Agnes the Alpha has Arrived
Well, it’s happened. I, Amber Gavriluk of Ruhl fame, now own chickens.
And not just one or two – six very cute balls of fluff and pointy beaks. They’re called Silver Laced Wyandottes, and they’re going to grow into these lovely ladies with silver feathers outlined in black. But for now, fluffballs with pointy beaks and dinosaur feet.
In truth, we’ve had the little ladies for less than 24 hours at this point, and yet their lives have been pretty harrowing at 3 Elm. Aside from the normal tumult of moving, settling in, and dodging the human hands that sweep in to snuggle, we’ve had two DANGER moments:
Chicks have to be kept warm in an environment of upwards of 95 degrees until their darling little floof falls off and they become gangly adolescents with normal feathers. (I know a litle soemthing about gangly adolescents, so I’m fairly prepared.) It takes about 6 weeks for them to reach this stage of development, so until then they have to be kept under a heat lamp. Well, last night at 1:30 a.m., a local transformer blew, and when we woke up at 5:30 to streaming sunshine, I realized that the power had gone out. We rushed outside to the shed to find all six chicks huddled together, cheeping, and thankfully unharmed. Alex hooked up the generator that I told him we didn’t need and he insisted on buying anyway, and all was thankfully well. He saved the chicks!
When you already have established animals in your home, adding in more is always a challenge. Obviously, Cocoa the cat was quite taken with the chicks at first, but she soon lost interest. Not Indy. He was so intent on them, he just stood and watched them, shaking like a leaf and telepathically pleading with his eyes, “Momma, I need to see them baby chicks again. Please take me to them.” Indy wouldn’t harm a fly, right? He’s the most gentle, non-alpha duffer you ever met — the absolutely opposite of an intimidating guard dog. However, when given the opportunity to examine one more closely (with Dad holding his collar and Mom holding the chick with both hands), he turned into Baby Yoda eating the eggs. Luckily, no chicks were harmed in this meeting of furrballs. So, that was a shortlived experiment in animal aquiantance.
As we all knew I would be, I’m in love wiht all six ladies and have begun to name them, starting with the most aggressive, Agnes. She steps on, nay clobbers, her sisters to eat from their chosen food hole; she pecks at their beaks, and she has no fear of humans. Agnes the Alpha has emerged from the pack.
I’ll take bets now on what happens when Indy meets grown-up Agnes in a few months. Smart money’s on the chicken, but it could go either way. Hashtag my dog tried to go Baby Yoda on my Chicks.