I decided to hug Ruffle Bob the last two nights. I took her out of the chicken coop to chill with me. I’m just sure she was loving it and not freaked out of her little mind. Really! Lee says that I am just trying to relive my memories as a child when I (and my siblings) would swing on the swing set with our chickens or ride around on our bikes with them on the handle bars.
Here you can see the ruffles in Ruffle Bob a little better. It’s only on the back of her.
So after much petting and poor little Ruffle Bob trying to figure out what she did to deserve this I decided to put her back and get another chicken to hug. This one is the chicken that we think might be a boy but aren’t really sure. He looks really thrilled to be hugged also don’t you think?
Did you by any chance let Skipper influence you in the naming of all these chickens BOB?! God forbid we ever have a boy child!
LOL! Um, yes they were named Bob in honor of Skip and his love of all things Bob.
Ruffle Bob looks very cute to hug, but I tend to hesitate when it comes to close contact with poultry, I guess because I think they have diseases. But since your chickens have been confined and specially raised, does that mean in terms of health and diseases they’re different from the farm-factory chickens (i.e. bred for Tyson)?
Yes, chickens can have diseases, but so can dogs and cats. In the case of poultry, there’s a big difference between 20,000 chickens crammed into a building with less than 1 sq ft per bird (typical living conditions for factory-farmed broilers), and 11 chickens in a coop with 5 sq ft per bird (and, as soon as the fence is up, a yard with an additional 700 sq ft per bird). The first case is a disease incubator as thousands of genetically similar birds are stressed by high ammonia levels, stand in years worth of poo, and eat feed that includes ground up chickens.
And don’t even get me started on what happens to the chickens between the time they leave their building and they end up in your freezer. Eww.
Personally, I don’t feel too worried about Robin hugging Ruffle Bob. It would seem kind of askew to eat eggs from an animal we were afraid to touch.
That makes sense. Your chickens sound a lot happier. And huggable.