Chicks!

2 chickies hatched 3 weeks ago, mothered by the lavender ameraucana. Goldish white like our roo, with feather feet. One has vulture hocks. Both are doing great. Glad they are big enough to not pop through the chicken wire anymore.

Tiny Dancer is Molting

Tiny Dancer, our only standard-size chicken and our oldest, is molting, and she just looks awful. And I hate that the coop is full of her feathers everywhere. It looks like a predator got lucky. But when she's back to herself again she'll be a an even more beautifully-feathered Columbian Wyandotte.

Mystery Chick Appears!

Just happened to check the coop a few minutes ago and heard a wailing chick! Didn't even know we had an egg ready. We must have overlooked it buried in the nest fluff. Lee had marked some to hatch just two weeks ago. It's black with a black beak and grayish black feet. I was glad I was there because it squeezed through the chicken wire and popped out of the coop. I put it back and the two easter egger hens, the lavender and the black ones, promptly guided it to the run area and sat on it, both together! It's so cute...the black hen was peeking out the lavender one's wing.

We successfully rehomed our two Sultan cockerals in July, leaving us with our single rooster Ponyboy, the golden neck d'Uccle. Hoping this new chick is a female and the actual offspring of one of the two momma hens, which would give us another green egg layer.

Poor Penguin

Lee found our birchen cochin chick Penguin keeled-over dead in the coop the morning after July 4th. I had just checked on them right before sunset on the 4th and gave them some scratch. I thought it was odd that this chick, who was always the first to scramble for treats, for the first time did not partake. She just sat there, roosting on the ledge of the sand bin. She was growing so nice and fat, like a cochin should. And her birchen feathers were really pretty. I'll miss her. Everyone else is just fine.

Chicks Update

2 months have gone by without an update. I've taken lots of progression photos, but have been lax in posting them here. I'll get them linked at some point. In the meantime the chicks have moved into the coop with the older hens. It was a pretty easy transition, and nobody really got picked on. For a while they separated themselves into two cliques, but the hens seem to like the new company, and they all hang out together now. The chicks loved all the new space and immediately enjoyed pecking, dust bathing, and the spacious roosts.

On June 19, when the chicks were about 13 weeks old, we heard the first crow from one of the sultans. We have since heard Ponyboy (previously Goldie), the golden neck d'Uccle, crow as well. So far their bantam shrieks are not very loud and don't happen constantly, although I've heard some long strings of cock-a-doodle-doo's. 4 houses down is another coop with standard-size chickens and we can clearly hear their rooster, but I'm pretty sure our crows don't carry that far.

Still not sure if the other sultan is a roo, too...I have not seen it crow and is always sitting quietly when I visit. Penguin, the black cochin I thought for sure was a roo, looks now like a very pretty birchen cochin hen...she just took a longer while to feather than the others. Her comb is also bigger than the other pullets but not as big as it would be if she were a roo. She and my favorite chick Squirrel, the silver-laced cochin, are just the friendliest of the bunch. I consider us pretty lucky that only 2-3 of the 8 chicks are roos.

It's raining

Momma Hen Postcard

Last month I got a Postcrossing postcard from the Netherlands of a Momma hen and her chicks. Adorable!