Good morning! Chick open! Please stop climbing on my face…
A little gray chick
Today’s story is about this cute, poor little chick, held firmly in my hands with a face like “my life is over.”
As I mentioned in EP100, I’ve taken on a few chicken-removal jobs as a kind of experiment. One is at a day care facility for older people, where the chickens have multiplied too much, and lately I’ve been catching them one after another. That’s where this chick came from.
The color is a little rare: gray, with a lighter shade on the back of the neck. So pretty! It looks a bit like Banana, who already lives here. I use traps, and only one or two chickens go into a trap at a time, so it’s slow work — but anyone can do it, so I’m catching chickens by remote. This chick’s sibling was caught a little while ago, so tomorrow they’ll be reunited.
Numbers 1 to 9
The others from the same facility are in quarantine, and for now they have numbers. No. 1, a fairly big rooster, was caught first — the most adventurous. No. 2 is handsome. No. 3 is a girl, and No. 4 is a rooster caught with her. Nos. 5, 6 and the enormous No. 7 were caught together, and No. 8 is a hen caught with them.
No. 8 staged a great escape from the quarantine pen, flying back and forth across our big property again and again. Thanks to Taro, as usual, we caught her safely. Taro, you did a good thing… Ouch! Not good at all! And the newest, No. 9, is a male.
Why I’m catching them
Neighbors across the street complained that the roosters are noisy. But nobody is keeping the chickens on purpose — they’re just there. Some homeless people scatter food, so the chickens multiplied. The facility considered hiring a company, but a company, or the city’s program, would catch the chickens and then cull them. Someone there said they didn’t like that, and a friend of mine who used to work there suggested asking me. So we decided to try.
After quarantine — three days to two weeks, depending on how ragged a bird looks — and a check that they’re free of disease, the hens will move into the coop with everyone, and the roosters will get time to play. They’ll live the same life as everyone else.
So far, so good: I think we’ve caught a little under half, with only five or six big adults left, plus lots of medium ones around Marron’s size. The chickens did nothing wrong — so we choose not to cull them.