Well, we decided to give Craigslist chickens another shot. In the wake of the tragic raccoon episode, I have been missing my chickens and eggs and we need to replenish the flock. I’m happy to report that this experience went remarkably better than the last Craigslist chicken fiasco (See post from 1/11/2019), but was still not ideal. For starters, we were dealing with farmers, not trailer trash. A traditional looking farmer’s wife, with an ankle length skirt and a bun in her hair met us in the driveway and led us back to the chicken coop. The ten red hens are lively and look better than the barred rock chickens when we got them, but they still possess some haggard characteristics. Some of them have chicken shit on their backs like they roosted below other birds and one is missing a devastating amount of feathers around its neck. Its hideous. You can totally see a full 360 of pale chicken skin on this thing. It’s pretty hard to take. I read that neck pecking occurs due to stress, boredom, or protein deficiency, so hopefully we can right whatever was wrong and they will grow back…because it’s pretty gross. Once we got the new girls into the coop, we were surprised to find that the barred rocks were not aggressive toward them. They all seemed to acclimate really well. The first order of business for the newbies was to get straight into major sawdust bathing. They were totally on top of getting that chicken shit off their backs. My barred rocks have come a long way at Keewaydin. They really do look like show chickens compared to these ladies.

~Joy