We're starting to call Abby 'Prince Abner' now... She/He is front and center there.

I go out of my way to order hens (for this flock I drove personally to another city) because my neighbors aren't keen on the crowing. I'm not keen on their dogs, but we've agreed to declare my yard a demilitarized zone. They keep their dogs out of my yard, I don't get roosters.

I have butchered a LOT of chickens in my life. When you grow up Mennonite on a farm, you see*. death*. everywhere*. It's a way of life and I have no problem eating chicken, but as I've gotten older, I've gotten softer. It kills me to have to kill my chickens now, even if they're miserably dying of illness and old age. I love them, wah!!!!

Abs is a beautiful bird, and either she's going to be an Amazonian machine, or he's going to be dinner. This is weighing more and more heavily on my mind every morning, with the crowing... It's been so many years since I've eaten one of my own babies, I'm not sure I can do it anymore.

Roosters are funny thangs. They're actually kind of effeminate the first three months, usually looking more and more like giant klutzes, and you wonder what the crap because you paid top dollar getting them sexed and surely this one isn't having a growth hormone problem, you know? I've seen a lot of weird genetic stuff in chickens, anything is possible. But then the crowing starts... It's like when a boy's voice starts changing, it sounds really weird for awhile and you go, really?, and that's what makes you think it might still be a hen, because hens crowing can sound a little ridiculous. Btw, that doesn't mean they're turning into roosters or going androgynous, it's just a natural bird thing for a tribal leader to clearly state territory proclamations. If there is no rooster, a lead hen sometimes naturally takes over. It's a very important job and must be done correctly, and you can go all Terry Pratchett-y if you dwell on that too long.

Anyway, I've been through this umpteen times, gangly awkward teenager goes giganto and starts irritating everyone, practicing foolishly on old hens who get miffed when an ideal opportunity pops up as they are getting a drink, and next thing you know, Jr. is on his back in the water bowl because he can't keep his balance, and the old lady's head is squashed under the kid ~in the water~, and, well, I'm pretty sure that's where the saying "mad as a wet hen" originated from.

And then the spurs start nubbing out, and boy don't they feel all sassy then, and oh look, legs walking across the yard, *stealthstealthcoolstealth* here he comes, dragging a wing and hopping sideways, then the LEAP, and *whamo*, I block the nidiot with a slick hip move and send him rolling, and he thinks that's so awesome that he comes right back and keeps throwing his body all over me, and dang if he's not trashing my good pants, what was I thinking wearing them in the back yard... My dad got specially bred fighting roosters one year because he thought they'd look pretty walking around the yard, boy was that a joke. You get one of those guys on your head and it's exactly like a cartoon, but with real blood. Nowadays you could impress people saying a zombie nearly got you.

I'm kind of hoping we can wait this one out and see what happens, maybe break out the good camera and have some fun with it. And maybe rename the guy. I'm not crazy about just sliding it over to 'Abner', and I really wanna stick to my tv character theme. Abby was for two Abbies, the one on NCIS, and the one on Primeval. You know what? Today is Wil Wheaton's birthday, I could use one of his characters, like Dr. Isaac Parrish (who is, incidentally, a dick) from Eureka. Or I *could* just name him Wil Wheaton, because technically he played himself on The Big Bang Theory but I hate to do that because later on I'd be saying Yeah, Wil Wheaton got mangled in a dog attack, or Wil Wheaton got hit by a car, or we ate Wil Wheaton for supper last night, and a phrase like that could wind up throwing some kind of horrible cosmic irony at me if me saying that happened to coincide with something terrible actually happening to the guy. I mean, what if a raccoon found a way into the pen and ate Wil Wheaton's brain? And the biggest Prairie Kingsnake Scott ever saw went slithering past the Quackerdome door while it was wide open last spring, easily 4 feet long. You just never know, so that's why I don't name chickens after anyone real, because it sounds bad when you tell someone they died, you know? Kinda bothers my sister to hear someone had a pig named her name but it died, can't say I blame her. She has a cute name that winds up in songs, so I'm not saying it was disturbing to have a pig named after her, ok, this is getting out of hand, you know what I mean.  It sounds like a jinx.

Behold, Dr. Isaac Parrish.

I grew up around chickens and started raising my own when I was about 18, I think. I live in an area that's like a chicken mecca, big hatcheries in several directions, and big production barns a little further out. There are breeding farms within half a days' drive that specialize in rare breeds of quail and partridge, turkeys and pheasants, geese and ducks, and even peacocks. It's not unusual to see emu ranches, and I even had an emu fall out of a trailer in front of me on an exit ramp one year. Don't worry, I didn't run over it.

