Rescue Journal

not much going on around here...and i think that is pretty darn good.

Carol  ·  Sep. 4, 2012

nugget is getting pretty big...gosh little baby chicks grow up fast! probably next week i will try her in with charley and hope they bond, then i can build charley a real handicapped accessible chicken coop and outside pen cuz he will have a safe chicken friend to live with.

anyway that is the plan...put them together while nugget is still young but not too small to get hurt and hope that by finishing growing up with a crippled bird, she accepts him as he is.

apparently now i am a chicken psychologist (i could maybe someday write a paper on how to stop chickens from cannabalizing the weaker ones!)

abbey is doing good..she is starting to beg for food like all good and hungry labs should. nice to see her brain is working better..she is a super nice dog!

blech! mya is laying under the computer desk on the karunda bed, sloppily but happily licking my feet and legs..thank god i am planning on bathing tonight...yuck.
i will let them lick me cuz for some reason it is important to them but quite frankly, i think the whole canine practice of cheerfully licking pretty much anything or anyone they like, is pretty damn gross.
and this would be why i like standoffish northern dogs, emotionally they don't have to obsessively suck up or need to lick me to feel good about themselves. but....northern dogs (and beagles!) feel good inside by getting away with doing bad stuff like.... stealing food, ignoring you, escaping and running away, digging holes and chewing thru the freshly painted doors and walls.

sigh..all dogs have their good and bad points i suppose...and that is why i REALLY like sheep. they don't make much noise, they don't insist of sleeping on my bed, they have no interest in the big wide world, you only have to shave them and trim their hooves once a year, they never do bad stuff ever and they never lick me either.

next life i am only rescuing sheep.

ok...my feet needing de-dog slobbering, time for a nice bombed out bath!

Comments

Carol

charley has always stayed at that end of the cage, even before the chick came, he can see better there. he also could seriously injure the chick, it is a mistake to assume he feels any kind of love for nugget...he could just as easily feel threatend once they are together without wire separating them.
chickens and roosters do not think like we do. i watched jerome peck out rusty's eye after living in companionable peace for 4 years because suddenly rusty got old and jerome knew he could finally take him and become the top rooster. and how many times have i had to pull out one of the classy chicks when the others as a group suddenly turned on someone?

loretta was the last one i pulled out when the group started to peck her...she lives in peace with crosy because crosby is so much bigger than her, but as soon as i tried to put charley in there with them, she immediately tried to kill him.

it is important to understand that animals are not humans..they function under a totally different set of nature and survival rules than we do.
and chickens are not by nature kind and compassionate and nurturing creatures.
they are highly competitive and have their own way of determining the pecking order in their flocks...and sometimes their way is pretty brutal.

if we are lucky..charley will accept nugget and as nugget gets older, he/she will accept charley and his crippledness...if we are not lucky...one may try to kill the other.



that is the reality of chickens.

Penny

Charley loves Nugget, he's very protective of him/her (how do you tell the sex of a tiny chicken?) and stays as close as he can to Nugget's cage. Hopefully the bonding will work. Charley is super-sweet.