The Honest Courtesan

Early last week, Chekhov was available to help me expand the chicken coop and replace the roof of the henhouse.  Given that I’ve been putting the latter chore off for several years now despite the fact that it probably should’ve been done the first year we were here, I accepted the help despite the fact that the three days it took were also the three hottest of the year.  But now it’s done; despite fairly constant rain from Thursday to Saturday, the inside of the henhouse stayed nice and dry, and as you can see the flock is enjoying being able to hunt for bugs in the grass they can now get to.  As you can also see, our turkey turned out to be a tom rather than a hen; turkey chicks aren’t routinely sexed, so we had no idea what we had until he developed those distinctive head features and started displaying his tail.  I’m not sure what Yellowbird will want to do with him, but the experience has led me to wonder if there’s a butcher hereabouts who’d pay enough for small flocks of turkeys to make the investment in time, money, and effort worthwhile.  But in any case, it won’t be long before those four white pullets are laying full-sized eggs, which is why I keep them in the first place!