My dream since I was a child was to have peacocks, and there are so many cool 'collector' colors out there now that I positively drool, so that's definitely on a bucket list. Problem with peacocks is they are *noisy* thangs, so I'm hoping we move to a bigger place for those. A rural subdivision full of fancy dogs is no place for peacocks.

When you grow up on farms and ranches and have to name a lot of animals, it becomes kind of a game, and sometimes you develop themes. When we were teenagers we had goats, and one set of twins was called called Bunny and Jack (put Rabbit after that), another set was Timex and Speidel (watches). My niece named a calf Tuna when she was little, and her sister had a cat named Amino. I try not to name pets after people I know, especially chickens, because chickens tend not to live that long, and you hate to go, oh, so and so died... I know my sister finds it frustrating when someone pops up that they have a dog or pig with the same name as her, and other people might find it disturbing, too, so I try to stick to themes. For instance, my last flock before this one was named after retailers, although Macy was technically named after the parade. I also had a Dooney (& Bourke), Bean (as in L.L.), and Spencer.

This year's flock is named after tv characters. I started with 8, but Zelda (after Ocarina of Time) went into seizures her first week and didn't make it, so I lost my first ever Cuckoo Maran, which would have laid 'chocolate' eggs. (I'm linking so you can see pictures if you want.) The names don't always fit, but I had the names picked out before we ever got the chicks.

Myka (from Warehouse 13) is an Indian River, and I was under the assumption she would turn out red like her mom with the Delaware markings like her dad, but she's a beautiful white. Supposed to be a super egg layer.

Mary Margaret turned out not to be as 'Snow White' as I thought she would be (from Once Upon a Time). She's an Austra White, another mixed breed for vigorous laying. I've never had a pink faced white chicken with black legs before, so the joke is that she's my naughty Catholic, a lady of the night in her stockings, as it were.

Abby (from either NCIS- Scott's choice, or Primeval- my choice, take your pick) is a puzzle. I knew what a Columbian was supposed to be like, it's a particular color pattern, and our Abby is spot on. But she's turning into a monster. The hatchery guaranteed 93% accuracy on sexing, and out of 8 chicks, that means there is a fairly strong chance of one of them turning out to be a rooster, so we're hoping Abby is just going to be a big gal. I've had heavy breeds before, but our Abby is only 3 months old and already bigger than all my old hens were, so I hope it's not a growth hormone problem. Sometimes you see weird stuff.

T'Pol (from Star Trek: Enterprise) turned out to be my most aptly named chicken, very first one to investigate and do everything. She's a Speckled Sussex, and already looking more petite than Bean from my last batch (who got pounced on by a hawk when she was 3). I've never seen a more curious breed than this, not sure if it's common trait or I just got two flukes in a row.

Nadia G (from Bitchin' Kitchen) is a Golden Laced Wyandotte. A Wyandotte trait across the board is a rose comb, which I'd never tried out before in all my years of raising chickens. Kinda reminds me of the little dress hats my mom used to wear to church. So far Nadia is our tamest, likes to come see what we're doing and stand by us, lets me get pictures without freaking out.

Morgana (from Merlin on Syfy here in the States) is a Silver Laced Wyandotte, and my most drop dead gorgeous chicken, easily the most photogenic, so I think I matched the name up pretty good with her.

Amy Farrah Fowler (from The Big Bang Theory) is our wonky little oddball. She's a 'Blue Egger', basically a mutt that is supposed to have the blue egg gene, which is dominant. She was the cutest chick because of her little muff around her face, but she's grown into something so cartoony that we can't help thinking that her front half looks like the chicken hawk from Looney Tunes. She grew funny and has an unusual gait, so her back half moved like a pigeon until she matured, and she still uses her legs like they were patched on by an Igor. She has never cried and eats like a pig, so I don't think she was ever in any weird growing pain, but she's always going to be tiny and weird. The coolest thing about her is she has awesome super fluffy 'blue' feathers underneath the funny light ginger color.

So I'm trying out Wyandottes this year. I've tried so many kinds of chickens, but never before Wyandottes, and I'm finding out there is a worldwide hobby devoted to new colors called feather lacing (scroll down that page for some truly beautiful birds). Might try it myself one day. Click on the icon for more about designing your own chickens.

Blue laced reds are on my bucket list, one of the rarest varieties in the world.

Personal note on Egyptian Fayoumi, one of the many breeds I've raised, you might wanna treat these like game birds for awhile, they tend to fly off into the trees and don't necessarily come back. The ones I had were about as wild as any I've seen. Somewhere in Missouri is a flock of wild chickens...