1/16/2004: Baby elephant mud bath

Happy Friday! We have a lot of new visitors over the last few months. Long time IotD readers know that IotD features happy animal shots every Friday, but I rarely outright mention the practice and so... if you didn't know before, now you know.

These two beautifully contented elephant babies are in a wildlife trust nursery in Nairobi. This location raises such orphaned baby elephants until they are ready to released back into the wild.

I keep forgetting to mention that glassjaw pointed to MSNBC's yearly review of their IotWEEK:

http://www.msnbc.com//modules/yip03/slideshow.asp

Soem of these have been IotDs here as well; in any case, it's probably the best gallery of yearly images around.

Well, if we knew what year it was here, we'd give them a run.

Arghhh... You can't copy and past the pics... damn flash.....

but my favorite one is definitely the pig... haha.. that's a perfect Friday image!

Ok.. I got super-annoyed that I couldn't find a way to bypass the flash stuff, and couldn't find the pic anywhere else via google, or the reporters newspaper website.. ....

So I did a prtscrn, and saved it via there.... So anyways.. here's the piggy..

I must be hungry...

I saw that picture and I thought..


WOW! That pig looks delicious!

Is it my imagination or is the Rhode Island red (seriously is that STILL a state) looking for her pal in that gaping maw?

That was a damn fine photo/musical montage. There are some absolutely first rate pics in there. I voted for the church, the illuminated cross and the thunderstorm as my fave.

Oh, you upitty food chain climber, you.

What are the negatives to chicken ownership? Are they mean? Do they smell bad? Tear up the grass? Can you have just one chicken or are they happier with a friend or 2?

I really like chickens. They are soothing to watch and listen to. I think its good for the kids to be familiar with the compressed life cycle of chickens since they can extrapolate a lot more information from watching them than you'd expect. They can be tough on a yard, we've had them here from the time we first established our "lawn" so they are constantly tearing up weaker sections.

The only trouble with meaness that we've had is when roosters get close to three years old. If you don't interact with the roosters at all they seem to behave well for about 2 1/2 years. The hens of most breeds like to be held and petted. We have dominiques which are great foragers and smart about hawks something thats important since we let them range free during the day. Domi roosters are gorgeous critters. We also have aracunas which lay oddly colored eggs like blues and greens. They are a much more nervous breed but come in all kinds of crazy colors. Our lakenvelder chickens, I'd call a failure since the roosters are noisy and the hens are skinny and skittish. The Rhode Island Reds are good layers and pretty smart birds. We've had a few others with varying results.

There are a number of bantam breeds which make nice pets. I've never kept a single chicken so I don't know how they respond to isolation. They seem to enjoy flocking up and the hens seem more content with a couple roosters in the flock.

Thank you. I wonder if Ljim would let me have a couple? He was pretty adamant about the damn alpacas.... I bet chickens are more reasonably priced though.

chickens

We too had chickens at one point. My mom liked them and so from the time I was 16 till just recently my mom had them around. We built them a pen about 8 ft. by 8 ft. and then would also allow them to roam the back yard. They stayed in the pen at night, on rainy days, and days we weren't going to be home. We never ate them and in fact I hate eggs and my mom is allergic to them so we rarely used the eggs. They were mostly there as pets as my mom liked to go feed them and watch them scratch and peck around the yard. We had the bantam varieties (Cochin and silver sebrights) and a few Araucanas for the green/blue eggs. Like Griff we found the hens to be very good natured and the roosters to be a little mean at times. If you live in a real urban area I don't recommend roosters as they will crow at 4 AM (and sometimes earlier) and it will bug your neighbors.

Here are two sites that have some info on chickens. The first is the American Poultry Association's article on having chickens in an urban setting. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the article. The second site has photos of different chicken breeds. Its not a complete list as they don't have any photos of breeds that only exist as the bantam (small) breeds. But still its nice to look at the photos.

Here is a link to a hatchery that has a bunch of photos as well, plus you can order day old chicks from them.

Prob. more chicken info then any of you wanted to know. Those are just site I found with a quick google search, so there may be better stuff out there.

Oh btw they'll eat deer ticks if you have trouble with Lyme disease down your way.

Back to the Baby elephants............
They look so cute, it would have been wonderful to watch them play in the mud.

Yeah, we've run into a few deer ticks already - and they freak me right out. I'd love to have them around for that, and bugs in the garden too. Thanks for all the great info and links!
I want alpacas. To keep the horses and chickens company.

I guess the next question I should ask is, what is he so adamant about regarding the alpacas?

Was it the price? I am not sure what they go for where you live but here you can pay $700 for one without blinking an eye.

Yes, price was a big problem for him. Mostly though, he just thinks I'm insane
We didn't end up buying a property with room for any kind of larger animal like that (definitely next time though)... but we should have room enough for a couple of chickens.

Chickens?! are you friggin kidding me!?

does anyone who has seen jinx's photo* think she looks even remotely like a farm girl?

we don;t even like our cats all that much, and they poop in a box!

chickens!

*

Farm girls don't have to look like farm animals.

Wow, great pictures! Beautiful family and home.... great job!

the one daughter ( they're both beautiful, btw) looks more like a hockey player than a farmer.

Kids are cute, Mom is hot and the dog is beautiful.

looks like a hollow body electric guitar too.......you any good?

Mandolin, I suck.

I'd say you nailed the essentals Bruce. I'm realizing we need to put up some new kid pics, with teeth. She looks more like Sonja Henie than Bobby Orr now.