Meet My Chickens

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Hi Nosey!

This is Nosey.

Nosey is a funny little chicken. She was hatched this summer so is around six months old, and she has been unusually friendly and a bit odd from the beginning.

You can guess how she got her name (my chickens only get named when they exhibit plumage or behaviour that distinguishes them, but then, quite a few of them do).

She runs up to me, routinely stands on my boots when I'm standing still, tugs on my buttons and zipper toggles and shoelaces, and gets all up in my way while the other chickens are getting out of my way. She also likes to perch at head level and supervise what I'm up to, whenever she can.

In other words, adorable. She's excessively curious. I've observed that curiosity is a prominent chicken trait - it must have been an adaptive trait for birds and many other creatures to survive, because it drives them to investigate and perhaps find new food sources. In my flock of chickens it seems to drive them mostly to find new dirt bath locations.

Nosey's beak is a tiny bit crossed. This is a genetic trait, and crossed beak can become so extreme that the chicken has trouble eating and drinking. I don't think it will become too extreme for her because she's already half grown.

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I made the mistake of trying to make a shoulder chicken out of her when she was nosing around sticking her beak entirely in my business once. I put her on my shoulder, where she was happy enough to stay. Less pleasantly, she promptly indulged the curiosity my eyelashes stimulated in her little chicken brain. Peck! I had a minor black eye for days.


I've been daily blogging about my flock of chickens, my bees, and my other farm-ette activities at my Happy Harvest farm blog (est. 2008) and I'm transitioning that blogging habit to Steemit now. Wordpress has become disappointing. I'm looking forward to finding my stride and voice with the new platform, yay!

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