“The chicken strode the field as if it was hers. Every worm in the rich brown soils was hers for the taking and she was utterly focused on this pleasant game. Her head would move as if she were part biological and part machine, as if there were beautiful cogs in that tiny neck. All in all she was a joyful fluff of feathers basking in the sunshine"
- Angela Abraham
“I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he cannot have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.”
- Henry IV, King of England
Before I begin this story I need to get something out of the way. I fully realize that, despite my attempt to channel David Attenborough in a discussion of the natural world, I may be unsuccessful
Instead I will likely come across as a crazy cat lady wanting to show you pictures.
I mean, for God’s sake, we named our chickens. It’s either cute or terribly boring. It is a close call.
But, it is our chicken story and I embrace it despite the potential memes that may erupt from our ‘hobby’. Truth be told, we are having a lot of fun with our new pastime. It is quite addictive as you get to know the personalities of the individual birds.
Chickens are at an interesting intersection at being both a domestic and wild animal at the same time. They will come when called, yet will be wary and shy of anything new.
We jumped into the sport for the eggs. There are those that raise ‘meat birds’ and both of us enjoy chicken as much as anyone else. But that is not our goal here. We wanted egg layers.
…they better lay eggs..
Moving on…..
As we have read, chickens are happiest when they can free range. Nothing makes a chicken cluck than an open field of grass and soil where they can peck and hunt for bugs.
There are two problems with this approach. Let unattended, chickens will denude a landscape like lumberjacks deforesting the Amazon basin. Most stationary chicken coops have runs that are only dirt. The birds are that voracious.
The second issue is a free range chicken is a dead chicken. Numerous predators happily hunt the fowl. Opossums, raccoons, dogs, foxes, coyotes , hawks, bobcats, and ‘Little Jim’ - the strange kid who lives across the street all live in our neighborhood. We have learned chickens exposed to the open air last only a few days here at best. Our neighbor has a dozen chickens in a stationary coop. Recently she lost her entire flock when a bobcat came over the roof and feasted on the easy prey. Her new coop is covered in concertino wire and looks vaguely like a Chinese camp for Uighurs.
Enter the ‘Chicken Tractor’. The idea is you have a mobile coop that you move every couple of days. It is sturdy, with predator proof wire, and allows the flock to free range in a confined space. You then move it before the lawn looks like Afghanistan.
We were also interested in getting a diverse flock with different breeds. This was a fun and addictive process. We started out only wanting six birds.
We have nine.
Shut up… it’s hard to pick.
And we don’t want roosters. There are a few reasons for this discrimination. Roosters are noisy and they can be aggressive. And, after careful research, we learned they do not lay eggs.
Reportedly they can be helpful with predators. They see one and yell (This is my best chicken voice) , “For the Love of God hide!!! There's a raccoon!”. Then they push the hens out of the way to be first to the coop.
So they are not terribly useful and all the chicks we purchased are ‘sexed’ to determine their gender before purchase. The technique mostly works. More on that issue later.
So it’s been about a month of the birds being here and let’s meet them. (This is the cute ‘cat lady’ part so if you want to stop reading I understand)
This is ‘Collette”. She is one of our four oldest hens. You can see in the picture she is not fully feathered and in that awkward teenage phase with molting. I remember when I molted. It was not pretty. Collette is a Favorolles (The s is silent) chicken. This is a beautiful breed that originates in France since the 1860’s. It is named after the village near where they originated. They can be used for both eggs and meat. They have a lovely prolonged breast that, when grown, gives them a pheasant like quality. They are very gentle and easy to handle.
She is also unique in having an extra toe on her talons. Speaking of talons, it is when you handle these animals that you completely see the dinosaur in them, They are totally prehistoric in appearance.
This is what Collette will look like fully grown.
This is “Jolene”. She is a Rhode Island Red hen. This is an American breed that originated in the Northeast. It is thought to be a result of selective breeding of Cochin, Java, Malay, and Shanghai chickens. She is the state bird of Rhode Island.
This is what she will look like fully grown.
“Wynona” is another American breed chicken. She is a silver laced Wyandotte. We picked her for her striking plumage. The Wyandotte is named after the Native American Wyandot people of the Northeast United States and Canada.
Here she is as an adult.
“Eunice” is our British bird. She is a Buff Orpington developed in the 1800’s by William Cook of Orpington England. She was meant to be a dual purpose bird but is now mostly a show fowl.
Eunice as an adult.
We have two “Silkie” chickens. The white one is named “Dame Edna” and black one we call “RuPaul”. The reason we chose such celebrated Drag artists as names is, of all the breeds, Silkies are the most difficult to determine gender. So we are not sure what they are. Silkies are highly ornamental birds that likely originated in China. Marco Polo wrote about a “Furry chicken” he encountered on the Silk Road. They are a bantam breed which means ‘miniature’. So they are much smaller than the other birds.
RuPaul is my personal favorite. When we got him he was full of personality and liked to be held. But. we nearly lost him to “Wry Neck”. This is a condition that some Silkies get that is a type of torticollis (Neck Spasms) in baby chickens. He could curl in a ball and twitch trying to move. It was sad and we prepared for the worse.
But, after a little research we discovered in some cases they respond to steroids. We carefully fed him tiny doses of Prednisone and waited.
He improved! He still leans his head to the left a bit but is otherwise running around with the others in the flock.
And Edna, dear sweet Edna…we are fairly sure “she” is in fact a “he” and will have to change pronouns. We are trying to imagine what to do with a miniature “Fluffy” rooster as it tries to take charge of hens that are at least 1/3 larger than he will be. It’s like trying to visualize Joe Pesci, in his best mobster days, wearing a feather boa and heels.
Here is what RuPaul and Dame Edna will look like grown up.
This is ‘Blu”. She was our impulse purchase. She is a “Blue Splash Maran”. A somewhat uncommon French breed that hails from the Southwest of France in the Aquitaine region. She is a descendant of fighting fowl from Indonesia. Despite that fearsome lineage, she is the shyest of our birds and often tries to hide under other chickens. We sometimes hear her chirping loudly and find Edna casually just standing on her.
Here is Blu as an adult.
“Martha” is our “Easter Egger”. As the name implies, this breed lays colored eggs, often blue in hue. They are not a pure breed and the name is used to refer to a variety of mixed breeds that possess the “Blue gene”. That being said, she is striking as a chick in her coloration with eyes that resemble an owl or if she was wearing eye liner
There are many types of Easter Eggers. This is a reasonable guess of her appearance as an adult.
We round out the flock with “Abigail”. Abby is a classic Barred American Plymouth Rock hen. They were developed in Massachusetts in the mid 19th century. Then they disappeared for almost 20 years only to be rediscovered in another part of the state.
Abby is very gentle and likes to roost on your finger. Here is what she will look like as an adult.
Yeah, we are a tad obsessed
I should say we had Chicken Pot Pie last night. it was delicious.
We decided not to tell the girls about it.
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