At the farm, we only have one neighbor, on one side. Remember how a couple of summers ago, we had some neighbors who raised three leghorn pullets into henhood, and let them free range? We saw those three not too long ago, so apparently, they’re still good layers, and the people two doors down didn’t get rid of them.
Last week, we saw at least a dozen hens free ranging in our new neighbor’s yard, but they seemed to stay over there whenever they saw us. Not so today. The entire flock invaded our side yard first, then made their way to our back patio, and the lawn just off it, to do their foraging.
It looks to me like a mix of of white and black leghorns, with a few Rhode Island Reds, and a couple of Barred Rocks, but I’m far from an expert on chicken breeds. Karen knows gazillions more about them than I do. Mostly, I enjoy bird watching, whether it’s the neighbor’s chickens, or any other bird in the field, woods, marsh, or even on a beach during migrating season.
I don’t mind chickens, so I greeted them with “Hi, ladies!” They didn’t mind me, either; perhaps half of them ran over to check me out within a foot of my feet. I had no bird seed on me at the time to scatter, so they lost interest pretty quickly. There was one that was considerably larger than the rest. While it was pecking around on our lawn, which needs to be mowed again, I thought little of it, other than it was so much larger than the others. When it walked up onto the patio, I realized it was a rooster. It was mostly white, but with a black tail –no big classic rooster tail (clipped?, which is maybe why I didn’t initially recognize it for what it is), but it did have fully feathered feet. Five minutes later, it gave a full throated “ehr-ehr-ehr-ehr-ehr!” No hen does that.
This is going to be fun if that rooster starts crowing at sun up. That’ll get our dog going. He’s got a big dog woof, even though he’s only a mid-sized model. No more sleep for us …
that’s the only thing I didn’t miss when I moved out of my grandma’s house. her neighbors’ banty rooster crowing and waking up the neighborhood dogs. I do miss seeing chickens wandering happily about the place and the free eggs when they had way too many for their own use!
It’d be nice if the neighbors have extra eggs they’re willing to give away, but we’ve been able to get large ones by the dozen for 79 cents at our local grocery store, so they’re still inexpensive. Once we get our kitchen garden going there, I’d certainly be willing to trade veggies for eggs.
I’m sure they’ve seen us come and go, as we have them, but we haven’t introduced ourselves yet. I’m reluctant to tresspass on someone else’s property without seeing them outside and waving hello first, as kind of an opener to further conversation. I suppose I could always look up the county property records, and snail mail them a greeting card, if it comes to that. Neither one of us particularly cares whether they’re friendly, or prefer to keep to themselves — or both, as are our current neighbors, and are we, for that matter.
I’m glad to hear you’re so tolerant! Our neighbors are pretty good about the crowing. They dislike dog barking more. Oh, and the feather-footed are their own specialty breed. I was going to suggest that maybe the black ones were Australorp, which I have (and are good cold-weather PA birds), but if they have feathered feet, they could be Cochins. Speaking of birds, right now we’re hatching out a full incubator of ducklings–khaki campbells, primarily, but we also have a few marbled crested ducks, so about half of the hatchlings are coming out looking like marbled cake.
I suspect your ducks would love the pond toward the back of our new property. It’s spring-fed, hence the old stone spring house adjacent to it, although w/o the rock dam at the one end controlling the water flow, it’d probably just be a stream. I don’t whether they’d like the aerator in the middle of the deeper end, although we see no reason to run for more than a few hours at a time, once in a while. We’ve seen Canada geese down by the pond, but thankfully, not entire flocks of them at a time; those critters are messy.
Best of luck with the ducks. Ducks are cool.
I’d love to get another look at the rooster, which I will in due time. I don’t recall whether its neck had some black feathers. From what I do recall, it looks an awful lot like pictures I’ve seen of “light” colored Brahma cocks.
ETA: those neighbors also have more than one dog. Never got a close look at either one, but I’ve seen two, one of which is a small-ish white “mop dog,” but larger than a Maltese, and the other of which looks like a brown/white English Springer Spaniel from a distance. Springers are cool dogs, but they’re not what I would call the Einsteins of the dog world.