The Big Chicken Post

This time I'm going to write about our amazing and very much alive flock of chickens.  Late last spring I had written a post about the broiler (meat) chickens that we were housing until John could sell them.  They were relatively ugly, but regardless of their looks, I had no interest in caring about them.  Not too long after, however, we brought home 10 chicks to keep for ourselves as egg layers, and they have been so much fun.

The chicks are mailed for overnight delivery from a Welp Hatchery in Iowa.  When they arrive, they look like these two:

Ours weren't this small when they first came to the house, but they grow quickly.  The 10 we have were born on May 1, and by the second week of June, they looked like this:

Another two months later, and they all look a like the chickens you are used to seeing.  The catch is that when John orders egg layers, the hatchery estimates that 90% of the chicks will be pullets, or female hens less than one year old, so there's always a small chance that a male will be hiding out amongst the females.  (One of the first things I learned is that it is very difficult to tell males from females until the chicks are many weeks old!)  Low and behold we ended up with two cockerels (young males) out of the ten!  So our original flock included 5 Rhode Island Reds (3 female pullets and 2 male cockerels), 3 Red Sexlinks, and 2 Buff Orpingtons.  We knew the Red Sexlinks were all female because their color is linked to their sex, hence Sexlinks.  With these, the males are one color and the females are another.  Here's a picture of what Red Sexlinks look like as chicks and adults:

Now, let me introduce you to some of the members of our original flock.  First, here is one of the Buff Orpingtons:

I like the Buffs okay, but they're not as social as the others.  They tend to wander off as loners, and they seem more nervous to me.  I might even go so far as to say that they seem ditsy, but for all I know they're the intelligent philosophical ones of the group, and they just like solitude . . .

Then there are the Rhode Island Reds.  These are the feistiest of the bunch, males and females alike.  The males are very pretty (as with all male bird species), and they are the leaders of the flock.  Here's the bigger of the two males:

The females will also grow a comb and waddle, so the appearance of both on the males was no guarantee they'd turn out to be cockerels/ roosters.  The giveaway, however, was the bit of metallic green on his tail.  Yes, it looks black for the most part, but in the right light, the green really shows up.

And finally, my favorites are the Red Sexlinks.  They are the most even-tempered and friendly, and they are always the first to eat out of our hands if we offer them food in such a way.  Of the three, John and I are a bit fond of the largest, which we call Mama.  At first her name was Crooked Toe because she had -- yup, a crooked toe.  As she's grown, it seems to have disappeared, and of the flock Mama is the wise old soul.  Here she is.

In the next post, I'll share the ten very interesting things I now know about chickens that I did not know before, and for the one after that, I'll introduce you to the new-just-today members of the flock!