Sunday, February 05, 2012

Meet the Flockers!! Part 1

I thought it might be fun to introduce the chickens one at a time. We currently have an even dozen: 8 girls and 4 boys. We have gotten chickens in three batches:
  1. The first 8, which consisted of 6 "Easter Eggers" and two Marans
  2. A batch of 5 Jersey Giants we found on Craigslist, and
  3. 2 more we came home with from Virginia, a buff Cochin and a buff Orp
This is Larry, the EE rooster we named after my dad. He's a decent rooster, not too aggressive but he will bite and while you can pick him up, he doesn't like it. My father is enamored with him and asks about him constantly. He even has several pictures saved on his computer and he uses them as desktops.


Honey, above, is a wheaten Marans whose comb is so long if flops over. She was the Hen Of Choice (HOC) at first, and was extremely timid. Recently she's gotten a bit more assertive. With the comb-over (hahaha!), she also looks pretty stupid for some reason and we made fun of her horribly, as in "Mama asked 'Brains or comb?' and I said "COMB!!'"

Peaches, who is a small EE hen with peach colored feathers only on her "chin" or muff. She's a quiet thing and doesn't seem to have much personality.

This is Daisy, the buff Orpington. We got Daisy in Virginia at about 6 weeks old, along with Tubby (below) and attempted to bring them home in the same Rubbermaid tub. Tubby beat up on Daisy, and we were concerned about permanent damage, hence the picture above. 5 hours on my lap, the FedEx driver almost drove off the road when he looked down and saw a woman with a chicken on her lap! So, the obvious name to me was (Driving) Miss Daisy.

Flash forward 6 months only to find out Daisy is a dude. So, Duke? It won't matter soon enough....

Tubby, aka The Fat Chick is about 2ish, full grown, and by far my favorite (don't tell the rest). She is just SO impressive in size and, uh, proportion. When she hops down off the roost you can feel and hear the THUD. If you hold her long enough she will fall asleep in your arms. I LOVE to watch her run, she looks so silly!

I had read that Cochins were fairly docile, but she uses her size almost as a battering ram, charging a group of the others if they look like she has food and scattering them, then digging in herself.....over and over. She also has a deep voice and she seems to bitch constantly, it is really easy to stereotype her into "fat human"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the chicken profiles! Tubby is my favorite too -- you can't help but like her thick plumage and thunder thighs.

Angie said...

Whoops. The "anonymous" post was me.