Why did the chicken attack the bucket?

.....because it touched his woman!


Okay, so Friday I put Crockpot and Stew out in the dog yard for the first time.....well, they have been out there off and on for an hour here and there, but this was the first time I put them out there in the morning and left them unattended all day long while I was at work.

This area has 4 foot no climb horse fence. Topped with a strand of electric. Plus my property has a perimeter 5 strand electric fence, right? I figured the most significant danger would be a hawk attack or a cat jumping through the deck slats above and into the yard. Crockpot is very protective of his woman, so I figure he will try to protect her should something get in there. And he is an asshole, so he is disposable, right?

We got let go an hour early at work because of the holiday....I ran over to feed my sister's cats and stopped at the feed store to buy chicken feed (and I looked at the babies and did not buy any, TAKE THAT WILLPOWER) on the way home. I get home and there was this red fluff of bird flopping/flapping around the driveway. I have a moment of OMG AN ANIMAL ATTACKED MY CHICKENS AND PULLED THEM OUT OF THE YARD AND NOW THEY ARE FLAPPING AROUND DYING IN MY DRIVEWAY. Except it was some weird wild red bird? Never seen that kind before. Maybe it was a juvenile hawk that still had some down or something. I'm totally going to google for it when I am done here.

So I pull in and park and as I get out I can hear Crockpot crowing away back there. Well ah ha, I think, everything is fine!

But he is just crowing and crowing and crowing and crowing. So I go over and call them from over the edge of the deck.

Nada.

He is still crowing but they did not come out. So I go down there...and there is ONLY CROCKPOT.

Where did my cute little hen Stew go?

Crockpot is throwing a fit and crowing and running along the fence by the gate and deck side. So I start looking around to see if she is hiding under the deck...or maybe wiggled through my little homeade blockade to the other part of the deck. Nada.

Crockpot is seriously wigging out. Like, throwing a shit fit. And I swear as I was looking I heard some clucking too......maybe she got under the house somehow? I think there might be an opening in the area under the steps which I have blocked off. So I am standing there scratching my head, trying to figure out what the hell happened to my hen......and notice a bucket overturned near the gate. I bump it with my foot and OMG I SAW A YELLOW CHICKEN LEG UNDERNEATH.


Now, it is the upper 80's and this is a small black bucket overturned in the SUN. It is hot as hell.

So I am freaking out thinking that somehow she got trapped under this bucket and is now going to have been COOKED. OMG I have to overturn the bucket and find my poor chicken dead of heatstroke underneath!

I finally get up the courage to kick the bucket over and look through the hand covering my eyes to see Stew come jumping out from under it. She was panting and her wings were drooping but she was alive! Crockpot was thrilled!

IS that not the weirdest freak thing ever? I had dumped the buckets out the day before as I worried about one of the chickens flying up and landing in one and drowning. So they were empty.....I'm sure she tried to jump up and perch on the edge (as chickens like to do) and since it was empty it flipped back over onto her, trapping her underneath.


CRAZY FREAK ACCIDENTS.




She was a little worse for the wear.



Crockpot was a little pissed. That bucket touched his woman! Nobody touches his woman!


You can see her still panting here.





After a while she was back to normal.






Crockpot has to stay between us when we are out there.....I tell ya, NOBODY touches his woman without his permission.




He was on bucket patrol the rest of the evening.




Never know when a bucket might come out of nowhere.



Now, my coworker is going to take Crockpot. She is supposed to come pick him up this weekend. I had offered him to her since he is such an asshole. Her hubby has serious gamebird experience and I assume either he will have an attitude adjustment there....or will be delicious!


But now I am having second thoughts! He is exactly what you want in a rooster as far as protecting the girls. That is their job. They are supposed to protect the hens (and make baby chicks, of course). But he is a little aggressive (ha ha ha) and hard to handle already and is still less than 3 months old.

I was thinking of texting my coworker that I changed my mind....but then tonight he was so aggressive in his small pen that I could not catch him to put him away for the night. Eventually I just grabbed Stew and put her away and after I had collected all the other chickens, I just opened the gate to his pen and let him free, hoping he would follow me to the garage to get put away....and he did! He followed me (at a distance) all the way down the hill to the garage, and then jumped into the closed in side (I had the door open) and onto a plastic tub, where I was able to grab him and put him away with his lady.

Not sure whether he will stay or not. If my coworker does not call for him, I will not mention it until she does or until he is unmanageable again. I compare him to my big black cock (he needs a name!) and that boy is nice as can be, I can just grab him and pick him up and hold him without any problems. But he is younger and a slower maturing breed, so he may be just as bad in a few months.....without the "good protector" aspect that Crockpot has.

We'll see! I have no doubt I have some more roosters to choose from on the way, either with the chicks with pants, or with the 9 new babies. Which I have found out what they are! The blues are blue andalusians...the feather legged blue is a Blue Cochin (same breed as the chicks with pants), the white one is a splash andalusian.....the cute one with a poof on its head is a golden polish, and I'm pretty sure the reddish chicks are some sort of red breed. Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire Red, Production Red, Red Star....one of those....

That is about it. I did something weird to my arm tonight so I am hoping that the 2 advil I took will help me out. I was stretching my arm out for something and I think I pinched a nerve or something. And since I slept until noon today and then took a 2 hour nap (ha ha ha), I am totally going to be up half the night doing laundry and playing on the internet. BTW, my computer is still dead...I am using the old old laptop that weighs 28349 lbs and only works plugged in. It has an old photo program that still works, whoo! I need to pay off some more bills and if I can make it to Christmas maybe I will buy myself a new computer then.

The plan this weekend was to work on the coop.....but I just really don't feel like it, to be perfectly honest. Maybe I will finally build the gate to the porch. That needs to be done, especially since I am going to remove the fencing around the front of the yard.

Maybe I will just sit on my ass all day tomorrow and do nothing again? Actually I am going to see Ms Foxy in the morning.....then I'll sit around the rest of the day, ha ha ha.

Maybe I should go around and remove all the empty buckets instead! Apparently they are DANGEROUS.