Welcome to Dog Week here at OPOD. We will look at pictures of families and their dogs. This idea was submitted by Marcus S., along with this picture of his family farmstead and dog, named Duke. The picture was taken in the 1890's in Kansas. Hope you all will submit photos for consideration this week. I really like the photos you send in from your old family albums.
Domestic Update:
We have had lots of activity out in Chickie Town this week. Lovie is on day 15 of sitting on her nest, and she is a real trooper. She sits round the clock, and only takes about a 10 minute break late in the afternoon to get a bite to eat and a sip of water. She is doing her part, but still not sure if the eggs are going to be the kind that hatch.
While Lovie is taking care of her nest, there has been some other strange developments in Chickie Town. I had been noticing that after I closed the door of the coop at night that there would be a lot of commotion. So, on Monday night, after closing them in, I lifted the little door above the laying boxes to watch to see what was going on. The chickies all got up on their roost like normal. Then Lovie got off her nest, and started walking down the line of chickies. She would look each chickie right in the face, and then move to the next chickie. Then she came to Ain't Gina, and when she saw her, she just laid into her. She knocked Ain't Gina off the roost, and then herded her over to the corner laying box. This is the box where I have the fake egg. This egg I had put in one of the laying boxes so that the chickies would know that is where to lay the eggs. Lovie pushed her into the laying box. If Aint Gina tried to go back to her roost, Lovie would force her back onto the nesting box. I thought that was sort of odd. Then, the next morning, I let all the ckickies out of the coop. They all left, and then Lovie got mad, left her nest, and went out and found Ain't Gina, and got after her, and chased her back into the coop and back onto the fake egg in the nesting box. I then thought I would open the door to the laying boxes, so that perhaps Ain't Gina could escape out the top, but then Handsome got up onto the coop, and stood guard to not let her escape.
Poor Ain't Gina appears to be being held hostage by the peacocks. I don't want to read to much into it, but I wonder if Lovie is worried about that fake egg, and thinks that someone needs to be sitting on it? Is she holding Ain't Gina hostage to sit on that fake egg? That is the only thing I can figure that is going on. Ain't Gina is very distressed, and appears to be extremely stressed over the situation.
I thought that the fake egg was perhaps causing all the trouble, so I took it out of the nesting box, but now the peacocks are still making Ain't Gina sit in the empty nesting box.
The other chickies spend a lot of time watching what is going on, but try to stay out of the way. The picture above shows Ivy June watching Lovie roll her eggs. Every few hours, Lovie gets up, and rolls her eggs around, and then sits back down on them.
All this commotion is affecting egg production. The other peacocks sit outside the chicken coop and harass the chickies as they are trying to go in and lay their eggs. Miss Maimy is shown above as she has just run the gauntlet of peacocks to get into the coop to lay her egg. Egg production had been up at 9-10 eggs per day, but since all this excitement started, we are at 6-7 eggs a day.
Mrs. PJM is getting upset with the situation, and says that we should move Lovie and her nest out of the chicken coop and into the fine peacock palace we had built for her. I say that we should not get involved in Chickie Town politics, and should just let things play out. What do you think?
