Salamander, thank you so much for sharing your poultry stories. I especially liked the ducks/skunk one. I grew up on an old fashioned subsistence farm. We had hundreds of laying hens and sold the eggs commercially.
Also had two flocks of bantam chickens that ran loose and roosted in the apple orchard. Each flock consisted of one rooster and 4-5 hens. All members of each flock resembled each other in color/pattern. I don’t remember any baby bantams - guess the foxes, hawks etc. got them. Those beautiful little adult banties were just exquisite - like moving toys.
[[I grew up on an old fashioned subsistence farm.]]
We weren’t quite a subsistence farm, but we did need to raise them for cheaper food/eggs/milk (goats- YUK!) lamb, geese, ducks, chickens, pigs etc- to get by- most of the animals were’ free range’ (except the goats- they were mean and would attack people lol- so we kept em in pens-
We had banties too- they could be kinda mean too- but yeah- they were cool looking-