I have not been too stoked with this world, at least not the people part of it. Seems like a bunch of snakes and fakes and flakes and folks sucking the energy right out of me half the time. If someone's not posturing beyond their knowledge about some dumb shit I don't even care about, then some other person is getting things all twisted and retardified in their own head and forcing that drama triangle on me. (Drama triangle is this bullshit where someone always has others positioned either as friend or oppressor, and usually they switch you back and forth as necessary, like say they are trying to work things out with their wife over some long-term problems, instead of facing the issues inside of themselves, they switch you over to the oppressor and a lot of their problems with the former oppressor were because of you. Some folks be so melodramatic in abundance it's more like a drama dodecahadrangle or some bullshit.)
Anyways, I solved my socialization problems and hate for the world by building a pimp-ass chicken coop, absconding a chicken tractor from some folks in a barter deal my wife did, and getting me some chicks, who will hopefully be more hen than rooster (which is a fucking retarded dead art in itself, of which I'm no good at at all, and every person you ask has some other bullshit chick dangling foot watching mountaintop science to try and teach you in 37 words). So I think I will talk about chicken breeds, both the ones I have and the ones I'd like to get, and all the stupid things I've learned immersing myself in true retarded ass Raven fashion in the written world of chicken "knowledge". (By the way, there are crazy amounts of backyard chicken websites/blogs/and even message boards. Most of them disturb me, though I do lurk and learn, and one even has this impressive very-internet-like nerd project of documenting how chickens of all breeds look at almost any age - from days to weeks to months - of both sexes to give visual aid in sexing chicks. Of course, it's unfinished, because this is the internet after all. Also, "sexing chicks" seemed to me a very dangerous google search to do on the family computer instead of my little laptop disease machine of stolen music and questionable image searches, but not that much creepy shit came up. I may have changed google settings on that computer without remembering though, as my oldest kid always likes to be trying to go onto americangirl.com and look at shit we can't afford.)
First chicks I got were from some scowl-faced short ass redneck near where I grew up. He and his ol' lady had a trailer with like two big sheds behind the place full of chicks and chickens, and it was right down the road from where my dead grandpa's house is, of which the roof I'm supposed to paint, so it gave me an excuse to go look at that roof, miss my grandpa, see a skunk under the back porch, and think about how much I fucking hate painting, especially stupid metal roofs in the age of global warming my ass the fuck up on top of metal on top of buildings on top of the surface of the earth. Anyways, little scowl-faced dude in overalls (like me actually, which was mad funny to me, and I think what pissed him off, like that was his country style or some bullshit, or I don't know maybe we went to school together and I was all fucked up on acid or something at a party and dissed him or something, who the fuck knows with country folk; we hold bizarre grudges stubbornly hard for the stupidest of reasons) picked me out what he suspected were hens, though it's hard to know at that age. Got me three 5-week-old Rhode Island Reds and two 3-week-old Leghorns, basically on his insinuation that Leghorns outlay the Reds (known in chicken nerd world as "RIR"s). I actually started building my coop after situating all these little dudes in the chicken tractor, and when I was almost done, like one good solid day of work finishing the fencing, I went to some Jesus freak chiropractor cowboy dude's house I got off of ebay and got myself a pair of Ameracaunas about 10-weeks old. He had no idea about sexing them (probably because of his god), but he told me if one was a rooster he'd replace it, but if both were, he'd only replace one. I figure fuck it, if they end up a rooster we'll eat them, which will prepare me for doing a flock of meatbirds later this summer. I'd rather my first couple chicken slaughters be one or two at a time than jumping into doing a whole batch of 25, although maybe the speaker I have permanently set up in the back yard could be pointed toward the slaughtering area and I could just pump The Ultra-Violence by Death Angel and get my chicken slaughter on. Finally, the other day after ballet class with the kids in my truck, I swung by a lady's house and she was a Shifflett (which is a whole slew of local people who are like an army of Jesco Whites who were run off the Shenandoah Mountains by the federales when they built the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park and all, so the Shiffletts are a strange, outlaw bunch) and I picked out two 3-week-old Buff Orpingtons and two 3-week-old Australorps. So here is what I have to say about chicken breeds, first the ones I've got, and then others I hope to get into.
