I think I’m going to call her Adie.
Short for Arrested Development. And when I cull out the other defective/unproductive hens, I think I’m going to let her live. Why not? She doesn’t eat much, she doesn’t have hardly any meat on her bones anyway, and she likes me. Which makes her very unusual among chickens. Follows me around pecking my leg and demanding to be picked up and carried. Hates it when I ignore her. All the other chickens love it when I ignore them.
Now, a suburbanite with a backyard flock wouldn’t find that the least bit weird. A lot of them don’t cull chickens at all, I’m told. But I have to admit I’m a little shame-faced about it.
At least I can console myself that I’m not this guy. That’s taking chicken-related weirdness to a level I do not plan to explore. Can you imagine what his deck looks like?
18th century mariners used to routinely bring chickens along because eggs. But they used cages and didn’t make pets of them.
h/t Landlady
I think that’s sweet! When we had birds, I never developed any fondness for the chickens, but I did have a favorite goose pair(Flo and Bob) and a couple of favorite ducks. One never knows who will take a shine to you or why. But I was never tempted to take any of them into the house or on road trips. You just continue to make all of this sound so much more fun and interesting than it was when we were doing it. 😉
You must have been a zookeeper in a past life or something. Those guys were forever adopting things they shouldn’t have.
In one case they had a fully grown, old age bat that had an issue with a wing. The vets amputated both wings so it would not try and fly. Everyday at 8am, noon and around dinner time a keeper would go and unhook it from it’s bar, let it walk around, have some water and a bit of food then hang it up again and leave. They did this for 3 years until it expired. I asked why and a keeper told me aside from the wing issue it was healthy. I pointed out the cost in resources (keeper time, food, vet treatment etc.) and was told… But it was our friend.