Chickens

Notes from the North Coast

This blog could well be only about chickens. I have 11 at the moment, 2 "legacy chickens" that my sister gave me when she moved, 7 teenage chickens that Frank & I bought as day-old babies at the feed store and 2 pre-teen chickens.

The two old galz, Buff and Red, still lay eggs most days, even though they're over 7 years old. Red is pretty benevolent towards the pesky little ones -- she mostly ignores them -- but Buff shows them no mercy. "My food!" *peck* "My water!" *peck* "My space!" *peck* "I'm bigger!" *peck* "You're annoying!" *peck peck peck*

Once I get up to speed on putting pictures in here, I'll include some. But for now the thousand words will have to do. There are 2 Brahmas, beautiful black-and-white speckled feather-footed birds that will reach 9 pounds. Two are Rhode Island Reds, kind of the classic "little red hen" looking ones. They were the first to eat from our hands and taught the others we were ok.

One is a Black Austrolorp, a black hen; PJ is a Buff Orpington, a pretty golden-cream color; one is called a Gold Sex-Link, a cross between 2 kinds of leghorns in which only the hens are gold, so you don't get any pesky roosters unless you want them.

The 2 babiest ones are an Americana and a bantam Black Silkie. The Americana, LaVerne, is a cross between an Aracauna, a Chilean breed that lays blue, green or pink eggs, and some American breed. We have no idea what ours crossed with, but she looks like a little Kiwi bird, kind of speckled walnut color. The bantam Black Silkie, Negrita, is a tiny busy black ball of fluff, with another ball of fluff for a tail. Her feathers won't be like average chicken feathers, but more like tiny ostrich plumes. She has feathers on her feet too, and will have a swanky-looking top-knot when she's mature.

LaVerne and one of the Brahmas got sick with a disease called coccidiosis, a protozoan that lives in their guts but which can make baby chicks sick. So we had the two of them in a hospital cage in the garage for several days and medicated the water that all the chickens drink.

Frank's mother, Betty Lou, has half of the chicks we originally bought and raised in my dining room. Hers are all the same as ours except she has a bantam White Silkie named Danni and a bantam Salmon Favarole, a feather-footed dark-gold hen. Her Americana is more gray than ours, and it's named Baby Huey because even as a 2-day-old chick it was a huge handful, with gigantic cheeks just like the cartoon character.

At various times we've suspected that one or another is a rooster (there's a 10 percent error rate in sexing standard breeds and a 50/50 chance with bantams) but so far we're not really sure. The oldest are about 3 months now and the youngest are about 5 weeks. We should know soon.


As you can see we took chicken-taming very seriously. If you don't get them early, all they wanna do is play Tetris. This one is learning to Google.