Chickens Are
Cute Little Carnivores
Copyright © 2001 by Lin Stone
Joyce Hansen, better known as the Chicken Lady in Mena Arkansas,
has a special sale on every year in the week of Good Friday.
Baby chicks, still wet and fresh from the egg are sprayed with food coloring in various colors. Then they are delivered to Joyce at the Parks & Hansen, Inc. -- the feed, seed and fertilizer store on Fourth and Gillham.
Some are red, some are green
and all of them are fuzzy, wuzzy cute.
People just reach into the box and pluck out a chick with the color they want.
"The food coloring doesn't hurt them a bit," says Joyce. "One of my granddaughters has kept a rooster for three years now. She says he's just about ready to decorate the family crock pot."
The colors wear off gradually over a period of three or four weeks, fascinating one and all with their splendorous colors.
Capitalizing on America's love affair with babies of any kind, these cute, cuddly little birds go "Cheep, Cheep, Cheep" all day long. They are easily caught and fit right into a child's small hand for closer scrutiny. Line that tender palm with millet and crunched corn and the little chick can keep the child fascinated for weeks on end.
It is easy to make a pet of a baby chick. With any encouragement at all, the little bird will follow a child -- indoors, and out. It will climb up into the child's lap, peer earnestly into the face, and express eternal friendship in fifty different ways. Chickens love to be stroked and petted, responding in songs more pleasing to the human ear than a cat's perfectly boring purr.
One reason baby chicks are so fascinating
is that they are so obviously,
BIRDS
but more readily available.
Within two weeks of hatching, these little birds can take flights of a foot or more. Grown chickens in good practice and strong health can actually soar to heights of twelve feet when driven by panic, and are not terrified of gliding down from housetops or tall tree limbs. Yet, give them any other opportunity of escape and these little birds will run; flight is their last resort.
Baby chicks don't need a mother to fend for them; though they obviously fare better when a loving mother is there.
While chickens are notorious for being cowards, don't test that theory out when a mother hen is protecting her brood. The largest bully in your class will wisely decide to flee the wrath of a mother hen. Even big black bears have been known to turn tail and run when a mother hen gets on their case.
Roosters are known to be aggressive too. Equipped with spurs up to four inches long, they can leave deep scars on the toughest complexions. When aroused by fury or protective instincts, roosters and mother hens will light on a child's head, pecking and spurring for as long as they can find a hair left to hang onto. Even grown boys will scream for Mama to come save them when the chickens are in top form.
Ah, but then you see,
chickens are cute little carnivores.
That's right. You can raise chickens on the sweetest corn and the most wholesome grain from day 1.
Turn those cheeping little chicks loose on the world though and they will leave the corn behind and go to chasing chiggers. They will scratch and dig anywhere chiggers are likely to be found, chugging down all the grubs and anything else that moves which they find along the way.
Chickens are birds.
Birds were created with a metabolism starving rather constantly for nourishment. For every ounce they weigh birds will need to eat up to one ounce of food just to maintain their weight. Baby chicks want to GAIN weight, so they eat more than their share of an ounce.
Chickens love
Given any kind of a chance they will terrorize the entire neighborhood of lesser critters, chomping on anything bigger than a newborn baby gnat.
Why, if cats and dogs would just hold still long enough, chickens would eat the ticks off of them and completely dissolve the need for flea collars.
Not even wandering scorpions stand a chance of survival
when baby chicks are on the loose.
Smart farm wives capitalize on this attribute by using square wire which lets only the little chicks into a garden plot. As the chicks search for chiggers to crunch on, they will keep the ground constantly cultivated, and clean of creeping pests too. On top of all that they will lay down a residue of easily absorbed, top grade fertilize yon smart housewife's tender young plants will thrive on.
Unlike most other animals in the kingdom, chickens can distinguish basic colors. Chickens are easily trained, smart, incredibly fast, and their eyes don't miss much.
The best news of all about chickens is that they are homebound. They don't need to be caged when food is plentiful. As long as they know where home is, chickens will roam no farther than necessary to fill their little craws with nourishing foods. Build a roost for them and chickens will almost never range too far to hear table scraps being raked off the plate into the yard. That makes them better garbage disposal units than any you can buy in a store.
Country estates can spend far less on exterminators (and fertilize) by employing chickens to tend their landscape. Since chickens arrive in various natural colors and sizes they can be chosen to compliment the decor. White chickens will match homes painted white, Rhode Island Reds will enhance brick mansions, Call Joyce up at 501 394 2663 and she can get yellow chickens for you, brown chickens, and for those people with their houses painted polka dot Joyce can have speckled chickens brought in to flock around their domains. That's enough color to make a peacock blush.
Want to learn more about chickens? Click on the Chick and you will be visiting e-cluck.com where you'll see fascinating pictures of rhode island reds, auracanas, Australorp, Buff Orpington, and Silver Laced Wyandotte are all described beautifully, and with love and tenderness. Here you will learn all about chicken coops, feed, and caring for chickens.
For even more pictures and more breeds, Visit the Oklahoma State University web site.
The end.
Chickens are Cute Little Carnivores is also available as a book for immediate download. RIGHT Click HERE for your copy.
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