Dogs have more fun!
 I race to the door each morning and when it's opened I walk right in and get my dog buddies to go for a romp around the yard. This month my photos and bio will be on display at the Animal Museum in Los Angeles - they are exhibiting the domestic chicken but I keep telling people I'm really a dog in disguise underneath these feathers. I jump up on laps for pats and push my head towards a hand that will pat me. I race to the car when my upright arrives home. I go crazy for treats and love helping my buddies retrieve a ball or sticks. See? I am a real dog aren't I?  Panda, don't you get your feathers ruffled...you're a good egg.Thanks for listening. Betty, the feathered dog |
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| lol - she is so cute! My chickens are free range and live amongst us, but not quite that tame  |
Lovely to see chickens ! I also have chickens and one is called Betty.  Our Betty is the little black one at the front! We have 7 right now as we lost 3 girls in the cold here but have eggs ready to hatch in the incubator. Our dogs are not allowed to Free range! but the chickens are ! Oes |
| So cute. I would love to have chickens but not allowed them in the city. Anyway would need a heated barn here for the winter. |
MontyQs wrote: So cute. I would love to have chickens but not allowed them in the city. Anyway would need a heated barn here for the winter. You probably would - we lost 3 lovely girls this winter through the bitter wind - we are on the coast and it just got so darn cold. It was not the temp but the wind chill that killed them. They tend to start to die at -8 but we only got to -5 and they never died here before from cold. I was so upset but then all the farms here have lost livestock due to the bad weather this year. So many have lost new lambs its such a shame. All the girls I lost were PRs ( Production reds) Which don;t have a lot of Fat coverage and then I lost my prized best hen a Speckled sussex but she was old and had a bad foot. They take a bit of work and a lot of loving! I am obcessed with them! This is me and Gerty she is a Marans  Oes |
| I totally enjoyed our chickens! The roosters were always a pain, but that's their job, to be obnoxious. |
| Our barn isn't heated- and mine do fine. They are in with the other animals, but it's not really overly warm, as there are doors open all the time to let the sheep go in and out. And we are plenty cold here in Minnesota - this was just less than a month ago:  If they can get out of the wind, stay dry and have plenty of fresh water (replaced as it freezes here pretty fast, even with warm water used) and sufficient feed with enough calories for them to burn, they do well. And a fun older picture from a few years ago -  |
| I really loved all the photos and stories of your feathered friends. Thanks everyone... ...probably should have a hen party some time! Oh stop me...been hanging around here and getting Ron's sense of humor. I'm sorry for the loss of some of the animals this year as some folks were hit with a harsh winter. Dawn that photo is amazing! Our winter this year was mild which was the good thing as I received 15 battery hen rescues in the summer but I kept them warm with a heat lamp. This is how I was rewarded by these girls and although I live in the city I'm allowed up to 15 on my property but no roosters allowed. I already had chickens ,so I'm over the limit but figure no one is going to tell on me as my neighbors love that my girls share their eggs. Here's a sample of what I get on a daily basis.  Marianne |
| PS Love that photo of Gerty and yourself! Marianne |
got sheep wrote: Our barn isn't heated- and mine do fine. They are in with the other animals, but it's not really overly warm, as there are doors open all the time to let the sheep go in and out. And we are plenty cold here in Minnesota - this was just less than a month ago: If they can get out of the wind, stay dry and have plenty of fresh water (replaced as it freezes here pretty fast, even with warm water used) and sufficient feed with enough calories for them to burn, they do well. And a fun older picture from a few years ago - I would imagine your winters are much colder than ours. Our birds are not used to the cold of late and it is so sad that a deal of our farms have lost a lot of livestock through the cold our animals here just don;t do that kind of cold! - the coldest March here since records began apparently. We are hoping to replanish the chickens we lost. They were older hens and probably more suseptable to the cold anyway. Your place does look lovely! Oes |
