Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Some of our poultry


Tree1008

Here is a pic of some of our chickens. Four barred rock hens, a white leghorn hen, and three retreating white roosters, which are barred rock/white leghorn cross.


The big barred rock in the front is named "Nonny-Nonny". She is the only survivor of the original batch. She is probably 8 or 9 years old. The other three barred rock are second generation hens four or so years old-hatched perhaps by Nonny-Nonny herself, and fathered by our dear old barred rock rooster Manny, passed several years ago. He was purchased from a breeder at one of the local fairs.


The White leghorn escaped from a neighbor and is still quite wild. I guess she heard our roosters and came to join the flock. She can fly over a 6 foot fence. She is the only one laying eggs right now-one enormous fat white egg each day. Amazing! She is such a scrawny thing. Her legs are bleached white-an indicator of a dry hen, I once read, but she is a tremendous producer! With feeding the rest of the flock, I figured her eggs cost us about $2 a piece-so you can imagine how terrific they are!!! :P


I thought she had stopped laying, but today I found her stash of three white eggs and stole them gleefully. We haven't bought eggs from a store in a very long time-and I didn't want to start just yet!


Behind her are three of her four sons-fathered by one of our second generation barred rock roosters;either King or Chick Boy. We still have poor old King-he lost the flock to the younger roosters. Chick Boy was murdered by me because of his nasty disposition.


Willow has named all of the hens. We have a couple more hens that hang with another white rooster that aren't in this pic. One of them is just known as "The red Chicken" -a Rhode Island Red given to us by another neighbor because she was broody. Now she is an egg eater and a goat grain thief, and not well liked by me.


We also have "Chooster"-who crows, but Willow swears he laid an egg. He was the only barred Rock hatched out in the last clutch-most likely inbred and possibly a hermaphrodite.

3 comments:

Dana said...

Thanks for leaving a comment on my post. i was wondering if I sounded rude. I didnt want to. It just threw me off guard reading along about how cute the animals are and their cute little names then all of a sudden they are in the freezer. I understand that it is the circle of life but I'm like you I dont want to know how it got there or what his name was. Have a nice day. Oh I didnt know chickens ate eggs

Velvet Ginger said...

How cute! I love all the names for your chickens! My Dad used to name ours too. Caring for animals helps us to learn many lessons in humanity.
Thank you for visiting my blog!

Tonia said...

Chickens have so much personality! We have 2 little banty hens that was left from the 25 we started with thanks to a neighbors dog we are down to the 2. We have lots of others but the banties are on short supply!! Anyways she will talk back and just cluck and hum to us. She also allows us to pick her up and haul her around.. She proudly lays her one egg every other day or so.. She is a fluffy little thing too. I will have to get a pic of her and post it.. Even though she is slightly bald thanks to the many roosters that we had... I love the little chickens. I have 5 silkies hens and the 2 banties and they are so cute.. I like all th ehens and my one huge roo!! He is an easy going fellow.. Which is good since he s so big.