Buffy and Handy

I've been wanting to do this post for a while now and some recent changes have brought this to the forefront. When young, Penguin was definitely the dominant rooster, chasing all the hens and jumping (somewhat forcefully) on them. Buffy was seen as the small upstart that no one would pay attention to. You can imagine with all the hormone raging in the roosters, he was somewhat frustrated, until he found "Handy".

Some of you who don't know, roosters jump onto the backs of hens, do a little tail wag and grip the back of the hen's neck. This tells the hen to lift her tail and the rooster's bum touches the hen's bum to deposit the semen. We call this act "waggy", I know, not very inventive, but their tail wag is funny! Penguin does this rather inelegantly by chasing the hens around the garden, rather than courting them. A courted hen will squat for the rooster, but for Penguin, he just jumps on them.

Buffy tries to court them, but there have been several rejections (Effie would beat him up, and still does to this day). His short legs didn't help as he couldn't climb onto the backs of hens when he was younger. Then one day, when we were feeding him, he jumped onto the back of our hand and did waggy.

This started off as a laugh and ended up as a routine! Now hubby is Buffy's absolute favourite human and he will only do waggy with hubby's hand. We tried to wean him off onto a toy, but no, handy is his favourite.

Yes, he does come inside the house. Well, he was raised indoors and he's such a cuddly chicken.

Although, his appetite for waggy seems insatiable.

I mean, how many times can he do waggy in a row? No hen will allow him to do this so many times!

"I'm not going to leave you alone until I get handy!"

All this waggy meant that Buffy got quite infatuated with hubby. To the point that Buffy will follow him around the garden (and the house if he came in). All hubby had to do was call "Buffy" and he would come running and if he was really excited to see hubby, Buffy will do a jump and fly towards him. Every day they would do the waggy routine.

Until...

Hubby had to go away on a business trip for 2 weeks. Two weeks without handy! But in the meantime, Buffy had made very good friends with the chicks that were rapidly growing up. All the chicks were now bigger than Buffy and the laying Leghorn, Houdini, was courted strongly by Buffy. The Marans, Chocolat and Fromage, were also courted. Suddenly, he had a wealth of hens to take his pick from! Would he still need handy? Or would handy still need Buffy? I wonder who liked the routine more?

"I have my own hens now!"

So the day came when hubby returned. Of course, the first thing tried was handy! Buffy although pleased to see him, did not venture to climb onto handy! Oh no! It turns out that hubby was quite devastated that his little Buffy did not love him that much anymore!

What I find extremely amusing is that hubby will continually try to get Buffy to jump on his hand, so far it is has been 4 days, and finally, Buffy indulged in his whim and climbed on. Can't believe how pleased hubby was. Maybe that speaks volumes about our own relationship... Ha ha!

And if Buffy is really excited with handy, he'll make "stuff".

On that note, I bid you "Good Day". Hope this post made you smile :)