Chicken Drama

I have to tell ya, I never thought I would have a blog post titled - "Chicken Drama" but here we are....no really, here I am holding a chicken and a baby. Ha - what a sight :)

OK, on to the drama....

In mid July around 6:40am each morning we started hearing a loud crow coming from our backyard. Not an ideal sound to hear when you live in a neighborhood in the city, not a farm and you are under the impression that you had 3 female chickens.

Now let me tell you, figuring out whether you have a male or female chick is kind of a crap shoot to begin with. There are no obvious, um... "parts"... if you will, to confirm the sex of the baby chicken. What there is, is a lot of voo-doo-like tricks that are done to guess. In our case the guy held each chick in his hand and dangled a piece of copper wire on a string over the chick to determine the sex. Umm...yeah....maybe we should be thankful we don't have a backyard full of roosters.

The crowing culprit - Lou our Barred Rock chicken. In this post I described Lou as the undeniable leader of the group. When the crowing first started we dug deep into Google to find out if it was possible to have a crowing hen. Turns out, it is. From what we read, in small back yard flocks with only hens, it is not uncommon for one of the hens to take on the role of alpha and crow. We hoped this was the case, but even if it was we couldn't have a crowing hen, alpha or not. So, we decided to do what any sane-minded person with 3 chickens, one of which crowed and two children would do - we got another chicken. Actually we got 2 more.

Meet Dolly

& Pearl

Our thought - if we brought in a new chicken that was a bit older then it would be the alpha and Lou would stop crowing. So, we got Dolly - a Lavender Americana. Dolly is a year old and was already producing eggs when we got her. Because Lou, Dot and Pip had been together since day one we didn't want to introduce Dolly to the group alone so we got Pearl at the same time. She is a Silkie and a few weeks younger than the original 3. 

We quickly learned that a pecking order is real. The new chickens did not receive a warm welcome from the group. Maybe I'm naive, but in my mind, the girls would invite them in, show them the nesting boxes, Lou would stop crowing and the 5 of them would live happily ever after, producing an array of colored eggs for us. WRONG. The OG chickens were not happy to meet the new chickens and were down right mean to them. Especially Lou. Dolly, our hopeful alpha was clearly intimidated by Lou and quickly owned her lowly position on the pecking order.  So now we had chicken fights AND a crowing chicken. Sadly, we were forced to make the hard decision to send Lou to live on a farm in Tifton, GA. It was a bummer to lose her, but the flock as a whole as been better since. Now, a few months later all 4 chickens are friends, no one crows AND Dolly started laying eggs!

It took her some time to get acclimated, but once she did we started getting these pretty blue eggs just about every other day.

Once we started getting eggs we took right to Amazon/Etsy and got ourselves all set up with half dozen boxes. Once the other girls start laying too, we may go with the full dozen size containers, but for now, how legit do we look?

Life with our backyard flock is pretty sweet right now. It's fun to check the nesting boxes each day for an egg and the excitement in finding one never gets old! We look forward to the multi-colored eggs in our future, but for now,  we are just happy everyone is getting along and no one is crowing.

All photos are my own. 

Meet Our Chickens

OK, OK for anyone tired of chicken talk, today will be my last blog on all things chicken, but now that you've seen their house (coop) we figured you'd like to get to know the girls a little better, specifically what breed of chicken they each are and what color eggs they will produce. When we started researching chickens we had no idea there were so many different kinds. Their look, temperament, egg production and egg color were some of the main characteristics we honed in on.

Obviously a pretty chicken with pretty eggs was high up on the wish list, but the highest priority to us was the chicken's temperament. Because these animals would be in our back-yard and around us all the time as we grilled, played in the pool, worked on projects outside the shed and just hung out, it was important that our chickens be nice and friendly. There were some that had really pretty hair/fur (ha) but were known to be skittish and broody, so we marked those off the list quickly. Each of our chickens are a different breed and each will produce a different color egg, but the one thing they have in common is their easy going personalities. Oh, and they are all female....we think/pray ;). With that being said, let's get to the introductions...

Up first, meet Lou, she is our Easter Egger. 

Lou has always been the biggest of the 3, as she is older than the others by about 10 days. She is also undoubtedly the leader. We aren't sure if that's because she has always been bigger or if it's just her natural personality, but the other 2 follow her around wherever she goes. We figured out quickly, the fastest way to get the chickens to like us was to suck up to Lou, because if the other girls saw Lou sitting in our lap, then they would follow suit. 

Lou is prettier than most Easter Egger Chickens because she was crossed with a Barred Rock, so her coloring is striking -  black with white stripes. 

Easter Egger chickens typically produce about 200 eggs a year and the eggs can range in color from light blue to green to brown. Though the eggs can be a lot of different colors, whatever color she lays first will be the color we always get. 

Next, meet Dot, she is our Light Brahma. 

Dot was a tiny little yellow chick with fuzzy feet when we got her, but those yellow chick feathers have now been replaced by white feathers with black specs. Her fuzzy feet have remained though. This is a signature characteristic of a Light Brahma and gives them a fancy-schmancy look. She is already really pretty and regal looking. 

Her eggs will be light brown and she should lay 3-4 eggs a week, even in the winter when a lot of chickens don't lay as many. 

And finally, little Pip - Our Olive Egger.

Pip has always been the smallest of the 3. As a tiny chick she had dark black feathers and still has the same look today. She will likely be the most boring to look at of the 3 (sorry Pip) but her eggs should be really pretty. Olive Eggers lay olive green eggs.  Pip should lay 150 - 160 eggs a year. 

We got the chicks from the same farm so they have been together (at least with us) from the beginning. They are very close and travel in a little pack around the yard. They have eaten all of my mint and marigolds and like to peck around at the grass. We try to hold them a good amount to keep them used to human interaction which is working pretty well so far. Of course we have to remind Croix, pretty much every 2 minutes, NOT to chase the chickens and NOT to shoot the chickens with water guns, but all in all, they have adjusted really well.

Most chickens don't start laying eggs until they are 5-6 months old so we probably have a good while before we get our first bounty, but in the meantime we really enjoy just hanging out in our backyard, swimming, grilling and chicken watching. 

All photos are my own.