This is Apples and Sprout, both distinguished former house chickens. Apples was brought into the house to gain weight, when as just a youngster, she was getting out-competed for food and I noticed her twin sister gaining in size. She was meek, and different, and that didn't work out in the chicken world, although it sure did in the house.
Just a scrawny little teenager. She lived in a box, happy just to perch on the edge and watch goings-on, not making any trouble (I'm no trouble!").
She got her name, Apples, because: box trolls.
Falling asleep sitting up, in a sunbeam.
She sized up, and grew up, and charmed visitors, and made it hard for me to decide what to do with her. How to reintegrate her to the flock? I deferred deciding, because she was cute and funny and no trouble ("No trouble!"). I carried her around on my shoulder through the day; we worked in the garden together (chicken enrichment).
Then one day a chick from another clutch, a batch of Ameracuana mixes, broke a leg! It was not a tiny chick, just palm of the hand sized, but too young to leave its mother. I splinted its broken leg with a stick and Flexxtape (it worked!). Poor little thing was in pain, an orphan now, with an unknown prognosis, and it needed to be warm, so I put her (turned out to be a her) in with Apples in her box.
Apples screamed at the sight. What is that! But in the morning, they were snuggled up, and the chick stayed, and Apples snuggled her (at first reluctantly but soon they could not be separated for a moment), and they lived in the box together, and the chick made a full and seamless recovery. Weeks, of course, to a full recovery, but she started to bear weight on it, then got her "cast" off, and slowly her limp declined, and the little lump where the break healed disappeared entirely by the time she was grown.
They bonded. Boy did they bond.
As the chick got better, Apples became less "no trouble", growing in feistiness in proportion to the chick's improving health. She seemed to want to show the chick around. They'd jump out of the box together and we'd find them at large, exploring. This is where crumbs fall off the counter.
Time to move out! I transitioned them from the house to the greenhouse, mid summer, while there was a crop in there. Chickens looooove summer greenhouse privileges. I put moms in there with their chicks once everything is too big for them to kill, and they live like jungle birds in the eggplant understory, protected from the pressure and competition of the whole flock.
Every night, the two of them went to bed in the apple box (more and more tattered).
When the chick was completely recovered, they moved out of the apple box and back into general population, Apples hanging with the non-Silkies, and the two of them always glued to each other, sharing dust baths and everything else. Sprout, because: Apples.
Now they are all grown up. Sprout is an adult hen, laying eggs, and Apples is back in with the Silkies. She turned out to be on the big side for a Silkie, and a bit bossy and grumpy. Don't you know who I am? I was a house chicken!
Only when Sprout was nearly fully grown did she and Apples part ways. Apples went broody, and Sprout started to hang out with her five siblings (both by nest and lineage). They are collectively the Pufflings, lookalike half Ameracauna offspring of Puffcheeks, a certain Ameracauna who came here as a retiree (but kept laying).
