peeperjj's Journal, 05 May 2020

Eh, you'd be suprised how well chickens and cats get along after a while. We had a tom kitty who claimed a nesting box as his bed and climbed through a hole in the coop each morning to take a nap.  

Lol Esther. I have 4 fish, 3 feeder steers, 3 horse, 2 horses at my uncles, a pony, a dog, a rooster, 15 hens, 2 inside cats and 5 outside cats. Plus the kittens and a Tom cat we share with the neighbors. He is mine but he likes their barn better. So many mice over there and no kids to pester him lol. Hubby says I collect animals. The steers and chickens are for food but the rest are our pets. We used to have turtles, frogs and an orphaned baby bunny in the past.  

LOL!! They can get along well if raised together. I do not trust my terrier with my chickens or my teeny parrot though.  

We hand raised the chickens in a stock tank in our huge entry closet. They were used to our inside cats sneaking a peek over the side. The black mama cat gets in their yard with them so they are used to her. She would swat at them when we first put them out there but our rooster kept her from actually hurting them. This hen seems to think they are family lol. Some of our more wild toms will occasionally act like they are stalking the hens that get out but they pounce a distance away just to watch the hens flap about I think. None of them have actually attacked a hen so far and this is our third set of chickens. 

We used to have a yellow and white Tom from the neighbors that would come over and eat the chicks. That’s why we started raising them in the house for the first couple of weeks. 

Dang. I thought 100+ chickens was impressive. More like stinky and hard work...and lots of unwanted stew and eggs. And a few heavy trash bags and tears when we were younger and weird sicknesses and predators took Mom's ladies. We had five original chickens, but two died of what we call snake neck (we had a chicken named Snake Neck, even), one was taken to the auction, and another had her whole left side shut down like she went through a stroke so we had to say goodbye. Now we have three chickens left: Buff and what we call the Julie hens because Mom's friend Julie gave them to us. I love chickens and will totally have some when I am on my own, but there's no way I'll go for 100 again. 😅 Man, I need to shut up. Sorry, you get me started and I never stop. 😂 

Yeah, chicks aren't really safe around cats, but other than that there were no problems accept a few growls from the chickens and some serious sniffing from the cats.  

100! Wow! No way would I want that many. With our 15 we have enough eggs to feed us, some friends and family and give a few dozen a week to our older neighbors. My oldest doesn’t like eggs much so we are lucky to have them once a week. I don’t like eating laying hens. The meat is tough and not anything like meat chickens. We tried some baked and in stew and none of us like it. I named one of ours, the oldest. She is called Nugget ;). She’s the only baby I was able to save from the neighbors Tom cat a couple years ago.  

Chris, so far no pecking that I know of. My hens go nuts when they see a mouse. They chase them and toy with them just like a cat. I was afraid the hen would think the orphan and the newborns were mice so I brought the newborns and that mama in for a few days. The orphan burrows under the bigger kittens so he should be fine I think. The hen hasn’t hurt them yet and she’s been laying her eggs in there and sitting on the kittens for about a week lol.  

So much cuteness on a cushion. Thanks for sharing. 

That is SO cute and sweet! I wish my old cat had been friends with other animals like that 

This is amazing :) I love animals I have chickens my self. 

Now that's sweet😁 

Haha, yeah, 100 is a bit crazy. We haven't eaten any of ours; we auctioned them off or they died...sometimes with Dad's help, which was no fun to watch. I hope that after all those years we can finally get a break though and all of our ladies will die of old age and we'll have no more mean roosters. Mom quit getting roosters after the last one was (we very highly suspect) poisoned by our rude neighbors. They live in this fancy house I so want that's up the hill from us and we can hear them sitting there complaining on their porch about waking up each morning to our chicken's squawks and crows.  

Also, Nugget is a cute name! I have noticed some odd things about chickens in the past seven years that we've had them. They growl, they eat meat and eggs, they sometimes go crazy (a long and interesting story) or get freaked out and have weird eggs, sometimes a chicken will have a certain blemish on every one of her eggs so you know it's hers...there's a long list of weird things. Now I really should shut up...🤐 

We had a rooster that crowed every sunset lol. Have no idea what was wrong with him! The next one was super mean and attacked my youngest when she was about 2 years old for no reason. The one we’ve had the last few years is a sweetheart. He protects the hens but won’t attack any of us. I try to corner him to pet him and he can tuck his tail feathers and run by me lol. I’ve never seen a chicken tuck their behind in until this one! Lol. We could let him when he was younger but not for the last 2 years or so.  

Lol you don’t have to ‘shut up’ Esther. You are fine saying whatever or talking about whatever you want to me :). Our hens go absolutely nuts over bread of all things! They also love okra and tomatoes. Those are their favorites but they’ll eat just about anything we throw to them. They love bread so much a few will come eat it out of my hand.  

Haha, that's awesome. Yeah, we had a jerk face little he-man. We named him Elguapo because he looked kind of Spanish for some reason and he was handsome. He spent most of his time attacking me, though...then we got Tarzan, who was the sweetest rooster we've ever had. Tarzan got his name because when his ladies scared him he's jump three feet into the air and make a noise that sounded very much like Tarzan swinging on vines in the jungle.😂 He would stand between me and Elguapo while I ran to safety. We got rid of the jerk-face and kept Tarzan, but he was the one who got poisoned and it kind of broke my heart because he was such a good rooster. There was no evidence of sickness or predators or anything, he just died, and right after we heard the neighbors complaining.  

I’m sorry Esther. Losing him must’ve been hard. My teenager says jerk face a lot lol. And butt face. She has a thing about faces I guess lol.  

Haha, my older sister has a thing about buckets. Terd bucket, Buckethead, what's-his-bucket, Slime bucket...the list goes on. Yeah, our chickens will go crazy for anything that isn't moldy. We let them free-range sometimes and once Serena found a decaying hummingbird in their run...not a treat we were very pleased about. We also used to have meat rabbits but they just became too much after six batches died and three batches lived - then Cloud, the pet and Mamma, got so huge that I'm suprised her little legs held her up. The funny thing is she wouldn't eat her hey, just the feed. That's kind of bad for rabbits. Anyways, we sold about twenty young rabbits to the aution and gave Cloud to a family who will actually butcher the offspring. Dad said he would do it but for all of his being big and tough, he's just a big teddy bear who loves animals and cuddles. I also have a beta fish named Bruce and a new bottom feeder named Bob that I got during the weekend. And then we have the cats and Tiberious (Mom loves Star Trek) the Newfoundland dog. He's HUGE and thinks he's a snow dog instead of a water dog. He hates water. And this is really long. 😂