MJ's little flock

[BY Bob]

Aren't they gorgeous!

Absolutely!

 

[BY Bob]

Wowsers!

View attachment 3313111

It was a flappy jump up!

Have they already started dustbathing? Or is that spillage from you mixing it up?

 

[Perris]

Wow - thanks for looking that up. Fascinating. I already read in my chicken history book about how it was the Romans who introduced chicken to the British diet.
The Romans also had large scale incubators for hatching eggs.

If you haven't read this book I strongly recommend it. It is by Andrew Lawler and is called Why Did the Chicken Cross the World:: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21412290-why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-world

I imagine it's generally sound but it's not quite accurate, as there definitely were chickens here before the Romans. What's not clear is whether there were specifically Dorking chickens here before the Romans, and whether the ancient Britons ate them, despite what Caesar says once (an accurate social anthropology of the Britons was surely not a high priority on his to-do list here ). Earlier in the same article I cited it says "The earliest confirmed record for the presence of chickens in Britain is currently from the site of White Horse Stone in Kent where a femur provided a radiocarbon date of 770–390 cal BC with modelled dates of 560–390 cal BC (Kitch, 2006). However, chicken bones are rare finds in the pre-Roman period in Britain, being recorded in only around 30% of the Iron Age faunal assemblages from southern England...and... the regular occurrence of partial or complete skeletons of chickens" suggests to me that they were being consumed, even if they had other e.g. ritual roles. Actually for something organic to be present in a third of sites of that age is quite significant.

 

[BY Bob]

I'm not able to tell the breeds apart . Could you give me a color hint ? They are really pretty and looking good and alert .


Yes, me too. This will be a lot of excitement for you! (And for @BY Bob apparently ). Welcome home young girls !

Yes, me too.

 

[BY Bob]

Interestingly, the hens are being more solicitous than usual this evening. Both Peggy and Ivy touched me gently.

Very out of character for both of them. Ivy's done it maybe twice before and Peggy never.

Maybe they know there is competition for your attention now.

 

[RoyalChick]

I imagine it's generally sound but it's not quite accurate, as there definitely were chickens here before the Romans. What's not clear is whether there were specifically Dorking chickens here before the Romans, and whether the ancient Britons ate them, despite what Caesar says once (an accurate social anthropology of the Britons was surely not a high priority on his to-do list here ). Earlier in the same article I cited it says "The earliest confirmed record for the presence of chickens in Britain is currently from the site of White Horse Stone in Kent where a femur provided a radiocarbon date of 770–390 cal BC with modelled dates of 560–390 cal BC (Kitch, 2006). However, chicken bones are rare finds in the pre-Roman period in Britain, being recorded in only around 30% of the Iron Age faunal assemblages from southern England...and... the regular occurrence of partial or complete skeletons of chickens" suggests to me that they were being consumed, even if they had other e.g. ritual roles. Actually for something organic to be present in a third of sites of that age is quite significant.

Yes. The book cited a lot of the chicken bone evidence. It didn't argue that the Romans introduced chickens to Britain, but rather that chicken and eggs were a mainstay of Roman diet to a much greater degree than of the diet in Britain.
From memory there was also some written evidence as well as bone evidence but I might be wrong on that.

 

[Perris]

Yes. The book cited a lot of the chicken bone evidence. It didn't argue that the Romans introduced chickens to Britain, but rather that chicken and eggs were a mainstay of Roman diet to a much greater degree than of the diet in Britain.
From memory there was also some written evidence as well as bone evidence but I might be wrong on that.

I'm sure that's true. The Romans ate a wide variety of birds, not just the few we do. There are ancient cookery books for written evidence of (some, mostly elite) Roman cuisine, but sadly we also depend on Roman sources for written evidence of what the people they conquered did and ate too, since most of them were illiterate and/or what they wrote hasn't been preserved, unlike some Latin sources.

 

[rjohns39]

Good evening folks

Love the new babies

 

[MaryJanet]

Have they already started dustbathing? Or is that spillage from you mixing it up?

No, not yet.

I suspect what you're seeing as spillage is the red concrete floor showing through the woodshavings.

 

[MaryJanet]

Good evening folks

Love the new babies

Thanks Bob! They're very sweet.