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Chicken Farmers In Asia! I knew all my chickens by name. I took care of chickens in a country place I was minding for a friend in the southern part of the northern island of New Zealand. The hens used to let me pat them. If I slept in because I was writing a book there, they would all show up underneath my window and wake me up. They went all the way around the house to find my window. When I went on hikes on the hillsides they would follow me until they forgot what they were doing and went back. Little Duckie kept following me, though. right to the gate, and when I came back, Little Duckie was still there. I'll never forget when he finally learned to fly. I wasn't there, but Bob wrote that he took off and never came back. Like me. One day we ran out of feed. The chickens were gathered around me with that dejected look. So I said to Rudie the Rooster, "Hey, Rudie, come over here and watch this." I went to the hillside and Rudi followed. I dug a little hole with my bare hand in the turf and side, "Now, Rudie, we've got to find some food for everybody the natural way, here. So all you have to do is scratch around and find some bugs." Rudie watched as I dug and finding a sort of grub I handed it to him and he really snapped it up. So then everyone gathered round me and I found another grub and gave it to Rudie. "There you go, old buddy. Now you try it." From that day on, they had it made. It was chicken paradise. They were self-sufficient. It got to the point where they began to turn down the chicken feed. I remember the time I was trying to teach Little Duckie and White Duckie how to swim. I put feed down in a line from their coop to a board going across the pond. The feed stopped half way across the board. To my surprise, when I came out later, Rudie the Rooster was out on the board getting the last of the feed and impressing the hens. He was quite a character. Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
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