Barn Raisin': Cockle-Doodle-Do

I realized as I wrote the title of this post that I am not sure if it is cockle-doodle-do or cock-a-doodle-do. I am not sure it really matters. At any rate, it is a sound that our handsome rooster is starting to make. I do believe that he is quite proud of himself and he seems to enjoy the sound of his own crow. Meaning, he crows more than he should. Thankfully, we have no neighbors nearby and so far we are entertained by him more than we are annoyed by him. I can't say the same for the turkeys who seem to think he is challenging them. They are all the same age, but the turkeys are about three times larger. They don't notice, though, and let the older chickens and guineas really push them around. Which is funny to watch. I have resisted naming any of the turkeys and try to only think of them as future sausage, however, I will miss them when their eventual demise comes. They follow us around like puppies. They like to look in the windows at us. They perch on the railings of the porch and look like mean gargoyles. They gobble and prance around and amuse us to no end. The poop that they leave behind EVERYWHERE, I will not miss. The tons of feed that they consume and the price that goes with the feed, I will not miss. Them roosting on the top of my truck, I will not miss. In the mean time, I will enjoy them, and love them, and give them a great free-ranging life. Speaking of free-ranging, one of our female guineas has decided to set a nest. She is a bit of an outcast and one day when she went missing I feared the worst. She surprised us all by reappearing a couple of days later only to disappear again. The next time she showed up, I sent Spencer after her and sure enough, there was a nest. She is about two hundred yards from the house, under a cluster of sage with about fourteen eggs. She is rapidly approaching twenty-one days, so hopefully the eggs are fertile and will hatch out soon. That's the news on the poultry front.