Feeding time at the zoo

The chickens are really cracking us up these days. The seem to enjoy it when we're working outside. They really are very social creatures.

I sometimes feel like I'm in Australia or the tropics somewhere with the wacky noises they make. There's the eagle-like sound, the screaming Welsummer, and the one that I think sounds like a kookaburra. I haven't gotten any of this on tape yet, but I hope to soon.

We've got them "trained" just enough that every time we come out of the house or approach the coop, they think we're going to feed them. You'd think they were starving or something (but they're not!). Sometimes Jeremy teases them by walking up to the coop and then walking all the way around the coop. They follow along in a clump all along the inside of the coop.

There are a lot of things they really like to eat. While I've been doing digging for the garden, I've been digging up these nasty grub things which turned out to be stag beetle larvae. They eat rotten wood so they're a relatively harmless, even beneficial bug. But the chickens go crazy when I throw some in and swallow them down whole.



Once or twice we've had some milk that we didn't want to drink any more (just slightly off) so we poured it in a dish for the chickens. They love it. Drink it down and they usually have milk dribbling down their fronts.



The other day we had some pasta that was getting a bit old and we didn't want to eat it anymore. So into the coop for the girls!



I'm hoping some day to get a good video of what we like to call "chicken football." This is when one chicken gets a tasty morsel and runs with it - with all the other chickens after her. For some reason she won't just swallow the thing down, she wants to pick and peck at it. So she usually ends up losing it to another chicken who is then chased. This can go on for some time. They really are hysterical!