Hey what is it with that chicken?
We have a pen full of Red Broiler chickens, bred for meat production, they don’t grow as quickly or have the health problems of Cornish Cross, but they do get larger faster then some of the other breeds, say a chicken hatched here on the farm, by a duck.
You may recall the earlier posting of the duck that surprised us by sitting on a nest of chicken eggs. Rick had taken all the duck eggs out of the nest, but the ducks accomplice, Henny Penny, replaced them with chicken eggs. A few weeks later we figured it out when we saw a little chick under the duck.
At the time we thought there might be a slow hatch out of chicks, but that wasn’t the way it turned out. Eventually all the eggs disappeared and no more chicks appeared. Still there was that one little orphan chick, alone under a light in a brooder box, unhappy, complaining, chirping a sad song, hence the name “Cranky”.
Our idea was to give Cranky some friends, three of the red broilers (all named Rudy). Cranky settled down, no more complaining.
Eventually Cranky and the three “Rudies” were all reunited with the other 23 chicks. Continue reading “Cranky”
