Everybody Wants to Be a Chicken

Over these past several weeks, I have been privileged to observe animal behaviors, the most amusing of which are behaviors that we typically associate with an animal other than the one performing the action.

Exhibit A:  One day when I was cleaning all the goat poop off their feeding trough (ewww, I know), I tipped it over to facilitate my cleaning and discover a hidden chicken roost.  Evidently, the chickens had been stealing away to the goat trough to lay their eggs underneath it.  I mean, there must have been more over a dozen eggs stashed under there, those sneaky chickens!  Thenceforth, I included it in my daily duties of egg collecting to check under the trough.  One of those days, I knelt down and reached under the trough to retrieve any eggs only to find Sunny, the creamy yellow colored cat sitting on top of the eggs!  When he knew he was found out, Sunny ran for it and I have not since caught him trying to hatch any eggs.  Part of me still wonders if a cat could hatch a chicken's egg. . .

Exhibit B:  I have already described how Luna, that playful young cow, at times behaves like a dog.  She frolics, she loves to be scratched behind the ears (as I've discovered most cows do), she will even come up to me to rub her head on me, insisting on a good petting.  Now is the time to tell of another cow, a couple other cows as a matter of fact, Autumn, the sweat, affectionate, very social and loves people cow, and Princes the much bigger and much less friendly, distant cow.  As I was walking home through the field in which they graze (mostly just to say hello to my Awesome Autumn), I caught Princess grooming Autumn.  Now I know cats groom each other, and I know apes and chimps and other such primates groom each other, but it had never occurred to me that cows groom each other too.  Princess was in full lick-down mode on Autumn's neck area, which makes sense I guess, since I am fairly certain that cows cannot reach their own necks for cleaning.

Exhibit C:  This story involves some prerequisite information.  In the state of Indiana (or at least in this area, I'm not sure if it's state-wide), it is currently illegal to keep chickens in your back yard if you live in the city limits.  Around here, people who wish to have backyard chickens have been campaigning and working with their local politicians to pass an ordinance allowing people to raise chickens in their backyard.  People choose or desire to keep chickens in their backyard for various reasons, including economical ones; a healthy chicken will lay approximately one egg a day, times that by, say, twelve chickens, and you get a fresh dozen every day.  Although the pro-chicken discussion is well underway, it is at the moment still illegal.  Quite recently a couple who were keeping backyard chickens got busted and had to get rid of their chickens (there are 24 of them plus a duck; I imagine that many would be a bit difficult to conceal in town) so they called Charlotte and a few days later Prairie Winds Farm was the happy home of 24 new chickens and a boy duck.  That day as we were moving the chickens from the truck cage to the grazing coop-mobile-thingy, I not only learned how to grab a chicken (by their feet and upside-down so they don't flap around and hurt themselves or you; it's similar to grabbing a cat by the scruff--it doesn't hurt them and makes them less likely to hurt you), but also I got thoroughly covered in chicken poop.

Chicken poop, however is not the point of this story; the point of this story is Duncan, as I decided to call him.  Duncan the Duck.  Duncan came with the chickens; he was raised and grew up with these chickens.  It follows logically, or psychologically, that he believed he was a chicken and he would not be separated from his dear chickie friends.  We tried to keep him separated from them, but he just wallowed and waddled around their cage, crying to be let in and he paid absolutely no attention to the two female ducks roaming around the farm.  It was pitiful.  So pitiful that Charlotte gave in and let him back in with his friends.  We tried to integrate him with his duck-hood psychologically and physically a few days later.  At first he just stayed close to his chicken friends, but then we purposely set him near the two other ducks; many times we had to chase him back to his species companions.  By the end of the day, we were fairly confident that Duncan realized that he was not a chicken that he was, in fact, a duck.  He is as happy a duck as he was a chicken, more so even, and we are happy too because now that we have a male duck to go with our females, we can have ducklings!