Post #16 - Shit. Tweak's a boy.

Caught Pasha and Tweak "sparring" yesterday morning. I wouldn't really call it a fight. It was more like intense staring competitions followed by some chest bumping, usually resulting in Tweak running away.

With one baby chick still unsexed and more eggs due to hatch late next week, I may end up with even more roosters. The nesting hen, Big Red, had eight eggs but she ate one yesterday. I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch but I am counting on at least a couple chicken dinners this winter.

Big Red is actually an all-white factory farm refugee. I have trouble telling her apart from half a dozen other white chickens so I daubed a little red food coloring on her back - hence the name. Pasha's mother was called Big Blue for similar reasons but, since the dye faded away, I can no longer tell her apart from the others.

I usually call these indistinguishable birds by generic sweetieisms like "Angel" or "Honey Bunny" or, on rainy days, "My Little Muddy Buddy."

If there are more roosters, I want to name two of them Philosophy and Sophistry. It's an Aristophanes reference that I don't expect anyone to get. All that matters is that I'm amused.

Post #15 - A boy...another rooster

I was finally able to establish that one of the chickens born this spring is indeed a rooster. Or, it will be a rooster. Officially it's known as a cockrel until it is a year old.

You can't tell the sex of a chicken until they're about six weeks old. I've read that an expert chicken sexer can tell on the day the chicken hatches but, if you don't figure it out that first day, you have to wait six weeks until the secondary sex characteristics appear. The chicken in question is actually eight weeks old. I'm just a little slow. Today I saw a green sheen in his emerging tailfeathers - just like my other two roosters. Dammit, I wanted a hen.

When he was tiny, he had a penchant for riding around on his mother's back. Probably because he saw siblings squashed beneath his factory farm mother's big dinosaur feet and figured her back was the safest place to be. It reminded me of a person riding a giant elephant and I started calling him "Pasha."

There is one other chicken the same age as Pasha that I still haven't figured out if it's a boy or a girl. I call that one "Tweak." A mix of game rooster and factory farm refugee hen, Tweak is white with a few black smudges. Tweak was hatched and raised by Mama Graybie, the bad-ass hawk-hating hen that takes no shit from nobody.

I really hope Tweak turns out to be a hen. If not, he'll most likely be the one who ends up in the skillet.

Post #14 - It wasn't all that bad.

The parents left this morning. Just a short weekend visit. It was much easier to handle than a long visit. I have a pretty low threshold for lecturing, beratement and interrogation. A weekend is about all I can handle.



The newest baby chick, only 10 days old, has just started investigating the great outdoors. Keep your fingers crossed that it can make it through the next two weeks without being eaten by anything. Those first couple weeks outside are pretty dicey for little chicks - little bite-sized morsels just running around out in the open.

The only other equally dangerous time for them is the first 24 hours. The large factory farm refugee hens have a tendency to accidentally squash their newly hatched babies. The newest baby chick had three siblings who were all squashed by their mother.

Another factory farm refugee is currently sitting on eight eggs. If all goes well, they will hatch in two weeks.

Post #13 - The parents arrived this afternoon

It only took my Fox News-loving father 3 hours to start bitching about stupid Democrats. We weren't even discussing anything remotely political when he suddenly hijacked the conversation and turned it into a monologue about how dumb liberals are.

Sigh...this is going to be a long weekend.

Post #12 - Tales from Community Service

Gather 'round, dear readers, for another installment of Tales from Community Service. Today's episode is about corruption. Nobody really seems to know the whole story but this is what I've put together from conversations with community service workers and courthouse employees.

A couple months ago, two young men from a neighboring county were sentenced to community service after running afoul of Randolph County's antiquated and Draconian alcohol laws.

One morning, a county commissioner requested a few community service workers to do some lawn mowing and other yard work. Nothing all that extraordinary - until you consider that this work was apparently performed at his house and the houses of clients of the yard service business he owns. Work that he charged those clients for. Work that community service workers provided for free. Were forced to provide for free. Hell, each one of them actually had to pay money because community service requires a $5 a day "user fee" on top of eight hours of slave labor.

The two young men from a neighboring county had been on that yard work crew. One of them told his father the story when he got home. Oh, did I mention that his father is a judge?

Apparently Judge Dad called Judge Hardass and some hell must've broke loose because the story was the popular courthouse scuttlebutt for two weeks. I haven't heard anything about it recently. They've managed to keep a lid on it so far and no word of it made it into the local paper.

I once had to wash a county commissioner's car. At least it was a county car so I guess it could be considered county business. Still, it's not really what I'd call "serving my community."