I would have thought by now we wouldn’t have much to show you about the chickens on a weekly basis – but they are still growing! I just can’t seem to keep up on taking pictures and posting.
A few weeks ago we bought some leg bands to help us identify individuals among the breeds – we have red, blue, and “no bands”. We lucked out that for those breeds where we have more than 3, half of them are hens – so we can still tell the difference.
Every night, at least once a night, Papa sets up a lawn chair inside the chicken run and plays “perch” … as in he becomes the perch and the chickens sit on him. His legs, his lap, and sometimes even his shoulders.
He’s developed some favorites – birds that come around every time he sits down, and fortunately the VERY friendly ones are hens! Here are our three sets of hens:
Henrietta – she’s the smallest and lightest colored Buff Orpington. She has also been the friendliest. She loves to come and “talk” to Dave to tell him about her day. She is a jabber-mouth! (That’s “Retta” behind the rooster in the picture.)
Blondie – another Buff Orpington hen. One of the BO’s that we leg-tagged lost theirs, so both Henrietta and Blondie are without tags, but fortunately Blondie is slightly darker than Henrietta so it’s easy to tell them apart.
Babs – a Barred Rock hen. I think these are still my favorite as far as looks (but then again I picked them!)
Faith, Hope and Charity
The Silver-Laced Wyandotte hens. They’re named but we haven’t determined who is who yet. Their feathers are extremely soft.
We’re also pretty sure we have one extra hen. She’s a White Rock like this (except this is a rooster). She’s smaller than the other two and doesn’t have much for a comb or waddle. I’m hoping that one is a hen – that means we’ll have white eggs among our colored ones!
We’ve discovered that the breed we thought might be Dark Cornish includes a couple of different breeds. The one below has more of a solid brown “stripe” on his feathers.
This one has more brown speckles. We’re still not completely sure what they are – but they have the most beautiful, iridescent feathers.
And of course, there’s Ludwig. I have to include a picture of him because he’s just so gosh darn CUTE! His “hair” is really getting spiky (hence the name Ludwig – as in Beethoven). It’s very hard to get a decent picture of him because he rarely stops moving. He’s been a lot smaller than the rest for quite a while, but just in the last week he’s really shot up in size and has almost surpassed the “runt” dark (Cornish?) that we have.
Oh, and the chicken with the attitude at the top? That’s a Brahma. There are three roosters – they like to fight among themselves and with others, and they just look M.e.a.n. We’re not going to be sorry to see them go.