Wednesday, December 9, 2009
I have enough chickens....oh wait...maybe not
Just when I thought we were done with chickens other than the 12 layers, I got the call from the neighbor. After I took the fencing and posts a few months ago, he decided to keep his birds with a small 4x8 pen area and let them free range most of the time. Well....as I expected, he got tired of taking care of them, and his wife got even too ****ing lazy to get off the couch long enough to search for eggs. As we were rounding up the birds, we found 18 in a cooler that was laying on it's side, 11 in a truck cap, and 3 in the henhouse I made for him this spring. None had birds on or near them, none were warm telling us they were fresh laid, so......not having a clue how long any of these eggs had been out there, all of them went straight to his trash. 32 eggs, what a waste of time. As much as I was disgusted by that, it really didn't surprise me. This is the same guy who refuses to buy any kind of chicken feed and tosses them the same "Ole Roy" that he feeds his dogs. That stuff is absolute garbage, horrible food that I wouldn't feed our dogs if it was free. *SIGH* can you tell I have no patieice with this guy anymore? Geez. Anyway.....he decides to keep the three mixed breed game hens and the one rooster for some reason, so I came home with 8 more free laying hens. All of them are young birds born this year, so they're still laying strong even with the onset of cold weather. I put them in the smaller half of the chicken run where the roosters were before they went to the freezer, and took straight for the feed & waterer. I figured they may have been upset over being caught, wrestled into a cage, drug across a field, and tossed into a house and run they weren't familiar with, but they've given 4 eggs already today (sunday) and seem relaxed and at home. Yea....I imagine readily available food and water would be a nice thing to have, even to a chicken. Yanno...I like the guy but I really hope he doesn't get any other animals next year.
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8 comments:
Unfortunately, I know of a few people who tend to treat animals like that. We inherited a pet bunny, a turtle and a bird over the years. Those birds probably ran for the food and water because they recognized good nutrition when it was offered! They were probably high-fiving eachother once you left the pen because they have finally lucked out and found a good place to live!
What a shame there are people out there who like the "idea" of playing farm but don't like the work. Those poor birds were probably starved to death and love their new home with great chicken food. You are a good man for taking them in...plus they were free!! yea! Merry Christmas!...debbie
His loss... So when is he going to get tired of his generator or something and need you to take it off his hands?
Congrats!
Yea! Free chickens. You and the chickens got the best of that deal. I'm with you, I hate when people get animals that they can't take care of. Any animal.
I'm so glad to hear the hens got a good home. (I am secretly hoping he decides to give you the rest of his chickens) ;-)
You can float eggs to find out if they are still good. Even in a pen ours still sometimes find an out of the way place to lay an egg and that's how we test them.
I didn't want to bother wasting the time to test the eggs, I just wanted to get the hens home and out of there. They weren't exactly abused, but feeding them that horrible dog food was definitly not right. We're getting 9-11 eggs a day now from this expanded flock, even in this cold weather..yay me! Last time we talked, he mentioned getting rabbits...suppose I better make room for those too.
Guntard, you'd be surprised at the things this guy gets and gives away. So far I've gotten FOUR coleman lanterns from him. Two propane lanterns "didnt work" and just needed mantles, and the fuel ones he was afraid to use. Right now I am trying to work out a trade for a 410 pump he has, looks like I'll get it for a $25 homelite garage sale chainsaw I have laying around, lol.
You've got 8 new eggs per day, 8 new chicken dinners in the future and thank goodness you're there and had the set-up to take them. Not everyone should take care of animals!!!
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