Since there's no way I'm mail-ordering a straight run (males & females), minimum order of 25 batch of fancy bantams from a hatchery, the only way I'll get any is finding a local source. So everyday I search the farm & garden section of Craigslist for some pretty hens. A few hours after we came home on Saturday from the feed store with our baby chicks, year-old Belgian d'Uccles were listed for sale!
The next day, I enjoy a rare Sunday drive by myself to see Shari in Crawfordville, who knows the guy also in Crawfordville from whom I purchased 5 fancies off Craiglist last year, who has also gotten chickens from Red Hawk in Quincy...small world.
Since we already have porcelain colored d'Uccles, I picked out 1 hen each from the other colors available --the only white hen and one of the mille fleurs, which is a pretty brown/peppery spangled beauty.
Miss PepperpotNo name for the white one, yet. Their feathers are a little ragged from being in a small coop with a dozen other bantams including several roosters. They are skittish from now being at the bottom of a new pecking order and from have never free-ranged before. But the little porcelains are quite assertive, so I figure they'll get over it eventually.
I have to confess that the 2 porcelain d'Uccles we have had since last March have made me fall in love with this breed. These are true bantams, existing only in miniature with no standard counterpart. I love their shape. They are dainty, docile, and can fly quite high. Beard, feathered feet, and vulture hocks. These are vulture hocks, by the way...long stiff feathers at the hock joint that hide the top part of the legs, as you can kind of see in this photo of Moneypenny (or Smurfette, I can't tell them apart) --
No comments:
Post a Comment