New chickies

On Wednesday I drove to pick up a few chicks from a lady about an hour or so away. I intended to get five... I came home with eight. Oops! So for those keeping count, my flock now has 15 lively chickens. All eight of these have been sexed as pullets, and they are about three weeks old. They'll begin laying around August or September, so if you'd like some fresh organic eggs in a few months let me know!

These first two are barred Plymouth Rocks (also called Barred Rocks). They are now the largest of my little flock.

The flash startled them in this picture!


My two brown chickens are Ameracaunas. They will lay eggs that are some variation of blue or green. How cool is that? The first photo shows my escape artist... When I took her out to take pictures she ran off under the furniture and it ended up taking me about fifteen minutes to catch her again! She also is the one who decided that it would be fun to fly out of her box at 3:30 in the morning and then perch on the edge of the ducks' box peeping as loudly as possible. Lucky for me, our dog Melanie is quite interested in the chicken's (ahem) welfare, so she made sure to whine continuously outside the nursery door to let us know something was not right. You know, when I got these guys, I didn't expect to have 3 a.m. wake-up calls!


Here is the other, more shy Ameracauna. This picture was taken right after she flew out of my hands into the ducks' "pond". Poor little wet thing, you can tell she's miserable.


Coming up next in the chicken beauty pageant is my golden-laced Wyandotte. I have high hopes that this will be a very pretty bird! Although you can't tell it from this picture, she is smaller than the Barred Rocks and Ameracaunas. I'd say she's about the same size as Pecos Bill or maybe a bit larger.


Although at first glance this little lady looks a lot like Devonking, she is actually a standard Australorp (standard means not bantam, which are the small birds). Other than the size difference, she also has darker feet than Devonking, a black bill, and no yellow above the bill.


My last two new babies are hard to tell apart unless I'm comparing them side by side, so hopefully I'll be able to figure out who's who in these pictures! Let's see, this first picture appears to be the Golden Comet, which is a hybrid (I believe) that lays a prolific amount of eggs.


This one is a Buff Orpington, a very pretty chicken who will be all fluffy and a lovely buff shade when she feathers out.


Here's a picture of her trying to get as far away as possible from the big scary person with the flashing black box attached to her face!



So what do you think? If you're interested in seeing photos of these breeds as adults I recommend visiting www.feathersite.com.