Sunday, July 31, 2011

Update on our May chicks

I figured it was time to do a quick update on the "surprise" chicks I got while Jason was out of town in May (detailed here). They are now 12 weeks old. All 7 are healthy and seemingly happy. Our initial plan to keep just three has now ballooned into keeping 6. In early August we were going to give some good friends 3 of the birds. However, they have decided to wait until mid-Fall to build a coop, get chickens, etc. So, we will keep the three Cuckoo Marans and three of what were supposedly Araucanas, but what I think are in fact Ameraucanas or Easter Eggers (because they have tails and true Araucanas don't - and ours definitely have tails).


The three Marans are carbon copies of each other physically, though there is always one that is much more trusting of us and more pet-ish than the other two. Of the Ameraucanas, we're keeping the white one (the "Blonde Snuggler" Jason referred to in his earlier post), the one that has kind of leopard-like markings (just because she's really pretty), and a more plain orange one. It was a toss up between the two orange-colored ones because personality-wise there is nothing that distinguishes one from the other. I'm choosing to go with the plain one because the other has markings similar to the "leopard" one, and I want the three Ameraucanas we're keeping to be completely different.

The leopard-print one we're keeping

We're keeping the more plain orange one in the back right of this picture

As for the white one - I think we're going to call her Dove. She is still just as sweet as pie. I told Jason today that if I were a European queen from the 1700s, I wouldn't have a lap dog - I'd have a lap chicken! And Dove would be the lucky hen. I'd go down in the history books as that crazy chicken-loving queen. It seems that at this rate I'm heading in that direction anyway. Not the queen direction - the crazy chicken lover direction! A friend on Facebook recently called me a Chick-onista for figuring out that one of her hens was a certain rare breed. I could get used to that name! -Carrie


Sweet Dove - what more can I say?

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