Adapting the Japanese-style yard to our ways is providing a lot of nice, appropriate areas for the chickens. Andrew Lawler's _Why did the chicken Cross The World_ suggests that the birds may have evolved in places like bamboo thickets. So the overgrown shrubbery provides the shade and air cover that makes the birds feel at ease, I guess.

#SilkyChickens #BackyardChickens #烏骨鶏 #AndrewLawler
#WhyDidTheChickenCrossTheWorld

Peach, the mean but maternally #Broody #SilkyHen, is with two generations of her chicks in a back corner of the yard under shrubbery. The more the back corner gets cut back and cleared out the more time they tend to spend back there. I think they need good views to warn each other when the weasel comes around. THese pictures are from a week or so ago (09/11) but it had me thinking about #ColinTudge's book #TheTree and #AndrewLawler'r book about #TheChcken, #WhyDidTheChickenCrossTheWorld . Those thoughts came back to me today while trimming shrubs and taking pictures of the cicks for my posts immediately preceding this one. .

#BackyardChickens #SilkyChickens

#Silky chicks enjoying the newly opened underbrush. #JoelSalatin writes about how the birds should sound happy. And #AndrweLawler's book #whydidthechickencrosstheworld has me thinking this is the sort of environment chickens evolved in, the sort of place where they feel ready to grow towards being their most appropriate selves.. #backyardchickens , if more people cared for them it would be great for local #resilience, I imagine.

This #broody #silky hasn't come out of this box for a few days. I don't she has had any food or water... She might increase our number of #backyardchickens . I'm curious if she can hatch any eggs the first time around. If everything goes well and an egg hatches it will be fun to guess who's seed was used to fertilize the egg. In _Why did the Chicken Cross The World_ Andrew Lawler explains that the hens can store sperm for a month. So this weeks eggs might just barely be able to have half their DNA from Chuckarine the #Cochin .... Lawler's book was great, it talked about a society that chose to empower everybody, including women, by becoming more decentralized by rejecting large-scale cows for small-scale chickens...

#AndrewLawler #WhyDidTheChickenCrossTheWorld