Am I odd?

[chris]

Anyone else thank your hens for laying for you?

I thank mine individually Usually give 'em a pat on the back or head etc too. I'm getting soft

[binley100]

Nowt wrong with a bit of encouragement......

[winstonwobble]

do exactly the same telling them what good girls they are

[shirlthegirl43]

I am only getting one or two eggs from my lot at the moment and I don't know which ones are laying. They all get words of encouragement and a general thank you whenever an egg is collected.

[chris]

Good to know.. my 17 month old daughter is learning fast too.

"gickin"
"gegg!" (when collecting eggs)
me: say thank you, "ta".
"baaaaaai gickin" as we leave.

hehe good fun and a nice routine when I get home from work Thinking of changing their names to something beginning with 'G' as everyword she says starts with it heh

[RichmondHens]

Oh it's so lovely to hear them start saying things, and it's worth keeping a record too as before you know it they will be pronouncing everything properly and you will miss the days of "gickin". Our children also said similar things when small and long after they started saying the words properly we still refer to things by the names they gave them when tiny.

My son used to call raisins "rainies" and I called them rainies for ages afterwards, until one day he said "mummy they are raisins you know, not rainies"!

[OverWyreGrower]

Good to know.. my 17 month old daughter is learning fast too.

"gickin"
"gegg!" (when collecting eggs)
me: say thank you, "ta".
"baaaaaai gickin" as we leave.

Awww, bless

[Snadger]

Me today to my five 'white' hens "Ah, so you've layed FIVE little eggs for me today then! Well thank you very much"
"How come you only layed three yesterday....no you can't come out of the greenhouse door.......get back Sid, don't start getting ideas...I'm only TALKING to them" Shuts greenhouse door quickly and latches it.
"See you all tonorrow" says I, peering through the glass.

And thats only one bunch out of four seperate bunches I have a discussion with each day!

Anybody seeing or listening to me would think I was a total loon (.........and they could be right!)

[Bramble-Poultry]

i always talk to our animals.

we currently have a "wild" welsh hill pony in our stables for taming down. He is an ungelded yearling and full of fighting talk. We had one of those "horse whisperers" over and i was a bit sceptical, but within 45 minutes he was stroking the horse, had a head collar on it and was leading it around the yard like it was a pet dog.

I noticed that all the time he was talking softly to the horse, thanking it for doing what he asked and discussing things with the horse as they went along. I asked if the horse understood anything he said, and the answer was no, but the horse did understand a soothing calming tone in the voice, and the control of the horse came from how that voice was projected in its tones and feeling, rather than what was actually said.

Now i tried it for a bit and today i was able to get in and fully muck out the stable with the pony in it, replace all the bedding and put a good layer of straw in aswell and he did nothing more than snort a couple of times, but he did do what i asked when i asked it of him. Had i tried that a couple of weeks ago he would have kicked the living daylighhts out of me as if he were Bruce Lee.

So i would suggest that it doesnt matter what you say to you chooks, as long as you talk in a calm and soothing voice they will understand your meaning.

[snakeshack]

my brother in law has been called STIR for the past 27 years as my niece couldn't pronounce alastair.

[country chic]

I would thank the girls if they ever decide to start laying again, I did have a word with the three of them the other day about the ' egg' situation but am still waiting on their response, perhaps they need time to think about it ?

My 5yrs old - Mummy do chicken know they are chickens ? Good question : )

[Snadger]

I would thank the girls if they ever decide to start laying again, I did have a word with the three of them the other day about the ' egg' situation but am still waiting on their response, perhaps they need time to think about it ?

My 5yrs old - Mummy do chicken know they are chickens ? Good question : )

They'll probably send you an email to let you know...............

[chris]

lol, I was wondering if chickens know we're not chickens last night - how strange. I thought why do they see me as a suitor, yet if I introduced a cockerel no doubt they'd prefer him to me...

Funny, as I'm sure our dog thuoght he was human too, when he was a puppy he always made a b-line for toddlers as he knew they'd play with him - ignored other dogs... until he reached I guess his pubecent (spelling?) age, when he had his nose up every botty and lady bits (dogs, of course) known to man.

As for pronoucing things properly RH - yep she's mastered one word that rhymes with 'duck' (my laptop battery died (completely) and I'd lost a load of work I was working on to get rolled out fast).. oh and the time when someone over took me in country lanes, almost clipped another car in front of me whilst over taking him then almost lost it on a bend, he was a duck and a twit sort of combo.

"Yes Seren, that's right.. 'DUCKs' say 'Quack Quack!'"
"errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... what do dogs say? erm what do chickens say? What do ducks say? Yaaay quack quack good girl"

phew!



(Oh yes, and to think my mother in law thinks she's saying "Sit" to their dog too is quite funny - really have to watch my tongue now!!! - though i'm going to turn it into 'chit' I think, as I am chitting some spuds )

[Bramble-Poultry]

when the teacher dropped her handbag in class and all the contents spilled over the floor, my lad Alexander (aged 9), leant over to her (and in his best Blackadder accent) said "i believe the phrase you are looking for rhymes with clucking bell"

teacher laughed, alex laughed and then embarrassing faces when he and the teacher realised the rest of the class would want that explaining.

[Flummery]

I't only polite to say thanks for the gorgeous quality eggs they give us. We can usually tell who laid which egg but if they do a slightly unusual one we say "thank you chicken" when we eat it. It's "Thank you Amber" or whoever, when we can tell.

I'm always glad no-one can hear me doing 'chicken duty' as I talk to them all the time. They get thanked for the eggs, told what the weather forecast is, told that they are an incontinent set of profligate pooers, whatever comes into my mind!

So maybe you ARE odd, but you aren't on your own! If it was a hanging offence there'd be a lot of long necks round here!