RHODE ISLAND REDS - These are standard red-assed chickens you always see and they lay big brown eggs pretty regularly it seems. Mine are now about 8-weeks old I think, and one I'm almost completely certain is a hen, the other two I'm not sure about, leaning hard hen on one and hard rooster on the other. Very functional animals and have a chill personality so far it seems. They remind me of the type of guys who work for themselves and like to play horseshoes while high but also lead cub scout troops or coach t-ball or something like that. I think if we keep a flock of around 12 to 20 birds, I will always have 3 or 4 of these guys, especially considering their egg-laying reputation.
WHITE LEGHORNS - These are the main commercial layers of all those white assed eggs you get at the store, which I think makes the do-it-yourself type playa hate on them. There also, for some reason, is a big deal about brown eggs being superior over white eggs, and I'm not sure if there's truth to it or it's just misplaced white guilt or retarded hippie nonsense, but I do know the Leghorns aren't supposed to get as big as the RIRs so they probably don't lay as big an egg. Still, an egg a day ain't uncommon for these dudes. And they look very normal chickeny too. I guess I am operating my flock like a game of Sim City in that I want a good amount of regular people shit going on and not just crazy fucked up birds everywhere. I also know from my brief consultations with internet nerd chicken world on some breed history site that White Leghorns were highly cherished in ancient Rome and used to foretell the future. So I like to pretend that involves them being super-mental chickens and not just something that was sliced open in a cave on a mountainside to spill it's blood and see what the gods wanted us to know.
AMERACAUNAS - They lay colored eggs, and my wife named these two some fucked up Russian names or something. One of them is most definitely a hen and the other I don't know. It looks like a hen, no real heavy comb or arrowhead ass feathers or anything, but it's aggressive and bossy to the other birds. It was also by far the biggest of the bunch until the one probably rooster RIR caught up to it in the last week, so maybe it's just got a big chicken in the coop complex going on. These are strange birds, therefore I like them. Apparently, true araucanas came from Chile and most every bird in America called araucana or ameracauna is a fake ass mutt hybrid that lays colored eggs and the true araucanas are impossible to find for real though.
BUFF ORPINGTONS - Straight pimps of the chicken world, with a tight ass cream feather color and goofy fluff to their tails. Mine are too young to sex (that's what she said), but one has the demeanor of a pimp ass rooster. Most of these, if they end up roosters, they will end up stuffed with rosemary and cooked in my oven, but I'd be tempted to keep a pimp ass straight gangsta funk looking buff orpington rooster. (I also apparently decided to stop capitalizing rooster breeds halfway through this post, as rhode island reds use of a geographical place confused me.)
AUSTRALORPS - These were bred by some mad scientist in Australia and were called Australian Laying chickens, but everyone put the -orp on the end so you knew they came from orpingtons, and they were called australorps and now you know the rest of the story. Mine are small, like 3-weeks, and they hang with the buff orps so I don't even notice them really, little ugly ass black chicks.
BLACK STARS - Basically, there are two types of chickens called red sex links and black sex links that are called so because you know what sex the chick is when it's born by the color of it's feathers. This shit was done in the mid '70s in mad science fashion, but I hate that term "sex link" for a chicken. They are also called red stars and black stars too, probably by uptight people who don't like to say "sex", which I'm fine with in this case. Mostly, this is because I have had a large west African fetish the past year or two, searching out bullshit rap and old funk and crap like that (if you want to buy me a present, get me Extreme Canvas by some dude, about Ghanaiananaan handmade movie posters for VCR movie theaters they used to have back in the day). Anyways, Ghana was the first African country to get independence, and they have the standard red yellow green (or is it black?) striped flag like a ton of African countries, but with a black star in the middle of the center yellow stripe. So since then, Ghana has had Black Star culture, where dudes who are on the come-up, or the national soccer team, or a song by English rapper Sway, is called "Black Star". Thus, I want some black stars.
BROWN LEGHORNS - They have a pretty odd wacky colorful feather patch on their front ends, kinda psychedelic, and I've been listening to a lot of Hawkwind and 13th Floor Elevators in the darkness of my backyard lately as the fireflies crank up, so I think I'm pretty down with psychedelic chickens. Maybe I'll crack open one of those glow sticks and pour it over them and watch them bug out.
There's more but the second bell rang so I've got to make it to algebra real quick.
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