Here in the United States, we celebrate Independence Day on July Fourth. It’s a big, rollicking, firework shooting, backyard cookout, sort of holiday. My little town of only 5,000 inhabitants has an “Old Home Day” the weekend before the fourth. There’s a parade. With balloons.

A band.

A fire truck (we’ve very proud of our truck and our on-call, volunteer fire fighters.)

There are Minutemen. Behind them are a group of folks dressed up as ticks for “tick awareness.” We’re that sort of town.

Townspeople with vintage cars are encouraged to join the parade. This year my son has the perfect car for the procession.

We also have the perfect parade dog!

I could leave this post at that – with Scooter’s smiling face. I never write about politics on this blog, but read the news. There are tens of millions of people in countries where this sort of parade is unimaginable. Too many live where there is brutality and violence driven by ethnic, tribal and religious zealots. The horrors are hard to fathom from my sweet and safe little town. I am so grateful that I am here. I am so grateful to live in a country where freedoms and tolerance are written into the constitution and those laws are respected and upheld (and even expanded – I’m all for same-sex marriage.) Happy Birthday, America.

There’s always one in a group – the string bean skinny, knee bouncing, always in constant motion, kid. He’s the sort that is constantly eating, but never puts on an ounce of weight. He burns right through the food as if it’s rocket fuel and he’s off to the moon.

Twiggy is that kid in my flock.

Have you ever seen her relaxing?

No. I didn’t think so.

She’s a White Leghorn, and she’s true to type. She’s sleek and full of curiosity and energy. She also lays eggs, and a lot of them. Even in her second year, she lays an astounding six eggs each week. Leghorns don’t go broody. She won’t take a break until she molts in the fall.

In order to make those eggs and keep moving at her leghorn clip, Twiggy needs to eat. She’s the first one at the feeder in the morning, she eats frequently during the day, and she makes sure that her crop is full before bedtime.

If I have to turn on the light after the hens have gone to roost in the dark, (which is what happens when Phoebe has decided to have a hop around instead of going to bed and I have to go back to the close up the coop on her schedule) the hens all murmur and shuffle at the sudden brightness. Not Twiggy. As soon as the light is turned on, she hops down and starts eating.

Everyone finds this annoying, especially Phoebe who likes to have the floor to herself at night.

I, however, recognize what it takes to make those eggs, day after day, and I do appreciate Twiggy’s output. Besides, it’s simply fun to have a hen with such kinetic energy and a comb like this in the flock.

I wanted to catch you up on a few storylines going on here.

The good news is that, what with the extra shade and the addition of pond salt, The Beast is fully recovered from her bout with sunburn.

The thermometer is registering temperatures above 90º F and it’s been humid, but I don’t need to look at a weather gauge to know that. I just have to observe Phoebe. She’s stretched out on the cool concrete inside of the Little Barn. If you want to see her active, check the cams at nightfall. She’s been letting us know that she needs a hop-around then, and not to ask her to come inside until it’s fully dark.

The new feeder trial has ended. The hens finally got over their fear of it and stepped on the platform. So, I adjusted it for the next step – slight movement while they step on the lever. That totally freaked them out, and they have remained freaked out for two days.

The hens crane their necks to grab a few pellets, but they’re not eating like they should. This is a group of eleven, three-year old hens. They’re laying six to eight eggs daily. The shells are thin because they’re old hens. They absolutely have to eat in order to make the eggs and stay healthy. I took away the lever feeder and returned their old hanging one. They rushed to get breakfast.

I guess that you can’t teach an old hen new tricks. I’ll hold onto that feeder, though. I do think that it’s a good idea, and I’d still like to be able to use it to keep the sparrows out of the chicken pellets. I’ll just have to wait until I get a new batch of chickens (which shouldn’t be for a couple of years yet!)

Lastly, Scooter has been working hard. My oldest son is home from college and recovering after a demanding semester. Scooter is helping.

Although you don’t see him on the cams, Tonka is as much a part of my life as the animals that you watch here at HenCam. In fact, I spend more time with him that anyone else in the family. My sons (one home from college, one in high school) assume that if they don’t see me around the house, that “mom’s at the barn.”

There’s all sorts of theories about why women love horses. I’ve heard people go on and on about how women get a power rush from being able to control a large beast, and that there’s an undercurrent of sexual connotations. I don’t buy it. It’s also not just about having an animal to talk to – for that people have dogs. I became smitten with horses as a toddler and that love has never ebbed. I’ve put a lot of thought into why that is.

