Some of you will think I'm weird (and you'd be right) but I love watching a society of hens interacting with one another, scratching for bugs or weeds, taking dirt baths, making funny crooning noises and talking to one another. I find it soothing - like meditating.Someone, in an attached comment, chided me for anthromorphizing chickens and then discussed their mating practices.
I'm not sure exactly where this person thought I was likening chickens to people. Was it because I called it a society, instead of a flock, or because my experience of watching them produced a release of endorphins in my brain?
Perhaps the misunderstanding lies in the fact that I was describing a society of HENS (female chickens) and the respondent was describing roosters who seem to rape the hens.
Those of us who raise chickens in this neighborhood (classified as a suburb) have only hens. We wouldn't want to annoy our neighbors with roosters who feel compelled to get up at the crack of dawn and wake up everyone else.
We don't get up with the chickens here.
My two Rhode Island Reds are now 2 weeks old. They are rapidly growing and they have wing and tail feathers and the tiny beginnings of combs on their heads (not visible to the camera yet).
The cats are fascinated by them, but won't be allowed to mingle with them until the chickens are large enough to discourage predation.
