For months I've been thinking to clear away and replant the spaces fenced off for the Green curtain. I got started a few days ago and the birds were quick to start enjoying the new dirt with fresh pickings, I guess there are a lot of worms and bugs and grubs for them along with any remaining green leaves..

#BackYardChickens #SilkyChickens #JidoriChicks #烏骨鶏 #地鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏雛
Silky Hens, Jidori Chicks, Falcon...

It seemed like a crow didn't like all the hysterics either and tried to chase the falcon off for a while..

The Miyazaki Jidori fighting birds seem half-wild compared the silkies. They disappear into piles of brush, or flatten themselves under fallen branches.. fascinating..
#SilkyHens #JiDoriChicks #Falcon #Crow #ハヤブサ #烏骨鶏 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #地鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏雛
Maron studiously ignoring adult birds.. but licks her chops and can't avoid a murderous attraction to the smaller chicks...

#MaronTheShiba #SilkyChickens #SilkyHen #JidoriChicks #烏骨鶏 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #柴犬 #地鶏雛 #じどっこ雛
Days old Jidori heirloom cihcks with a mothering Sillky hen.. One of the hens was staying on the eggs tat never got beyond the liquid stage, so I replaced the eggs on the 19th... Eventually it would be nice if the hens decided on one place to be a permanent brooding box for eggs, then moved to another box when one of them decides to take care of chicks instead of warming eggs.. If there were always one or two at each stage there would be no need to use electricity to hatch eggs with an incubator or warm chicks with heat lamps at night.. "Creator Spirit" (Paul Goodman on writing, art..) come... Maybe I'll get an epiphany about how to set up a rotation like that..

#JidoriChicks #SilkyHen #地鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏雛 #烏骨鶏雌鶏
Can't stop being fascinated by the Miyazaki Jidori Heirloom chicks.. I'm pretty sure all 4 or so are hens... I wouldn't have known if that rooster hadn't hatched and lived a couple weeks, long enough for me to see who different the Jidori roosters are in color, pattern, and speed (of movement and development...)

#JidoriChicks #SilkyHens #地鶏雛 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #宮崎地鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏雛雌鶏
Prune the maternal Silky hen with some recently hatched Miyazaki Jidori Hen chicks..

#SilkyHen #JidoriChicks #JidoriHenChicks #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #地鶏雛 #地鶏雌鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏雛
It's fascinating to follow the changes in the colors and patterns on the Miyazaki Jidori (or Jidokko, some sort of local heirloom bird, maybe mixed in with other heirloom) birds. These three chicks, the Silky, the Jidori rooster, and the Jidori hen all being together helps get started with comparisons. The Jidori chicks seem to grow a lot faster, and the Jidori rooster seems the most adventurous as in running around far from the mother hen. The Jidori hen was a lot more pro-active about eating the wriggling worms I threw to them.. But the Silkies seem to have preferences too. It might just be an individual taste thing, some birds like worms, some don't.. I read about research on coyote poop that seemed to show a diversity of individual tastes among coyotes.. For better or worse, not many seem to like eating feral cats, the outside cats probably need a natural predator so the wild birds and a lot of other species get a better chance of avoiding extinction. I wonder if this set up with locking the birds up at night would work with coyotes the way it tends to work with the weasels, badgers, and tanuki around here...

#SIlkyHen #JidoriChicks #SilkyChick #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #地鶏雛 #烏骨鶏雛
Silky Hens with Miyazaki Jidori (Heirloom) chicks (and a shy silky chick probably not visible in the photo...
I just notice that the 2-3 egg-brooding hens managed to hatch another Jidori Hen.. Hopefully the new chick won't get crushed with among all the bigger birds at night..

#SilkyHens #BackyardChickens #MiyazakiJidori or JidodKou? #JidoriChicks #宮崎地鶏 #地鶏雛 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #烏骨鶏 #地鶏 #地鶏雛
Silky hen with 3 chicks, 1 Jidori rooster, 1 Jidori hen, and 1 Silky. With Silkie it's hard to tell if they are a rooster or a hen until the get big and start practice fighting chest-bumping or awkawrdly start trying to crow. My guess through this first experience with Miyazaki Jidori heirloom birds is that the roosters have a brigher red background with a dark strip foreground from the start and the hens are plainer with only a lighter red background. That's my guess for now.

The plainer Jidori chick (probably a hen right?) was in a box all by her(?)self. I was nervous about leaving her in the box with the weeks-older turkey and silky chick. I tried it for a bit but the older silky was insistent about yanking on the new JiDori's feet as if they were tasty worms. To be save I had the new one in her(?) own box. but she was noisy when I came back for lunch. And it's a lot of work t make sure the heat lamps are working and there's a variety of food in 2 different boxes, and to think about how to time their adventures outside with the colder rainy weather. It's much better to leave all that to a brooding hen.. So I placed her next to the hen that's brooding the Jidori chick (rooster?) and Silky chick.. And it went well (KnockOnWood!!)...
#SilkyHen #JidoriChicks #JidoriChickRooster #JidoriChickHen #JidoriChick #SilkyHen #烏骨鶏 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #烏骨鶏雛 #地鶏雛 #宮崎地鶏 #宮崎地鶏雛 #MiyazakiJidori #MiyazakiJidoriChick