Prettiest Birds for Free Range Duty

[St. Phatty]

I nominate the Belgian D'Uccle Mille Fleur Bantam.

The first picture is from an enthusiast website.

The second picture is a male bird at the Cackle Hatchery.

My experience with them is a situation where they free-range. Though the show birds are obviously living in person-made facilities.


I have a Mille Fleur Hen, that is one of the spunkiest birds & most fearless animals I have ever seen.

She was de-feathered by a predator with a very sharp forceful claw back in 2018. About a year later she decided she want to live indoors, a choice it was impossible not to respect.

I have a male bird that is 1/2 Mille Fleur. He is black with red splashes, and extremely shiney feathers.

He is sort of high maintenance in that he has to be separated from the other birds, because he likes to fight.

All the male birds have leg spikes, but he has special leg spikes. They have a second tip that is conical, and sheds a thin layer of horn periodically. When you do the math, this means it is mathematically, perfectly sharp, or as close as nature gets.


The male bird is sort of like a dog. He really is a people person, but he is "feisty". It is best to have an attitude where, you go to retrieve him from some part of the house where he doesn't belong, and he flutters in mid-air like a hummingbird, and kicks you with his very sharp leg spikes.

If he draws blood, and you say, "OH HE'S SO CUTE", Then you might be a good candidate for this kind of bird.


Character-wise, the males are sort of like Bruce Lee re-incarnated as a bird, then forced to wear a Liberace-esque feather suit.

Chickens are often a big meal ticket for predators, since they do, in fact, taste like chicken.

But when they are encouraged to fly and to roost high off the ground, they do pretty well dealing with predators.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

So, did you ever clean out the garage they were living in?

The things we put up with for the sake of our pets, that's what LOVE is all about!

 

[indagroove]

My Slikie Roo says, how do you do?

But this guy is the king of the flock. He doesn't know that he's a 8 ounce micro-chicken (Serama) though..

 

[St. Phatty]

So, did you ever clean out the garage they were living in?

The things we put up with for the sake of our pets, that's what LOVE is all about!

No. But I did create room in the driveway, by making about 5 cubic yards of waste plastic disappear.

Remember that old show Green Acres ? City people move to the country ?

Well in reality when that happens, they cover their stuff with plastic tarps.

Then the sun destroys those plastic tarps and demonstrates the meaning of the term "micro-plastics".

Anyway I had to deal with that and of course, I put the degraded polyethylene garbage in ... another polyethylene bag.


I knew I had to DO SOMETHING. To make it DISAPPEAR. Or Dis-Fucking-Appear.

I guess I'm kind of a hoarder. Like in AA, it starts out by admitting that we have a problem, or, at least, a situation.

And being a Harry Potter fan, I could imagine how cool it would be if I could just wave a wand and "make it disappear".

I can't do that, but I can, compress it. What happens when you put a piece of Plywood on top of a 42 gallon plastic Polyethylene bag full of more Polyethylene - and then drive a truck on top of it ?

I did that about 10 times this week.

Then I put it in a Fox Farm Ocean Forest bag. How's that for recycling ! That bag is small enough that I can just drop it in the garbage can at the grocery store.


Some of the bags, I realized they were too heavy and it would be time consuming, so I decided to compromise with reality and pay $20 to discard them at the garbage place.


But first, a Pot Pic. Cookie Cross. Getting around to harvesting the bottom of the plant. I've had 2 small male Chem cross seedlings growing with them for a few months, and they started making little pollen clouds about 2 weeks ago.

Since winter weather has basically started, I was trying to give the Flowers as much time as possible, dancing on the edge of the Sword Mold-wise.

So for each branch I have a decision to make - where to cut ? Like a Rabbi, but different.

I look for finished-ness on the part I'm cutting, and little clusters of half-developed seeds on the plant that's left behind.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

Sorry I brought it up St. Phatty but what you've described is the history of civilization, building on top of the rubble left beneath!

I'm a hoarder too.

 

[JonathanT]

Love the birds! I'll have to take a few pics of mine. Something like 90 chickens lol.

 

[armedoldhippy]

if they could truly be domesticated, i'd like to have ringneck pheasants.

 

[St. Phatty]

Personally, I like to have animals that don't depend on me, for food or water, or to escape from the heat.

I went to a "Farm Animal Share & Sale" type thing that one of the farm supply stores had.

That kind of became the topic, "how do you take a vacation with all those animals".

The most common answer - no vacation.

I think there would be a HUGE market for a RELIABLE pet-sitter franchise.


You might need kind of an automated barn, the horses return, the door shut, the mountain lions go hungry.