It appears I have made it, become an expert in my field and am now a cited reference in an international work.
I made my discovery while passing an idle moment checking the traffic statistics for the blog, and was rather surprised to find my monthly figures had gones from between 3,000 and 7,000 visits a month to 15,0000 and rising.
Intrigued, I waded deeper into the figures to find out where the extra visits were coming from.
It emerged that while I have found a few new readers from other blogs, by far the most of the new traffic was coming from Wikipedia, which was intriguing.
More curiously, the specific wiki that was referring to my post was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken
I ventured over to read the chicken wiki and there, under General Biology and Habitat, I found the linking sentence, which reads:
Adding hens, especially younger birds, to an existing flock, can lead to violence and injury.
To put that in context, the wider paragraph was about chicken behaviour and flock dynamics.
To say I was amused is putting it mildly.
Someone has decided that, instead of an academically qualified animal behaviouralist or a poultry keeper with decades of experience, little old me is an expert on adding hens to an existing flock.
I’ll have to put a disclaimer on the post the wiki links to, saying “hey, this is my best guess but you really should investigate much further before accepting what I say”.
But who was that someone?
A Wikipedia user by the name of Dennis Argall, who turns out to be an Australian living near Jervis Bay.
I don’t know why he decided my post was worthy of being a wider source of advice than it has been and I certainly don’t know how long the link will remain on Wikipedia, but it’s certainly given me a good laugh.
national fellow feeling perhaps?
Aha, it’s a sinister Aussie conspiracy…
Wow! That’s posh.
I just followed the trail to your post through the Wikipaedia link you gave and I must admit that I can see why they have linked you to that subject. We used to keep lots of chickens (all the Sussex breeds, including the rare Red Sussex), when we lived in Kent, and the method you use and describe is the one we used too. But you have described the process so minutely that I have never seen it put better…..so don’t be so modest! And hands-on first-hand experience is much more valuable than dry old textbook stuff…even if it was available on the net…which I doubt.
Perhaps you should write an e-book and make some money!
Stoney your famous!!!!
Can I have you autograph?
Congratulations, but I can’t help feeling it says more about Wikipedia than it does about “Musings from a Stonehead”.
Lily, flattery will get you nowhere. Well, maybe a little!
Helen, as Lily says, it’s time to make some money so autographs will start at £5. However, prices may rise if feed prices continue to rise - eating oats every day means I keep adding value.
Mel, so what does it say about Wikipedia, then?