Horse are domestic animals. They’ve been working alongside people for thousands of years. They relate to us. They communicate with us. That’s true of other domestic animals, from dogs to chickens, but, with horses it’s at another level. Because we ride them, we can communicate instantaneously through our bodies. So, for example, not only do I know what Tonka is looking at because I can see his head turn, and his ears flick, but I can feel it, too. Conversely, that goes for him as well. He knows where I’m looking. He feels if I’m tense. If I shift my weight from one hip bone to the other, he senses it, and, with training, will adjust what he does accordingly. Ride with enough quiet and tact, and you feel each other breathe. Go out into the world on your horse, and you see the landscape together. You can’t do that with any other animal.

There’s this theory out there about how, because horses are prey animals, (big carnivores want to eat them) that they relate to humans as if we are predators and are a threat to them. “Natural horsemanship” bases a lot of their training on this premise. I think it’s totally wrong. Horses are smart enough to know that we’re not going to hunt them. We might scare them once in awhile (and they might scare us) but it’s not a predator/prey relationship. My horse knows I’m not a mountain lion. If I trained him as if I were, I’d be causing a lot of problems between us. There’s also this idea that, because horses are herd animals, and that the herd has a hierarchy, that we humans have to take the dominant position in the group. I don’t agree with that, either. First of all, horses know that we’re not horses. They don’t expect us to be part of their herd. Secondly, there’s a lot of misunderstanding with what “dominance,” and “leadership” is. Just thinking that you have to be “dominant” makes you behave in a way that sets up conflict. That doesn’t mean that I don’t maintain a relationship that asks for and requires appropriate and safe behavior from my horse; it does meant that I don’t rely on aversive training techniques to have that relationship. Horses are social animals and develop long-lasting and deep friendships over time. That’s the key. That’s what I aim for.

On the other hand, even though I don’t have to act like a horse to train Tonka, it does help, in our relationship, to be aware of what horses respond to. They’re hyperaware of movement, and so being calm and predictable is something that I try to do. They respond to body language and so I am aware of where I place myself in relation to my horse. They vocalize rarely, but when they do, it means something, and so I try not to chatter, but I do use my voice, when I have something to say.

The relationship with my horse fascinates me and enriches my life. But there’s something else about horses. Beauty. Especially in movement.

Of the three horse gaits, walk, trot and canter, two of them have moments when all four feet are off of the ground.

Here is Tonka at the trot.

This is the canter.

How amazing is it that I can put a saddle and bridle on this horse, and he’ll do that when I’m on his back? That I can take flight with  him?

That said, it’s not the rush of galloping that makes me so happy around horses. We can be standing still, like we are in the photo below. Actually, look closely at it. We’re not still at all. Tonka has one ear towards the camera, and one ear back to listen to me. My legs are on his sides and I can feel that he’s relaxed, but also ready to move off. He’s waiting for me to tell him what’s next.

And so the conversation continues. What’s next, Tonka?

The Nursing Home Project began with five hens. I was concerned that five were too many for the space,

but I also thought that there’d be losses. I was right on both counts. Clementine, the favorite hen, died of internal laying. Beulah, the Black Star, decided that her flock mates were too close to her and she was too bored, so she got into the bad habit of feather picking. I brought her back home, where she is reformed.

The nursing home flock is now down to three.

Three hens are just right. They all get along. They’re busy, and chatty, and that makes them entertaining for the nursing home residents and their families. Children, who would otherwise find visiting an elderly relative scary (as these institutions are, what with the smells, and the staff in uniforms, the equipment, and the people with dementia) are happy to spend time with a grandparent when there are chickens to distract everyone.

The staff benefits. Lisa continues to spend her lunch hour with “my girls.” She lets them out on grass when she can. They follow her everywhere so she has no problem getting them back into their coop. Lisa collects the eggs, and will surprise a coworker with a gift of an egg at their work station.

I have learned some lessons. Firstly, I should listen to my own advice and stick to my chicken coop criteria, especially for the amount of outside space that hens need. Also, next time, I’d build a compost bin into the fenced run, just like I have at home. (It turns out that the nursing home provides lots of greens and other goodies to the hens, and a contained space for those healthy treats would be better.) I also proceeded under the assumption that there was ample storage for the feed, tools, etc. nearby. However, there isn’t. A coop at an institution needs it’s own, attached storage area. The nursing home is going to purchase a small tool shed. That will make Lisa’s care-taking chores that much better. (You can see the way it is done now in this photo.)

The other thing that I concluded is that coops designed for public viewing should have a roof on part of the outside run. That way, even when the weather is bad, (whether it’s raining, snowing, or very hot, the hens will come outside and people can enjoy them.

They are enjoyable.