Jane

This small bantam hen is Jane.
On 4-8-13, she and Sigyn were given to us by Annette B.
How anyone could give away such a wonderful girl is beyond me, but I enjoy caring for her and she has forever home here with us.

She has a very small head which makes her eyes look huge.
She is also very subordinate and usually calm.
This causes some of the other chickens to bully her, so she is only kept with gentle chickens or those who don't bother her.
She feels secure in the small dog crate and is often found resting there during the day.
Although she is healthy and not at all underweight, she only weighs around 1 lb.
On cold nights she has to be brought inside because she is so old and the freezing weather is hard on her.
This is how it should be for an old hen.
I named her after a character from the Thor movies.

Brownie

This is Brownie, who was hatched in 2009. 

She closely resembles her sister, Coco Puff. But unlike her sister, she has a few feathers on her feet. She is thought to be a buff orpington-cuckoo maran cross. 

On 8-22-14, we noticed that one of her wings was hanging limp and she was gasping. 

We never found out what had hurt her. 

There were no open wounds nor missing feathers, so it is unlikely that she was attacked by a predator. It was not long before her wing healed, but she continues to gasp to this day. 

Brownie is usually calm but she does not like being held. 

She goes broody every year and lays brown eggs. I don't eat eggs because they are underdeveloped chicks. Keep them warm for a while and they hatch. 

I find eating eggs not only gross, but not much different then eating a chicken. 

(At least they were not once alive like chickens) 

That being said, my family does eat eggs. If you feel like you must eat eggs, it is a hundred times better to raise chickens in your yard and care for them properly, then to support the cruel factory farms. 95% of eggs are laid in these terrible places where no living creature should ever be. 

Click here if you eat eggs.

Cyclops

If you watched Cyclops swim by, you might wounder why he would have needed to be rescued. 

His golden scales shimmer in the light as he goes about his business in a most graceful way. 

He is still young and over 6 inches long, making a wonderful additions to a large tank or pound. 

But is you took a closer look, you would notice that something was wrong; he has only one eye. Weather his eye was lost from an injury, during shipment, or if he has always been without it is unknown. Who knows how long he would have lingered in Walmart's tiny tanks if we had not spotted him. 

On 11-13-13 we brought him home. 

He has at least doubled in size since then and gets around just as well as a normal fish would. 

His feeler on his blind side is several times larger then the other. 

This very handsome butterfly koi was named after a member of the X-Men. 

We would love to get a large outside pound some day, but until then he will have to be content with the 55 gallon aquarium he shares with several other fish, including Quicksilver, Lars and Whiskers.

Toadstool and Hunt

A tadpole is not an animal, at least not an animal unto its self. Tadpoles are baby frogs or toads and in captivity they require good care to grow into adults. I have had the privilege of raising two.

On 6-12-14, Wal-mart gave us Toadstool. 

He was thought to be a leopard frog and had already grown his back legs. It was not long before he grew his arms. 

He lived in a aquarium with small freshwater fish until he could be released at a natural spring. 

He was set free on 6-20-14.

This is Hunt. On 12-4-14, we found her in with the fish at Petco, and they were happy to give her to us. We fed her lettuce - after it was boiled for ten minutes. It seemed to take forever for her to grow legs. 

On 1-10-15, she grew his arms and was moved from the guppy aquarium to a smaller container, where she could climb out of the water onto rocks. 

On 1-16-15 she started breathing air. Now, she is often found in his water dish and I think I heard her croke. 

She will be released in the spring.

UPDATE: Hunt was released on 3-22-15