All posts tagged Black Aliss

The Chicken from Hell

Reports appear in today’s media of what researchers are describing as ‘the chicken from hell’ – a dinosaur with a bony crest on its head and feathers on its arms, the fossilised skeleton of which has been found in the Hell Creek formation in North/South Dakota (they are cagey about the exact location). This is an artist’s impression:

The dinosaur Anzu wyliei . Illustration: Mark Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

I can’t help feeling that Aliss is closely related, especially since she has been behaving like the chicken from hell this week.

Black Aliss: our very own chicken from hell

Black Aliss: our very own chicken from hell

It always happens in the spring – she tries to escape, she spends ages trying to penetrate the vegetable beds and she refuses to co-operate. Yesterday she and Esme managed to find their way into the field behind us. Fortunately, Ifan (the young son of the field’s owners, who has his own flock of Warrens) spotted our two and managed to catch them for us. Some investigation revealed a gap under the fence which I have now blocked. This morning she was in the onion bed… at this rate, she’s going to be in a casserole tomorrow! It’s only her prodigious egg-laying that will save her!!

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by The Snail of Happiness on March 20, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on March 20, 2014

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2014/03/20/the-chicken-from-hell/

It’s a jungle out there

In our garden we have four chickens: Lorna, Esme, Perdy and Black Aliss. After various battles, they are now confined, most of the time, to one section of the garden. They a have a run where they can be further confined, but they are not shut in there much because, frankly, it’s boring for them.

Perdy, Esme and Black Aliss

Perdy, Esme and Black Aliss

I often see backyard chickens in a dirt run and feel sorry for them. The reason being that, despite their limited flight ability, domestic chickens are birds of the jungle, not of the mud wallow. They are descended from the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) which, according to the Smithsonian:

browses on the forest floor for insects, seeds and fruit, and flies up to nest in the trees at night.

Now I appreciate that we have come a long way since the Red Junglefowl: domestication appears to have taken place 7-10, 000 years ago, and there may have been genetic contributions from three other closely related species. However, chickens do still, generally, prefer to sleep up on a perch (like being on a tree branch) and scratch around for grubs and insects, so they have deep-seated instincts. I can’t help feeling, therefore, that we should provide them with an appropriate habitat in which to live, and that a bare patch of mud or an area of open grass does not do this. In addition, a small enclosed area is likely to build up a rampant population of parasites, leading, for example, to repeated worm infestation.

Esme emerging from the 'woodland' laying box

Esme emerging from the ‘woodland’ laying box

Our hens have open areas where they can scratch about or have a dust bath, access to the area around the compost bins, where there are often insects to hunt, intermittent access to the fruit cage, with its herbs and grasses (they are excluded when there is fruit to be had!) and an area under the willow hedge, where leaves accumulate and invertebrates live. They also visit the rest of the garden to turn soil and do the weeding! Recently they have been spending a lot of time under the trees and we decided that it might be a location where they would like to lay. With this in mind, we placed a plastic laying box (actually it’s an old covered cat litter tray that we were given) inside the hedge and this is now Esme’s preferred laying spot. Of course, this is not a safe location to spend the night, so they all happily troop into the run and then their house to roost, safe and sound and inaccessible to foxes or other predators.

Animal welfare is something that anyone keeping livestock should take seriously, both because it’s ethically right and because you get better production if you have healthy happy animals. So, if you do have backyard chooks, give them some shade and an area under the trees where they can get back to their roots and release their inner junglefowl!
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by The Snail of Happiness on August 22, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on August 22, 2013

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/08/22/its-a-jungle-out-there/

Jurassic chicken

Throughout the film Jurassic Park there are allusions to the fact that dinosaurs are more like birds than reptiles. I think that we have one of their descendents in the garden. Yesterday Aliss was found excavating the root parsley, having somehow got in to the vegetable enclosure. She was removed, the netting examined for gaps, and any sources of weakness dealt with.

Juvenile delinquent chicken

Ten minutes later she was back in there. Additional barriers were added at the points we thought she might be entering.

Five minutes later she was back in there, having flapped over the barriers.

Netting was placed over the top of the target area.

Ten minutes later, she was in there again. Busily excavating.

The netting was rearranged – corners were tucked in, gaps were blocked, canes were used to secure edges of mesh. We watched what she would do.

She began by examining the place she had entered previously – stretching up, trying to poke her head through the mesh. She then moved on round the enclosure. There is a scene in Jurassic Park where Muldoon, the game warden, explains that the raptors…

never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fence for weaknesses, systematically. They remember.

And so did Aliss… working her way round the perimeter of the entire area – testing for weaknesses. It took her quite a while, but eventually she returned to her starting point, having been unable to gain access anywhere. And at this point she gave up and went away to investigate another part of the garden.

We should be careful of when we give names. Black Aliss is living up to hers, just as Esmeralda has turned out to be top chicken. I wonder if Perdy will start singing opera next!

-oOOo-

And a slight aside – today is the first day we have had four eggs, one from each chicken. A couple of weeks ago there was a day when we had four eggs, one each from two chickens and two from one chicken, but that’s another story…

21 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on July 24, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on July 24, 2012

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2012/07/24/jurassic-chicken/

The newbies

We have been profligate in the chicken department… after the demise of Gytha we decided that a replacement was in order so off we went to the chickenery (or Country Lane Nurseries as they call themselves) to get a new girl to add to our flock.

‘We’d like a chicken,’ we said to the nice lady.

‘A chicken?’ she responded with slight incredulity, or possibly amusement.

‘Yes, a chicken. One of ours has recently died and we want a replacement. We have two others that also came from here.’

‘One chicken?’

‘Yes, please’

‘Well, we don’t advise getting a single one… she might get bullied by the existing chickens, so it’s better if she has a friend.’

Now, I know this is common thinking, but we have limited perching space in the hen-house and three fit nicely, but it would be a squash for four. But the prospect of our newbie getting bullied was too much… so we bought 100% more chickens than we had intended to. They will just have to get very cozy in the hen-house… or sleep in the laying boxes.

So, let me introduce our two new ladies:

The new girls

Carrying on the Terry Pratchett witches theme, that’s Aliss at the front (Black Aliss because she’s a Black Rock) and Perdy at the back (Perdita aka Agnes Nitt – another Speckledy).

Esme, being the boss (as befits the one named after Esmeralda Weatherwax – chief of witches despite them not being hierarchical, unlike chickens) has decided that she will spend time letting them know the pecking order:

Esme letting everybody know who’s boss

She has been strutting up and down and making herself look big – plus when allowed direct contact, she occasionally pecks and sits on the newbies. Interesting thing this chicken behaviour. Lorna is not interested particularly and is just getting on with life as normal, hence her absence from the photos.

They all slept together last night, but during the day we are mostly keeping them apart until they are more used to each other. By August we should be having eggs from all four. Plus we will have built a new and bigger house for them… and we may even have stopped being rained on for more than a day or two. Actually, perhaps we should build them a chicken ark!

2 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on June 21, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on June 21, 2012

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2012/06/21/the-newbies/

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