Guest wrote: I really loved all the photos and stories of your feathered friends. Thanks everyone... ...probably should have a hen party some time! Oh stop me...been hanging around here and getting Ron's sense of humor. I'm sorry for the loss of some of the animals this year as some folks were hit with a harsh winter. Dawn that photo is amazing! Our winter this year was mild which was the good thing as I received 15 battery hen rescues in the summer but I kept them warm with a heat lamp. This is how I was rewarded by these girls and although I live in the city I'm allowed up to 15 on my property but no roosters allowed. I already had chickens ,so I'm over the limit but figure no one is going to tell on me as my neighbors love that my girls share their eggs. Here's a sample of what I get on a daily basis. Marianne That is a great lot of eggs and lovely colours. - We get a lot of eggs too! DH does a deal of home baking here is a cake he made for our granddaughters 1st birthday!  This is the Easter cake he just made for her!  Having so many eggs in the house is brillient! We are working on more rare breeds and have had cream crested Legbars and now hopefully Silver grey Dorkings. The Marans lay lovely chocolate brown eggs. Oes |
| Eggs have taken over this post!! Our chickens are a mix. We used to have purebred show chickens - the kids showed them in 4-H. Most of ours now are mixed breeds, we got a bunch of them when Todd's parents died. They were a variety...now they are mostly black hens, with the roosters being a little more showy. A couple years ago we put French Maran eggs under one of hens with her own eggs - and she hatched the Marans out too. We used to use an incubator, but our broody hens do it now - much easier! We also have a banty flock amongst all the standard birds. We got them from a nearby school that hatches them out in the classroom in the spring - then at the end of the school year they come to us to live. Works out really well. Here is a bowl of assorted eggs I gathered one day last summer. The darkest ones (left and right side of the bowl) are from the Marans.  |
so the maran eggs have chocolate icing inside!!   |
| Ya gotta get some Araucanas and their blue eggs. Always fun to put one in a dozen and surprise folks. Yeah, when the girls were working, I got good at chiffon and Angel Food cake. The end came when Fox decided baby chicks and ducklings were good snacks. |
Cute story!  |
I'm sure Ru would eat a feathered dog if we had one  I think you should start Betty on obedience training... Sit... LAY...  |
| Ha Cassie! I'll have to work on that! I'm sure the boys would keep Ru in line should she ever visit as the boys are really protective of their little feathered buddies. Betty is pretty smart and would pick it up in no time. Although I had to doubt her sanity the first time she flew over a six foot chain link fence where the chickens were kept separate from the dogs. She hangs around with Snoop the Pitbull and the two of them are always together in the yard.(I always supervise however and never leave anything to chance) My heart did flip flops the first couple times she flew over the fence where her chicken friends were to hang out with the dogs but as with the bunnies ,cats, and guinea pigs they seem to know that these little guys are part of the pack and don't harass them. Of course saying that, this meant previous months of having them check each other out behind chain link and each dog assessed individually on leashes once the girls free ranged to see how they reacted. It took about a year for me to get comfortable to allow the chickens to free range with the dogs in the yard. They previously had been used to the bunnies being placed in a huge outdoor Mastiff cage which I bring them out in the summer or a moveable pen as I do with the guinea pigs. Betty sped things up however the day she flew over the fence and raced along side Snoop on his romp in the yard but he kept waiting for her to catch up and the two walked the paths together. I have a pic somewhere in my photos of the two of them. Yum! Those treats looked so delicious oes - you did an amazing job with those cakes! Your grand-daughter is lucky to have such a talented grandma! Blue eggs...that would be cool. I love packaging the boxes with assorted colors for the staff at my work and if I added blue eggs would make it look even better. (people at work and in the neighborhood started purchasing the eggs) which I just set aside for my chicken fund and spent it back 100% on them. As the first five were cruelty seizures from the SPCA and the other 15 were battery hens, their health wasn't the greatest although these were the same chickens that people purchase their eggs from in the grocery store. When I first got the hens, I added yogurt, flax seed, and good quality foods to their daily meals. After months of this, I finally took money for the eggs to purchase even more good stuff for the girls and even brought Penny to the vet and had 3 months of physio on her leg which was twisted as she grew up in a battery cage. All is good now...Penny walks! Betty with her Pitbull pal and Penny who now runs are the two that will be featured at the museum. Yup...feathered dogs really do make great pets and the bonus is the eggs! Betty is a red- star chicken and Penny is a white leg horn. Who woulda thought that I'd add egg seller as part of my long list of jobs? |
| Then I could have one of these wannabee dogs. Check it out ...it's only 29 seconds long and worth watching! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10 ... =2&theater |
| Love the pictures and stories! Cindy |
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