New Companion

Thursday morning we got news about a new chicken , a rooster was joining the family. It wasn't until Saturday when my dad, my brother and my mother went to pick it up at a farm near Washoe Lake. Of course  the hens didn't have a clue that their new partner was joining  the clan. I walked outside our backyard to take some cool air and to take a look at the chickens. I wondered what they see when they see us , I made some research to find out what the world is to them. Chickens have tetra-chromatic vision that means that they see 4 different wavelengths(Blue, Red, Green and Ultraviolet) , while mammals are tri-chromatic ;we see only 3 different wavelengths(Blue, Green and Red). That means chickens see completely different things than we do! Their night vision is poor, this is caused by the lack of light sensing cones inside their retina. Their motion sensing is a bit better than humans but not as good as hawks. Birds and mammals have a structure in their eyeball called the fovea. This natural instrument makes the images appear bigger. The second one found in birds is used to make objects at distance look bigger and clearer. Because of this instrument they wobble and tilt their head when their looking at something at distance.
Saturday morning the rooster decided to make its fancy crowing sounds and scared me too death when i was asleep. I woke up frantically asking my brother to put a blanket around it so it " thinks its night" and it will stop crowing.  I made some research on why they crow. It turns out that they just crow when its morning or dawn.          

Works Cited 

mikethechickenvet:A Chicken Vet's Perspective of the world."Chickens Vision."30 Mar.2012. 26 Oct. 2014.Web.                                                                                                                    

Los Angeles Times. Eryn Brown."Cock-a-doodle-doo! Scientists wonder why the rooster crows." 18 Mar. 2013. 26 Oct. 2014.

Home Sweet Home

The Chickens look sitting like ducks in their pen house waiting for time to fill their Bowl of food. In this week of observations different things came up and different things were learned.

I was sitting in my chair and I was wondering how smart the chickens really are. So I got a blue pencil and held it in front of them. Most of them chased it to the end of their 3 foot pen house like a dart piercing through the air and pecked at it, biting little pieces. They really do look clueless when It comes to giving them such a humanly object.

Another day I was sitting on the pavement and I remembered when me ,my dad and my brother first built the wooden pen and It was nice and clean, but now,  I noticed the wrecked tree Carcass. I thought about how much crap the chickens did to their home. The Pen was full of bites which made me think if they liked to eat the wood and cardboard. The plastic covers we put on them to keep them from the rain was spotted with holes and painted with Feathers  , poop, dirt and the bones from the fly’s that once landed on that same poop and got snapped by the piercing dart.

I stepped into my backyard and the cold gave me wildly chills, I wondered if the chickens were cold. I went closer to see how they reacted to the weather change. Their feathers, puffed up like Feathery balls; and WOW they looked fat! It seemed like they changed accordingly to the weather. Most, if not all of them were snuggling together.

Curiosity Scratches the Chickens

Tuesday morning a curious chicken got mad and moved a wooden stick Covering the door from the wire fence. It got out and scratched itself on the wire fencing. As it moved the wooden stick ,the other chickens raged to get out side the pen. Right away they started rolling on the dirt and they rushed towards some tomato plants pilling themselves on them. The prickly Chickens were wondering allover the yard pecking their curious beaks everywhere they can fit .My mother was furious because her plants got destroyed. She might have wanted them killed that instant.
After several days of observing them i noticed the curiosity in them was big, to big to take over most of their actions. They even pecked at each others feathers, plucking them out like Weeds on a desert surface.

Poultry or Not ?

It is the second week of my observations with my chickens, I have learned so much about them. and some questions came to mine:What are the purposes of these chickens?, Why are we keeping them alive? I asked my father why we was taking the responsibility of keeping them alive and he said it was so they can give us eggs for food. This brought my attention to modern poultry. I started researching  it and found some horrifying videos on poultry farming.