Dick King-Smith my beloved
I once slept on the couch because our itty bitty chicken fell asleep in my beard and didn’t want to be moved. May not seem like a big deal, but I have a back filled with multiple injuries, so it was a lot of pain.
She’s too big for that now, which is sometimes sad, but spending the night pinned down by cuteness as she trilled and peeped in her sleep was absolutely adorable.
I swear, people posting about me all over the place!
Also, I would legit do that if I had chicks.
You paint a touching picture. There is a famous picture of a Japanese woman cutting a corner off her kimono rather than disturb a sleeping cat.
Do you think the bird was dreaming? I like to watch cats and dogs paws twitching while they sleep. It seems that dreaming is something that every creature does.
That’s a reference to the passion of the cut sleeve where emperor Ai of China did the same for his sleeping boyfriend
I’m convinced chickens dream. They exhibit the same kind of involuntary twitches and wing flaps that are too akin to a dog running in its sleep to not see them as the same thing.
But chickens are also light sleepers. They’ll bump each other and do little trills and whistles to each other. So I’m not sure what exactly she was doing; dreaming or just reacting to tiny movements I was making while breathing.
Ngl, I’d definitely cut off clothing rather than disturb her in her sleep lol. I’m getting a reputation for being the crazy chicken guy because I talk about them so often, but I love these damn birds.
I keep wanting to record our pet hen doing her dream movements and sounds, but there’s not enough light in her indoor “coop”, so it ends up just being sounds. It’s freaking adorable though. She’ll take little naps on the arm of the couch, and do it there sometimes, but she gets woken up too easy to get a good recording of it.
I remember when my daughter was tiny she had some very cute behaviours that I was trying to capture on camera but sometimes those precious and elusive moments must remain as sweet memories.
I’ve had a lot of backyard chickens, but I’ve never had an indoor one. Have you trained her not to crap all over the house?
Luckily, she did okay with pad training. She isn’t perfect, but she makes sure her feet are on a pad before letting go. Since she’s only inside in the evening and night, she’s not running around as much as she does during the day, so we can make sure there’s a pad available no matter where she is with us.
It took about two months to get to that point though, and I suspect if she had been much older when we got her, it wouldn’t have worked out. It helps that she’s fairly prissy as well; even outside, she won’t poop near her food and water, which I’ve never seen a chicken care about. She also won’t poop in her nesting box (not that she’s in there long, she’s never gone broody at all).
That’s really cool, I’m gonna have to try that with my next batch of chicks. They’re such awesome little critters, I’d love to have an inside one.
If all else fails, chicken diapers exist. More work day to day, but less messy
Quackulator
