RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Thursday, October 1

October O.C.D. #1: Backyard Fowl Studies

My chickens have started to lay some eggs, making them worth more while than just me sitting there looking at them with keen interest. Which I could do all day to be honest. People have those corny fake fish tank screen savers, you know? I want one that's just chickens walking around a pen. Both white leghorns are regularly laying their solidly egg-like eggs, pretty much daily. The moody ass americauna has started dropping her green eggs, not as regularly as the leghorns (white chickens work harder, am I right?), but steadily. And we got one brown egg a couple days ago, waiting on the second. I also suspect whatever red laid the brown egg was the one that dropped the alien shell-less egg that freaked me out last week one morning.
The strange thing is, I know for sure the one americauna is a roo; he does big country ass cockadoodledoos now when I walk out in the morning. That's a tight style, and I enjoy looking across my oddly piled back yard at the sound through the cool ass fall mornings we've been catching the past two weeks. And from the eggs, I know for sure, four of the other out the 11-chicken flock are hens. I am working under the assumption both my other reds are hens, and the pair of australorps and buff orpingtons, I think there's one hen definite out each pair and one question mark that I'd been leaning towards hen. Until today. The buff orpington we call Dixie (get it, "be my Dixie chicken", which was playing in the back yard speaker when I was watching them one day), my wife said, mounted one of the hens. So I go out to kick it and watch these birds, as I love watching the birds, and the two australorps (which are black, but have these subtle dark greenish/bluish feathers in the mix, very pimp ass) are fake fighting, ruffled neck feathers, jumping up with the twist where, throwing legs. Then Dixie rolled over and busted up their little fight by doing the same. And honestly, I am no beast of a man, but seeing a pair of chickens stick out their neck feathers and ninja jump at each other, it's a crazy and beautiful and energy-inducing sight. I can understand the attraction to gamefighting. Although the whole adding steel gaffes bullshit is kinda disturbing. Why can't we just have civilized all-natural as-gods-intended chicken fights, like poultry mixed martial arts?
But now I've got to spend some free time tomorrow hanging out by the chicken pen and figuring out if they'll all get along and whether I need to relocate Dixie, because our other rooster, named Arishkagol, he's a classic. I bought him off a Christian dude who said he was a hen, but if not, because no one can tell, I could bring him back. But Arishkagol is a beautiful fucking rooster. And he's thick as shit too, like a cock diesel ass little gangsta of a chicken. I can probably have hundreds and hundreds of chickens for the rest of my human life hanging with farm fowl, and Arishkagol will be a Hall of Famer, guaranteed. He's americauna, meaning all mixed feathers, but he's got a black throat with these long skinny gold feathers on the back coming around the side, like a mullet. But I told everybody (meaning my wife and kids - I lead a sheltered social life) that if one of the buff orps turned out to be a rooster we'd never get rid of it, because buff orpingtons are nature's pimps. I guess I'm gonna have to take this pen we already have and put a new door on it since I snaked the door from it a couple years ago for a goat pen and throw in a nesting box to make it rooster acceptable.
And while all this chicken dynamic is unfurling itself for my enjoyment, I also have a chicken tractor full of five guineas, who make a big fuss, and went back on lockdown after freedom to roam the yard because they were fucking up the chicken area. I put new wheels on the chicken tractor to make it roll easy, wheels I snaked from the dump off a lawn mower, but the tractor contraption still won't roll over this dip in our yard, so I've been waiting to kick it with someone to con them into helping me move it to the other side of our back yard (two-and-a-half acres ain't really a yard I guess) so, hopefully, the guineas reattach themselves inside the chicken tractor to that corner of the property and won't wander back to the chickens and fuck up their chicken game they got going on, pumping out the eggs, as well as the visual entertainment. Guineas are not fun to watch. They stink and are stupid. But they eat ticks. Basically, on this earth, if ticks didn't suck so fucking much as a pest (one powered by our evil government with Lyme disease to cause more damage than ever before), guineas would be useless. Settling the guineas means three more weeks, once I get the chicken tractor in the right spot, of their confinement to feel homed again. Fucking guineas; they are annoying.
By the way, in case I never mentioned to this to you (as if you, the internet, was a friend, who remembered what I typed into your brain directly), we have one white guinea and four regular looking ones. White guineas basically look extra retarded (with guineas looking retarded already). But we named our white guinea Carmela, and the other four are named Tony, Paulie, Sylvio, and Furio. I have no clue how to tell them apart, but that's all their names. Because they are guineas. I do feel sad for Italians if that disparaging term came from the actual guinea bird, because no human ethnicity should be considered that stupid and ugly in my opinion.

3 comments:

Steve said...

"And honestly, I am no beast of a man, but seeing a pair of chickens stick out their neck feathers and ninja jump at each other, it's a crazy and beautiful and energy-inducing sight. I can understand the attraction to gamefighting. Although the whole adding steel gaffes bullshit is kinda disturbing. Why can't we just have civilized all-natural as-gods-intended chicken fights, like poultry mixed martial arts?"

Genius.

I never thought I'd enjoy reading about chickens so much. Sounds like you got a good life there.

Unknown said...

Being born poor has nothing to do with learning some cultural training If you are so into computers etc, you can easily learn to write and talk like you have some cultural intelligence. Anyway good luck to you, have fun with the chickens, and try to keep the language clean so you do not look like a loser

Raven Mack said...

haha, okay.