What I've Learned

I've learned a lot about chickens and their keepers in the last couple of months.  When I inquired about chickens at the feed store they gave me a number for a lady in Golden Valley.  All she had was Barred Rocks.  I went to look.  As we pulled up we thought, hmmm, live in the middle of nowhere and looked like squatters.  But they were nice people and we took home three chickens.  I thought: I'll get more from somewhere else.  But after I got home, I decided to go ahead and get three more from them.  First, because they were all the same age and were already together so they should get along.  Yes, there is a pecking order.  Sylvie is the boss, Cecile is next, and thirdly, Hazel.  The two smallest ones are almost caught up in size are Vera and Cleo.  Lastly, is Ruby, she does her own thing and even roosts with the newest ones.  But, I digress.

My six are growing up and doing well.  Then, I find a lady on Craig's List who has chickens for sale so we make a trip to Havasu Heights to look.  She has a price of $10 for the Auracana's and are supposed to be 1-1/2 years old and it said $25 for Red Star's.  I was going to get two and she dropped the price to $5 each.  She led me into the coop to pick which ones I wanted. 

Hindsight is Foresight.

When we pulled up to this place, we thought, wow, this is nice.  It was like a compound.  House on the hill with adobe walls, another building below also adobe, a circular pen with citrus trees and lots of desert tortoise, and to the left two more covered caged areas also with adobe sides.  Wow, nice!  Then we go in to pick chickens.  She grabbed a long metal rod with a hook on the end and started grabbing chickens by the leg and held them upside down.  That should have been my first clue!  Go to a nice place and you get chickens with problems.  I got my three new ones here.
My friend Sandy discovered bumble foot as we know in my previous posts.  Look at mine: feet good on the six barred rocks, two of the new ones have it bad.  So, we are doing surgery on Wednesday afternoon.  I'll take pictures.

Next, I'm reading one of the chicken blogs this morning and it says to tell if a hen is laying look at their vent.  So, while I'm out putting Vaseline on the new chickens legs just in case, I decide to look at vents.  A laying hen has a nice moist, pink vent, an old hen has tan, wrinkly vent.  So, Red is an older chicken and probably not laying.  Okay, on to the Auracana's, can't find the vent on Princess, will look again later, but when I got to Queenie, crap!  We have lice, great!  Now I have to clean out the pen, find bug killer, etc...  Also, I should do this before we do foot surgery, right?  Guess who works every day until and including the day of surgery.  I'm going to try and get my hours changed for tomorrow so we can get the coop and hens taken care of so the bug free zone is starting to be in effect before SURGERY!

What have I learned?  The first feeling I had when that lady got out that hook and was being so mean to her chickens was run the other way.  I should have, but HINDSIGHT IS FORESIGHT!   I will know better next time!  My girls have never had that done to them and they will never have that kind of treatment.  My new girls will adjust and be taken care of. :)