This blog is an experiment in learning how this cell phone functions. The picture of Tweety was taken with my digital camera, uploaded from my lap-top to my WordPress photo file, now retrieved for this blog, a scientific experiment in negotiating New Age electronic technology.
Tweety is doing fine, thank you, but suffering in this 95-degree Savannah heat and humidity. She has two roosters, Squire and son Speckles, to keep her entertained.
She lays brown eggs every day but seems to be slowing down now. She does not sit on her eggs. She leaves them unguarded to go outside and scratch in the dirt with her guardian, Squire, who is now 11 years old. Squire’s son, Speckles, is over ten years old, but I can’t keep the roosters together, because they fight. They have a long history of trauma, including attacks by foxes, owls, racoons and chicken mites. Speckles almost blinded Squire’s right eye before he knocked both spurs off attacking me. Squire seems to have some use of his eye, but he’s further impeded because his comb flops over his good eye.
Now Specs is a cuddler, my only chicken born and raised here.
Will try to post this update now
katharineotto 
I’m just the opposite, I read and blog almost entirely from the phone app, having not turned my laptop on in ages.
My chickens manage the heat just fine (I’m about 35 miles south of Savannah) it’s the thunderstorms they don’t much care for.
That’s good to know about the phone. My laptop is inconvenient, but when I need hard copy, I need to be able to type as before, and to print.
My chickens manage the heat and humidity better than I do, but they are plagued by mites. Tweety stands in the water dish.
Get some diatomaceous earth, I get mine from the local feed store
I’ve been using diatomaceous earth for years, and maybe it sort-of works. It’s so fine that it clogs when it gets wet, like clay. Soeckles had bad scale mites, so I had to de-bride his leg ulcers at the scale-feather junction, de-briding a trick I learned in my surgery rotation in medical school.
Body mites seem to respond to squirts of diatomaceous earth around neck and under wings. There’s a nifty pump aerolizer I use to direct the flow.
Well done, Katharine and so good to hear about your chickens. The heat sounds hot! Our heat has been hotter than normal and wild birds have suffered. Have often felt many must use their phones for blogging. Convenient but I don’t like the confined space. I also found uploading and organising photos difficult on my ipad. Now getting old, perhaps as old as your Tweety Pie! The wordpress app doesn’t function on it but it was good for viewing and looking at photos. Think the phone also does not do justice eg Cindy Knoke’s wildlife photos.
Great to hear from you in your hot savannah.
Have you ever despurred your roosters? It’s not fun work, but sometimes it’s a good way to give the hens a break. I had to do a lot of despurring as a kid.
Speckles despurred himself, but Squires seems to shed the outer layers naturally. I tried clipping a previous rooster’s spurs, but Roscoe bled for several days. Also, I don’t really know what I’m doing and don’t have proper equipment to shave off the outer layers.
This is yet another skill that comes only with experience, which you obviously have.
Squire is probably a beta-rooster and has never been overly aggressive with the hens. He’s a lover, not a fighter.
When I was a kid, what I had to do was grip the bony spur with a pliers and gently twist back and forth, like unscrewing a wicked tight bottle cap. They pop off eventually. And bleed, we used to use paper to clot the blood. They grow back, but takes a while. And, the roosters aren’t as peppy without them. Less boxy.
Ouch. These are my last three chickens, I hope, so I probably won’t become expert at de-spurring this lifetime. Maybe I’ll have a chance to see you or someone else do it sometime.
It was not a fun job.