Today's naked redneck chick post

A study has found that chickens are capable of empathy.

Chickens have feelings too:

The writer E.B. White, patron saint of us dwellers in darkness who have come late to the barnyard, wrote about the mystery and menace of country life from his saltwater farm in Maine. He wrote about weak lambs who die in the night, heifers who refuse to breed, colts who go lame for no discernible reason. The theme that runs through all his farm accounts is the extremely tenuous thread that links livestock to life, a thread he turned into the world’s most famous web when he wrote Charlotte’s Web.

The story White never wrote was one that I reckon he deemed too hard for young readers to take, the story of a tame hen who willfully tore a chick to pieces and then, crazed with remorse, went into the cellar and committed suicide by eating moth balls.
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The story this week that chickens are capable of feeling empathy might have surprised some folk but it sure didn’t surprise me. I’ve known chickens who were capable of love, jealousy, selfishness and lust. I’ve observed the politics of the chicken yard and found them to be as complicated and heartbreaking as any parish council in the land.

Naked redneck chick post: chickens used to eat our ancestors

Oops! Our ancestors used to eat chicken? Nope I was right the first time:

The discovery of multiple de-fleshed, chomped and gnawed bones from the extinct primates, which lived 16 to 20 million years ago on Rusinga Island, Kenya, was announced today at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 70th Anniversary Meeting in Pittsburgh.

At least one of the devoured primates, an early ape called Proconsul, is thought to have been an ancestor to both modern humans and chimpanzees. It, and other primates on the island, were also apparently good eats for numerous predators.

A final naked redneck chick post

I just couldn't resist posting this snippet from an interview with Debo Mitford, the last surviving Mitford sister.

A bit of background context. There were six sisters: Pam, who was the least well-known sister, described by John Betjeman as 'the most rural Mitford’; Nancy, who wrote several historical biographies and eight novels; Diana who married the fascist leader Oswald Mosley and was imprisoned during WWll; Unity, who moved to Germany in 1934 at the age of 19 and became devoted to Hitler (whom she knew in person) and ended up brain-damaged after a failed attempt at suicide by shooting herself in the head at the outbreak of war; Jessica, who became a communist and ran away at the age of 19 with Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, and then moved to America and wrote several books, including "The American Way of Death"; and Debo the youngest who is now 90 years old.

Debo may not be the most famous or eccentric Mitford sister but...

In June 2000 some American friends of hers came to stay, who visited every year. They included the art collector Jayne Wrightsman and the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and his wife. Thinking they would be bored by a table centre of flowers, and because chickens are her passion, a Buff Cochin cock was washed and placed on some hay in a rectangular glass container. 'A couple of hens of uncertain ancestry occupied another glass container,’ she writes, 'and there had been a hatch of Welsummer and White Leghorn chicks that morning so I put them in little china baskets lined with hay to keep them warm… the chicks presumably thought it was all quite normal as they had only been alive for 12 hours.’

'It was fantastic,’ recalls a guest who was there. 'But it only just worked. It was almost too much for the Americans.’

The following year Debo topped it by putting half a dozen piglets, replete from their feed, in straw beds on the middle of the table. 'But after the first course, my husband said, “That’s enough, take them away,” which was rather sad really.’

Debo's husband Andrew’s older brother Billy was married to Kick Kennedy, JFK’s sister.

She also got to know JFK quite well, and says he was one of the funniest people she ever met. 'He was so quick, and he made such fun of other people, but in such a nice way that they didn’t mind.’ She met Kennedy at a ball in 1938, and later became close friends with him; he would often ring her at 3am to chat, and she and Andrew attended his presidential inauguration in 1961 and, in 1963, his funeral.
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[Debo] The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire has her own exhibition at Chatsworth, in celebration of her 90 years. There is a display cabinet with her diary open at the page where she writes about having tea with Hitler in 1937.
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There is her collection of insect and spider brooches, and also what can only be described as an Elvis shrine, including a piece of picket fence with a nail that may or may not have been knocked in by the man himself.

When the talk turns to Elvis, she brightens considerably. 'Oh, don’t speak about Elvis,’ she says looking delighted. 'Wasn’t he wonderful? I never became a fan until after he was dead, otherwise I would have been a stalker.’

She has been to Graceland three times.

Her husband, Andrew, used to wear a tee-shirt with the words: "Never marry a Mitford." I recommend reading the whole interview if you're an historian of the inbred English aristocracy, student of English literature or simply a lover of British fruitcakes like the crazy chicken-loving Dowager Duchess of Devonshire nee Debo Mitford.

Today's naked redneck chicks post: spring chickens

From Chas' Farm Report:

Here is a photo I took of our new brown Leghorn chicks that we got from the local Feed Store. They were about two and a half weeks old when the photo was taken, which was Easter Sunday. They are growing fast.

In the last report, I mentioned that the Bantams where hatching chicks, five and one in process. Well the 6th one died not long after hatching (it's true: never count your chicks before they're hatched). Then, the 5th one died when it fell into the dogs water dish and drowned.

So there are four left, it looks like two little roosters and two hens. One of the hens is a runt, she lags behind, but manages to survive thus far.