Chickens (Edited)

Chickens. before october of 06 the word chicken would mean to me the meat that alot of people eat not including me. chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, chicken breast, chicken wings, the list is endless and don't forget about the time old saying "tastes like chicken". but since than the word chicken now means somewthing different to me. Now to me it means cute fluffly babies and light and cheeps and smell while i'm trying to sleep and builing a coop in my backyard with my dad and friends and giving away my oldest chicken that i got and raised in October of 06 to a poultry friend so that i could get two more babies for their cuteness that lastes about a day and their smell and noise and the light in the midle of the night. i now have four chickens. but i will write about all 7 that i have had.

Jazmine
It started with a little yellow/white fluffly chick. I named her Jazmine. A light Brahma is a big feather-legged breed (that means she has feathers on her feet). But being the amautur chicken raisers that we were (and still am)we did not know how big she would get. the first time i brooded (raised from a chick) a chicken was nice. she was sooo cute. yea ok blah blah blah you don't want her whole life storybut i guess you can scroll down to the next one then. ok i raised here and when she got old enough we put her in a coop at a ranch( more later in Skittles' story on the coop) with some other chickens. ok blah blah she was there for a while until she started losing feathers on the back of her neck. so we took her out and kept her at home until they grew back. (Btw we had gone through skittles and now had Kansas and Kloie) but ended up kepping her at home forever. we built a coop for her and Kansas and Kloie. When Kansas and Kloie were big enough and the coop was completed and painted red we put them all in it. about 5 months later jazmine feet started to lose feathers and become bleedy. we took her out and built a temporary coop for her and kept her in it til the feathers grew back. we put her back in and within an hour she was bleeding again. so we put her back in the temporary coop and eventually we gave her away because chickens aren't meant to live alone and feather legged was too much of a hassle. We vowed to from then on get only clean legged. we gave her to a friend who currently has her in with his 1 month old chicks and they get along fine. ok on to the next chicken

Skittles.
he has a story too. yes HE. we gave him away to a family some of you will know with 9 kids. ok so i was cleaning a coop that my pultry project shares and someone came over and asked us if we were missing any chickens. we said no why and they said they had seen a couple of chickens near the pond close by.( Btw this is at the ranch called Bernal Gulnac ranch or something) so we went to check it out and sure enough there were a bunch actually of chickens walking around. there was one male and like 4 adult females and like 6 babies.(later we also found some eggs.) so we worked for like two hours until it got too dark to see. we caught the male(very pretty with big long spurs[big talons on the back of the leg used for fighting.] and a beautiful green tail.) and about five babies. blah blah blah we took one someone took two and another someone took one and -------- took the other. Skittles was never very nice we had him for about a month till he started getting green feather and crowing. The name. ok so my dad and I were trying to decide. we went to the store and were thinking that the chicken doesdn't care what it's name is so we could call it car or tree or this or that and we started nameing off all the things we saw that we could call our chicken(some of the funny ones included Assphault and KFC) as i said we were in the store and i said "or skittles" and we decided that was the right name. skittles legs were kinda orange and his feathers were kinda greens and his comb was kinda red. like a rainbow.so there is his story.

Kansas
i have Kansas a golden seabright that i placed second with in showmaship at the most recent hollister poultry show. Kansas has a story as do all my chickens. when got her and her sibling in july of 07we had named the other kansas and her we named... well her name changed about 9 times. in about a month we realied that the previosly named kansas was growing a nice big comb( the red thing on top of the chickens head). well for seabrights females have very small combs. well previosly named kansas' comb was (at a month old) already bigger than females are supposed to every get. on top of that previosly named kansas was getting a little agresive. we had a problem. in San Jose, roosters(male chickens) are illeal due to noise.So if you havn't figured it out yet previosly named kansas was a boy. we named HIM Bob and his sister we named Kansas. now Kansas and Bob were siblings and very connected. when we took him out Kansas started sceaming. now if you've never heard a chicken scream come to my house and i will show you what it sounds like. so we headed out to go take bob back to the farmers feed store that we got him at. we gave him to them saying this is a male Golden seabright and we'd like to trade him for another one. so the guy put him in a cage with some other chicks and we started looking for another one. I swear that the whole time we were looking i could hear bob's scream and believe me it's kinda hard to here your own thoughts let alone one chicken in like 300! But i knew my baby's cry and it made me sad to think about him getting put on someone dinner plate. But hey. Thats a chicken life. so we were looking for another chicken which brings me to the next chicken. but first here are some other things i didn't have a place to put about Kansas and Bob. On thier first night home i had to dunk their beaks into the water because they didn't know where it was. they drank like water was a new concept to them. When i first got them they had little bald butts.and both could fit into one of my hands. We went to the farmer feed store to get A chick and came home with 2 chicks. oops! just kidding. i begged my dad so much that he let me get two. ok on to the next one.

Kloie
Weird spelling i know but hey, the chicken doesn't care. her story is short. we picked her because she was this little ball of black and white fluff. she is a Barred Plymouth Rock. the ride home she was very quiet in my hand and i was falsly happy about a quiet chicken. we got home and she became loud. Kansas was still screaming for her brother who was a couple miles away in a cage with a bunch of other chicken all cheeping too. we put Kloie in with Kansas and Kloie started pecking at Kansas feet. we had to put a divider between the two but eventually the grew on each other. Oh, fact, Kansas was very freindly towards humans before we gave her brother away but after she was cautious as if she was afraid to disappear like her brother. ok there is Kloie's story. She is still very loud and Very soft. and she is trained to jump up on a pole when i open the door so i can give her some scratch(crushed corn and other small seeds). ok almost done two more.

Grace and Holly/Molly
ok Grace is mine but Holly/Molly is Laila's. She couldn't decide which name. but they are both in my room at the current moment as of Jan 16 08. we got them on like Dec 30 and they were 10 days old when we got them. so their Birthday is Dec 20. aproximatly. Accroding to me. As of like now. Ok so Grace is a Rhode Island Red and Holly/ Molly is a Silver Laced Wyandote. ok since they are still in my room they do not have a story other than laila and i picked them out and named tham and now they are in my room stinking it up.

there all seven chickens though i currently only own Kansas, Kloie, Grace and Holly/Molly