky Burkheart said...

Haha! Val, they were in my trailer the whole weekend. I'm surprised you didn't hear them when we were chatting. I'm sorry to hear you lost another little one. I got mine from Edie Booth and I know they have a couple more batches that are younger than the ones I got.

LA - sorry about the poo. Sad to say, it's a large part of life on the farm. :) I'm glad you enjoy the stories in spite of it.