Chicken in the living room

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

or, So Help Me God, I didn’t know chickens could fly so well.

OK, so, first of all, my mother keeps chickens. She’s not a farmer or anything; she lives within the city limits of a major metropolis, but the city ordinances allow her to keep a half-dozen hens, so she does. They keep her supplied with eggs, and she sells what she doesn’t need to a few of her neighbors.

Well, yesterday, she was out in the barn (it was originally built as a stand-alone garage, but it’s never held a car in my lifetime, and instead mostly holds livestock and agricultural tools, so we call it the barn) getting the eggs, and saw that one of the hens was getting very badly henpecked by the others-- She was actually bald and bleeding in a big spot near her tail. Mom’s not sure if the hen got injured some other way, or if the others did that to her, but either way, she had to get the poor thing separated to heal up. So she got out the windowed box she uses to carry them in the car when needed (mostly just when buying new ones-- They only live a few years), and brought her into the house, up to her bedroom (so she could keep the dog away). To make sure the chicken was comfortable, she put some cedar chips, some feed, and one of the watering dishes in with her.

That was a short term solution, but let’s face it, there are a lot of reasons you don’t want a chicken in your bedroom. So today when I was over, we got out the old dog kennel, and I set it up in the basement. I come upstairs to tell Mom it’s ready, and she goes up to get the hen.

Except that it turns out that she had splashed her water dish all over the bottom of the box, and cardboard can only take so much. Mom makes it halfway down the bottom flight of steps, and the bottom of the box gives way. Out comes cedar chips, feed, water, egg (yes, she laid since she was brought in) and chicken. The chicken flies the entire length of our very long living room, straight over the lamp next to the chair and nearly over my head, before scuttling into a corner in a bookshelf. This, of course, sends the afore-mentioned detritus even more scattered than it was by the fall itself. Fortunately, the hen has now voluntarily cornered herself, so (after much squawking and flapping) Mom was able to gather her up again and finish taking her (in her arms) the rest of the way to the basement.

So, that was our bit of excitement for the day.

2

I don’t blame your mom. I’d sqawk and flap too if there was a chicken loose in my living room.

What? Y’all are just mad cause I said it first! :smiley:

3

They fly better than turkeys, at least better than turkeys in Cincinnati.

4

Giant chicken in a living room.

5

Ewww yuck! I’m so sorry. Chicken poop glued tot he carpet? Windex!!! Seriously though, it does work beautifully if you haven’t found a solution already.

I was sure this would turn out to be a zombie discussion of this NPR story on chicken diapers from last May.

P.S. That sounds an awful lot like a mating injury. Are you certain all your hens are laying?

6

I read the thread title, and my first thought was that it was maybe slang for a very small problem that everyone ignores.

7

Chicken in the living room!? What’s next, ducks on the wall?

8

Bravo. :smiley:

9

This thread title did NOT disappoint me :smiley:

(Yes I scroll through the forums looking at thread titles… and will say “Oh, *that *sounds interesting!” and in I go to have a read. Love it when a thread delivers on the title’s promise.)

10

Thankfully, Mom has hardwood floors, not carpet, so clean-up wasn’t actually difficult… Just time-consuming. The hardest part was keeping from laughing.

Absolutely. Mom keeps track of the eggs, and she often has days where there are as many eggs as chickens. Some of the older ones aren’t laying all that reliably any more (I think the eldest only averages one egg every two or three days), but they’re all absolutely certainly female. Unless you’re suggesting that she has a lesbian hen?

11

Oh my goodness that was amazing!

I asked the chicken to jump up and down. It did. I said thank you and it politely acknowledged my thanks. Then I asked it to flap its wings. It did. Then I said good night, and it bowed dramatically.

Do live IMs go to a guy in a chicken suit?

12

I didn’t expect him to do a backflip or lay an egg. But he sure tried!

13

The Burger King Chicken As You Like It thing is years-old. Basically, they just videoed a guy doing a bunch of silly actions, then associated those with a bunch of commands they thought people might try. Sometimes different commands result in the same action.

14

Excellent observation. We had an old hen begin crowing once. FWIU, postmenopausal hens have decreased estrogen levels in their bloodstream, which sometimes allows naturally occurring levels of testosterone from the adrenals to cause male behaviors.

15

They could’ve hidden it better if they’d made it look like lag between videos instead of just a jump cut, and put a little more fake lag in the vids so it wasn’t obvious.

16

Thanks, kayaker, that’s good information-- Two of Mom’s hens are in fact getting pretty old. I passed that on to her, and she says she’ll keep an eye on them.

Here I was just relaying the story because it was funny; I didn’t expect to get an actual solution. I should’ve known better, this being the Dope and all.

17

I keep hens and I’ve heard of similar things happening if they develop ovarian cancer. We had a hen who was 8 years old and started to crow and develop spurs just before she died.

18

Is the longest chicken flight being 13 seconds an urban legend?