Cat shares birdcage with chicks

A cat has adopted five chicks in China - and is living with them in a birdcage.

Owner Li Tongfa, of Qingdao, northern China's Shandong Province, said the unusual family had been living together for two weeks.

The unlikely relationship began when he left the door of the birdcage open and the cat clambered in.

"I kept shooing her away from the birdcage because I was worried that she would eat the chicks but she seems to love them very much," he said.

"So now I just leave the cat in the cage with the chicks and she just seems to want to play with them."

Li added that the chicks seemed to welcome the cat, jumping all over her when she climbs in the cage.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Cat_shares_birdcage_with_chicks

Osprey chick snatched by buzzard raises one-eyed questions

One-eyed view on buzzards and a coiincidence
July 2012. This remarkable video clip was filmed on a nest cam in Scotland. The clip shows an osprey leving her nest moments before a buzzard swoops down and carries off one of the chicks. This provoked some very strange reactions from certain sections of Scottish society, howling about the danger of buzzards to rare spoecies.

THE STORY HAS SOME INTERESTING ASPECTS THOUGH:

The film was taken at Lochter, a custom made fishing and outdoor pursuits centre run by Euan Webster. Mr Webster is "a former chairman of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's Grampian regional group". Various groups have ben howling about the need to control buzzards for persecuting ospreys, and, according to a statement made via Scottish Land and Estates, Mr Webster states He said: "This was a shocking act and clearly demonstrates why something needs to be done to control buzzards. It cannot be right that the buzzard remains protected yet they swarm over the countryside in large numbers eating prey - including iconic and beautiful birds such as Ospreys - at will."

Scottish Land and Estates statment also states "As Buzzard numbers have grown, clearly there is a need for increasing amounts of prey for them to eat. Whilst smaller populations of Buzzards may at one time have been able to survive mostly on carrion, rabbits and small game, this is now clearly not the case with growing numbers of reports of Buzzards preying on other wildlife such as red squirrels and other wild birds, some of them being rare species of conservation concern such as Osprey."

This ignores some facts; Ospreys have coexisted very happily with buzzards for centuries, until human intervention removed them from the scene in the UK. Buzzard numbers too are now reaching healthy, and probably natural, levels since their persecution was stopped (or slowed at any rate) and various chemicals have been removed from the countryside.

Do buzzards kill other birds for fun? Now that would be shocking behaviour
What was so shocking about a raptor catching and eating something? One would have thought that someone in Mr Webster's position would have known that this happens occasionally. What would have been shocking would be if the buzzard had killed another bird just for the fun of it - Or even charged another buzzard for the right to do that on his patch.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/osprey-buzzard.html#cr

Men hatch Swedish chicks from organic eggs

Lucas and Lars Lund from Hällnäs, near Umeå in northern Sweden, bought a carton of 24 eggs from their local Coop supermarket, the local Västerbottens-Kuriren (VK) newspaper reported.

"It's really exciting for us. It all started as a hobby, and when I read online that organic eggs could yield chicks, I knew I had to buy an incubator," Lucas Lund told The Local.

“I bought the freshest eggs in the store, then I came straight home and put them in the incubator.”

After a time in the incubator, the Lunds saw a surprising result as the eggs started to crack.


“We have a total of five now and they are as cute as anything. And we think there's another one on the way,” Lund said.

Of the 24 eggs purchased, Lund claims that 10 were fertilized.

“There is already a small crack in one of the other eggs, so we’re expecting another one very soon,” he said.

Lund explained that the little chicks must stay in the incubators for a while after birth, but that four have already "moved out" to their own patch.

"We'll be doing the same thing next year when the chickens have matured," he told The Local

Lund confessed that he and his brother tried the same experiment last year, however, this resulted in “just one crazy cock”.

Oliver Gee



http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4348728589329576621#editor/target=post;postID=2964588303700339255

Four-Legged Chick

An Australian chicken farmer isn’t making any suppositions about the four-legged chick that hatched while he was transporting eggs through a top alien hotspot.

Alien influence? Hardly. Kevin Horner of Noonamah said it has more to do with a double yolk than aliens that the chick, dubbed Drumstick, hatched with two extra legs protruding out of her back end while he was passing through Wycliffe Well, the Geelong Advisor reports.

Having bred about 100,000 chickens, the 59-year-old man said he’s never seen or heard of a four-legged chicken and thought Drumstick was sitting on a dead bird when he first noticed her deformity.

Horner said Drumstick will be his prized pet and be spared from becoming a meal.

And that’s no yolk.

Jayne.

http://blogs.app.com/saywhat/2010/10/27/chick-born-with-4-legs/