Since my last chicken update so much has changed. Through various chicken deaths and murders (password protected post – the password is sad), I ended up with just six chickens from my previous flock.
Jack and Mathilda. Almost a pushmi-pullyu chicken. 🙂
Romeo. At the time of the last post I wasn’t yet sure if he was male or female.
Lucy, a tiny Dutch bantam
Two Freedom Ranger hens. This is Frances. The other is Flappy, who did not wish to post for me. I had planned to raise my own Rangers, but it doesn’t work that way. These two are nearly two years old now.
New chickens!
Reuben, who until this week was called Mr. JLB. Here’s why he’s called Reuben. He and Jack got into a fight and Reuben has lost use of an eye. He is adjusting to it and knows to keep a close eye on Romeo, who thinks to move up in the pecking order. He and Precious (below) are two Blue/Black/Splash Orpingtons I hatched from eggs last summer.
Precious is a big beachball of a Blue Orpington. She’s my hope to have a number of blues in my flock. I’ve been trying for so long! I will mate her to Reuben and the chicks will all be splash (like Reuben) or blue. Any splash hens can be mated to Jack and I’ll have a whole clutch of blue chicks!
I have three Ameraucana/Easter Eggers:
Willow
Prissy
Gracie.
There are three Buff Orpingtons. Buffy (with white ear lobes), Goldie and Patience. Only Buffy is pictured, but the others look the same except for the white ear lobes.
Buff Orpingtons were my first chickens. I’ll always have a soft spot for them.
Rose is broody here, hence the big puffy look. Rose is one of Jack’s kids. Her mom was one of the Wyandottes. She looks like an Orpington but has a rose comb. At this time she’s sitting on 9 eggs, which I think will hatch this week sometime.
One of the four Rhode Island Reds. When I got them, I was reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels featuring the witches. These ladies are named after them. If not for the bands on their legs, I wouldn’t be sure which hen was which witch, but because of the bands I know that the hen with no band is Esme. The blue-banded hen is Githa. This hen with a blue and a white band is Magrat. The white-banded hen is Agnes (since I was reading Maskerade at the time – link is Amazon affiliate link). The RIRs are so pretty in the sun.
There are five Barred Rocks. Only Sault (pictured above, pronounced Soo) is named. The others I have no real sense of as individuals, so they are just “ladies.” Three of the Rocks came with the Reds and Buffs, to replace the murdered laying hens.
Two days after the massacre, I found someone with 7-week old chicks. I brought home six Buff Brahmas, four of whom turned out to be cockerels. I refer to them collectively as Buster. They were hand-raised chicks and have absolutely no fear of hands. Often when I am reaching for feeders, one of them will peck my hands, which is annoying and somewhat painful. They are not much longer for this world, as they are starting to crow, fight and harass the hens.
Two of the Buff Brahmas are pullets.
Zoey has an upright angular tail (love the fluffy feet!)
Chloe is more rounded. I haven’t learned yet which is the preferred look for a Buff Brahma.
Angel, a Dark Brahma pullet, with one of the Busters. Angel has a very fierce face.
Shirley is a Partridge Brahma pullet. I get silly with my names some times.
This is a young Australorp cockerel. They are lighter in body than the Orpingtons. He will join the Busters in the freezer.
The person who had the seven-week-old chicks also had some peeps. The Blues Brothers and Juju-bee. The Blues Brothers are Ameraucana/Blue Maran crosses. The idea was to get what she called Olive Eggers, chickens that would lay dark olive eggs. Won’t be finding out with these two, as they both ended up being cockerels. They think Juju is their mom, since she was two weeks old at the time and they were raised in the same brooder. I’m thinking I will keep one of these boys and breed him to Gracie, who lays light green eggs. Hopefully any pullets from that breeding would be Olive Eggers.
Here’s Jake:
He’s probably the one I will keep.
Elwood (with Belle)
Belle is a “Special Black Star,” a sex-link chicken. The normal mix is Rhode Island Red rooster and Barred Rock hen. They are called sex-links because all the chicks in that mating that are black are going to be female. The lady who bred Belle called her special because her mom was a Dominique instead of a Barred Rock and dad was a Blue Splash Maran – hopefully her eggs will be dark.
Belle – just a pretty little black chicken.
JujuBee is a Dominique. They have funny little faces.
My last chicken is known as Baby Chicken. She’s a cross between a BBS Orpington (Jack) and a Buff Orpington. I think of her as a calico Orpington. I hatched two eggs in the incubator. Sadly, at two weeks, the second chick up and died…literally. It got stuck in a corner and scared itself to death. I was at the cage within 20 seconds of its alarm peep and got it out of the corner and it ran to the middle of the cage and flopped over dead, leaving Baby Chicken alone. A chick alone is not a good thing for the chick because it bonds with the caretaker (me) and I end up with a chicken who doesn’t quite know how to interact with other chickens. She’s outside now, but is still alone. She stays on the edges of the flocks and mostly interacts with Reuben. He doesn’t quite know what to think of her as she’s too young to breed just yet.
She runs out to meet me every morning. In the dark of night, I can’t tell if she’s in the little coop or not so I say “Baby Chicken?” and she peeps at me. It’s very sweet.
When the chicken bonds with the human, you get this:
Baby chickens often jump on their mother’s back. She has, thankfully, outgrown this phase. Just this morning I picked her up and put her on my shoulder, but she flew down.
I love my chickens.
Total flock: 38 chickens.
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