Aurora means Dawn....

Our Light Brahma chicken... named Aurora by Allison was caught red handed!

First of all, I created a boundary for naming the hens. They all had to be named after girls in animated Disney movies. This was a challenge for my daughters...for a little while. Allison's favorite movie is Sleeping Beauty so she named our light Brahma Aurora "which means dawn". This should have been an omen.

For weeks now, I have heard a crow from the hen house...full of hens! I do not have a rooster. Yes, I do know what a rooster looks like. Every morning, I open the coop and let the ladies out, I turn my back and I hear a crow! I would look back and ask which of the ladies just did that. They would stop and stare at me in a manner of "who me?" I didn't know which hen had the identity/gender crisis until this morning.

Before the sun came up, I opened the coop and I caught Aurora crowing in my ear. Perhaps she was celebrating the crack of dawn! *smile* I explained to her the following: Just because she is the biggest hen in the yard does not mean she needs to crow to prove it. Just because she hears Uncle Martin's rooster crow next door doesn't mean she needs to answer him. And most importantly, she is a hen, she is supposed to lay eggs, she does not crow. She turned her head quizzically towards me and crowed again! I'll post a photo of our crowing hen soon.

As for our other ladies, they've taken to flight! They've discovered Bernoulli's Effect = lift, flap like crazy and fly! They visit with the Alpaca's during the day. Allison and Emily will go out to the pasture to try to capture them. Sometimes they come quietly, because I think they want their water and feed. But others take to hiding out under the Alpaca shed. Eventually, we gather them all up and return them to their designated area. But now I think it is time for me to get a lesson in wing clipping. Perhpas wing clipping will equal egg laying???