She's a chicken, not a stripper.

After we lost one of the Lizard Twins, we knew we needed to get another chicken, as we were at the four-hen count and that’s not good. As revealed in an earlier post, we like to keep the number uneven. It’s our way of assuring each other we’ll never part – who would get the fifth chicken?

I headed to the Feed Barn to see what they had. We like the Feed Barn because we don’t want to be in the business of raising chicks, and they usually have several chickens at the four or five month stage. A hen that age is bigger, which helps minimize that pecking order problem, and she’ll be laying at about six months. They are always able to tell me the date of birth of the hen, which shows on the receipt along with the breed.

My requirements were specific. I wanted the oldest hen available which was also the heartiest in our extreme summer heat. I told the owner what I was looking for, and he that I was different; most people choose chickens by their looks. I was feeling very brainy. Then he told me that the best chicken for our weather are the Naked Necks. They are named that because they have no feathers on their necks and about 50% fewer feathers overall. They are not pretty. Please don’t have any Naked Necks, please don’t have any Naked Necks. I want a pretty hen. I am not that brainy or different, after all.

He didn’t have any Naked Necks. But he had a very interesting hybrid – a cross between a Rhode Island Red (which is what the Lizard Twin is) and a Barred-Star (these are the beautiful black and white speckled hens, much like the Barred-Rock.) He got her out of the cage and opened her wings and I felt her neck while I told him about Lizard One’s fluid build-up and we discussed possible causes. We talked about the heartiness of hybrid chickens, and then I asked what her breed is. He said a Black Sex Link. Really? When I paid, the receipt said Black Sex Link. Huh.

When I got her home I took a picture of her and sent it to Bill at work. He texted back, what is her breed? I replied, Black Sex Link, and no, it’s not a porn site. He loved it and said I should give her a stripper name, but I didn’t want a chicken named Destiny, Angel or Candy.

We named her Lucky. She is our seventh chicken, and what a lucky girl she is to be out of a cage and padding around on soft grass. She must be happy to be able to stretch her legs. She RUNS the length of the yard. Always applying airline terms, Bill says she’s been cleared to do a fast taxi.

Hensence: The owner told me to keep the new hen away from the others and introduce her to them at night, after the hens are in the coop. We did that and it seemed to help a bit in the pecking order game.

News from the yard

What a busy spring it was for our family. But the chickens didn’t seem to notice.
While we were madly careening through the last months of school, hammering on grades with tutors, juggling football (yes, the new year-round sport), workouts, personal trainers, knee surgery, driver’s education and flights to San Francisco every week for work, the chickens didn’t care. They were just busy being chickens.

While my blog responsibilities piled up, I felt too guilty to post my thoughts because my clients follow and there was ALWAYS something I owed someone. During this crazy time I thought about how stressed we were inside the house and how stress-free they were out in the yard. The spring was cool and nice, and everyone was getting along. Cori started laying pretty little green eggs right on schedule and somehow that makes her all grown up in the other hens’ opinion.

There were some days where we had maximum production; five eggs a day! School finally ended at the same day asmy big San Francisco project, and in one day we went from overdrive to summer vacation. My sister Debbie stopped by one afternoon and found me in the back yard with the chickens. While we were talking, I noticed one of the Lizard Twins was breathing heavy and had fluid build-up in her neck. It’s possible she got something stuck in her crop. I researched possible issues but we didn’t find anything that described her symptoms. Two days later, she died.

I felt terrible that I didn’t know what to do for her. I visited with Dottie at Western Ranchman and she sold me a book with great information, but our best resource to date has been blogs where people share their common sense.

Beginning with this post, I’ll be adding our tips and advice in a section called Hensense. Hopefully something I pass on will help someone else. We were sad to lose one of our big, beefy chickens. The Reds had gotten so big we changed their name to “47 Heavy”, which is the term the airline pilots of the jumbo jets like FedEx and China Air use when speaking to the tower, so they’ll have extra room when taking off. Our remaining 47 Heavy is, without a doubt, in charge in the yard, but there is no way she’ll ever get off the ground.

Hensense: I now know to add a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to water or use a dropper of olive oil with a neck massage helps a chicken who may have something caught in the crop.