Barbara the Brave

Barbara was the first little chick to figure out how to jump up on things.  Our brooder box had to continue to get taller and taller in order to keep Barbara in the box. 

 

Even as an older pullet, Barbara is always the first to greet us.  She makes it furthest out of the run to attempt to forage with the older hens and is quick to come even to our 6 year old.

Now at 5 months old Barbara has a tall red comb.  We think she will likely be the first of the new chickens to lay eggs.  We are patiently waiting for some of Barbara's finest.

Rosie becomes Roger

When we ordered four hens I thought for sure an additional four was too many.  We quickly grew fond of each of our hens and it seemed that four could be a good number.  However, as time passed we grew suspicious of our favorite "hen" Rosie. 

 Rosie/Roger at 7 Weeks

Some of the signs we saw:

Rosie was always very friendly to humans, but she greatly enjoyed attempting to fight with the other hens.  As soon as they all got outside to play Rosie would be jumping at and herding the other hens.

Rosie's legs were always a little bit bigger than the other hens.  She developed little bumps (spurs) on her legs at an early age.

Rosie's comb began to look red-ish at about 6 weeks.  S/He was an Easter Egger so her comb never got particularly large, but definitely had the right color.

Rosie always had beautiful feathers.  We were sure she would grow up to be the prettiest in the flock.  As more and more colors began to appear, especially that brick red color, we knew that this was not hen patterning. 

And lastly, when Rosie made that funny screeching noise (early attempts at a crow), we knew that Rosie was in fact a Roger.

Roger at 8 Weeks

It turns out Roger is a very beautiful type of Americana called a Golden Duckwing Rooster.

So what does one do when a hen turns out to be a rooster?  We would have kept him, but it is illegal in our town.  In fact I'm pretty sure the 2 weeks of crowing that we withstood did enough damage to our relationship with our neighbors.  The options were not great, but we were hoping to find someone we knew to adopt him into their flock so that our daughter could have an easier transition.

Enter: Happy Ending...

Thankfully we found a family from school to take Roger.  They were in fact very excited to have him join their flock of 11 hens.  We went to visit him after he had settled in and found he was very happy in his new coop. 

 Roger at 4 Months

 Look at those fantastic feathers!

Here is Roger trying to share a treat with Nora.  

What a sweet young man, he never forgot his ladies!

New Chickies 10 days old.

 

Amelia, Easter Egger, love those puffy cheeks!

 (left to right) Barbara, Rosie, Nellie

Nellie in front, Amelia and Rosie behind.

 Barbara, Rosie, Amelia and Nellie: enjoying some time outside the box.

Chickens on my lap, by Nora.

Here I am with Barbara and Amelia on my lap.  So cute!

Chicks With Some Grass, written by Nora

Nellie Amelia Rosie and Barbara did not like a little bit of grass. Then Rosie saw a piece of grass. She had it in her beak and they liked it (*note from Mom: the other chicks chased Rosie). ps chicks do not like grass- hens do like grass.

An additional note from Mom: One hour later the chicks are enjoying the patch of "grass" and dirt so much they are trying to dust bathe in it. Silly chickens!

Two Weeks Old

 First day out in the yard.  You'll notice the fence behind where the big hens hang out.

Barbara the Brave sitting on Nora's lap.

 (left to right) Barbara, Nellie, Amelia, Rosie

Introducing a New Blogger: Nora

My six year old daughter Nora will now be posting on this blog. We will share the work at first, but my hope is that she can take over someday (these fingers are tired!).

Meet the New Chicks

Here are the new ladies within hours of their arrival they were already eating, drinking and sleeping. 
More pictures below:

Cornelia (Nellie), Barnevelder

Barbara, Barred Rock

Briana Rose (Rosey), Easter Egger

Amelia, Easter Egger

Adding to the Flock

With the decision to not sell the house and the new fence for the chickens, it took no time at all to order a new set of chicks.  We were able to get them before it was too late and only had about a week to wait before their arrival.  Thank goodness for that because our 6 year old asked about their arrival about 5 times a day. 

We ordered this set of chicks from a different company than the first set of chicks- Meyer Hatchery.  They would arrive on Tuesday, August 6th from Ohio.  We originally thought we'd get three chicks, but ended up getting four.  This will bring our total number of hens to eight.  This time around we thought less about production and more about color.  We wanted some pretty hens with pretty eggs. 

Here's what we chose:

One Barnevelder Hen.  This is a Dutch breed that lays dark brown "chocolate" colored eggs.  It is also a very pretty bird with a black head and neck and a gold laced body and tail.

One Barred Rock Hen.  This hen is a black and white and lays brown eggs.  We chose this hen to replace the little hen we lost from our last flock.  The barred rock is thought to have been bred from a Dominique hen so they share the same kind of coloring.

Two Easter Eggers.  Easter eggers come in all different feather colors, have a muff and beard and lay green, blue, or pink eggs.  We're excited to see what color feathers and eggs our hens will have!

Making a Greener Pasture

We've wanted to add more hens to our flock for some time now, but were delayed in this as we attempted to sell our house.  We eventually came to the conclusion that it was not time to sell and thought about how we might make our current 1/3 of an acre work better for our current hens and a possible flock expansion.

It turns out this was pretty simple.  We purchased 200 feet of farm fencing from Tractor Supply and spent an afternoon hammering in stakes and putting up fencing in the yard.  The girls now have a significantly larger area to roam around in and surprisingly have NOT destroyed our grass! 

The ladies free range all day, from 6am till 8pm.  They know to head back to the coop in the evening and have found some nice spots to hide when predators (mainly our resident red tail hawk) are nearby.  The first couple of days I thought for sure I'd come home to four dead or missing hens, but it turns out the ladies are pretty good at taking care of themselves. 

We've enjoyed watching them in the evening as they chase bugs and run around.  They are so tired at the end of the day that they often will come over and sit on my lap to have a pre-bed nap. 

While we were not able to sell our house and purchase something else with more land, we are finding that our little 1/3 acre in suburbia is turning out to be just perfect for us and our flock.