Three Years Old!

 

Three years ago yesterday (Oct 21, 2007), our first batch of chicks arrived from Privett’s hatchery in Southern, New Mexico.

This month also marks the third year we’ve lived here on Laughing Orca Ranch in the mountains of Central New Mexico.

As for the chickens, these were our very first chickens and the first animals to grace our little ranch. My parents had chickens when I was kid, so I wasn’t completely a stranger to poultry keeping, but I was still excited to own our own flock and wanted to do make sure we did everything right.

I started off with 13 chickens, going in together with a friend so we could split a larger order and get an interesting and varied selection of chickens:

• 2 Rhode Island Reds (Rita and Rhoda)
• 2 Barred Rocks (Betty and Bertha)
• 3 Ameracauanas (Annie, Fertile Myrtle, Angelina Ballerina)
• 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes (Suzie, Sandy)
• 2 Speckled Sussex (Spotty Dotty, Kipper) 
• 2 Brown Leghorns (Brownie, Beanie)

A year later I decided I wanted to add a few more chickens to our flock and chose some unusual breeds, just to amuse and entertain…..a little ‘Coop Candy, if you will:

• 2 Polish (Phyllis Diller and Sid Vicious)
• 2 Japanese Silkies (Mr. and Mrs. Cotton)

(This lovely lady is Phyllis Diller, our Golden-Laced Polish Hen)

One of the Silkies turned out to be a Rooster, and one of the Polish ended up being a rooster, too, which we decided to name Sid Vicious, after the punk rocker.

(This is our Silky Rooster, Mr. Cotton. He’s a sweet roo)

Before the handsome Sid Vicious decided to live up to his name, he fathered 4 chicks: two roosters and two hens. We gave away the roosters, even though they were very handsome boys. And we kept the two hens. One of the hens grew into a lovely black hen with gold highlights, and we named her Ebony. While the other became a carbon copy of Sid Vicious, and we named her Pat Benatar. I’ve been very pleased about how beautiful Pat’s become because I sometimes miss that gorgeous Sid Vicious and wish he hadn’t of attacked me and became so vicious.

(This is Pat Benatar, Sid’s daughter. Her photo is also in my blog header, too. )

When Pat was a chick, the rest of the eggs in the clutch didn’t hatch, so she was born alone. So, I went out to the feed store and adopted two more chicks to keep her company:

• 1 Black Sex-Link (Liza Minelli)
• 1 Buff Orpington (Matilda)

(Here’s our pretty Buffie Hen, Matilda)

And then last Spring, I attended a Poultry Sale and bought some new pullets to add some more color to our egg harvests:

• 2 Welsumers (Cocoa and Hershey)
• 1 Cuckoo Marans (Snickers)

 

(One of our Welsumer Hens……..What’s up, Chicken Butt?!)

Over the past three years, we’ve lost 8 chickens to sickness, predator attack and re-homing. And we now have 18 chickens in our flock: 17 hens and 1 rooster.

The older hens have slowed down on their egg-laying duties and are just dear pets now. But we still get between 5-8 eggs per day from our flock, which keeps us from having to buy any store-bought eggs for our baking, while also allowing us to enjoy delicious green chile breakfast burritos at least a couple times a week.

I’m so glad we have chickens, not only to give us tasty, fresh eggs, but also to enjoy their entertaining antics and behavior. I can’t tell you how many times my chickens have relaxed me and brought me joy just by watching them peck and scratch, waddle around and take dust baths, and cluck and mutter to each other. Just stroking their feathers while they sit on my lap can be very peaceful. I can’t imagine not owning my own chickens.

Yay! For Chickens!

Chocolate Eggs

 

First off, I just want to thank everyone who participated and left comments on my Caption Contest post. They were all good. I chose Nuzzling Muzzles as the winner because she made me laugh the loudest. Her caption was creative, too.

But I also really liked Flartus’s comment, too. A year ago I made a post very similar to her soap opera inspired comment ‘All My Chickens’, called ‘As the Coop Turns’, so her caption was just great. I have a little literary prize for Flartus, too. And Nuz Muz, let me know if you’d like a scarf to go with the hat I made you last winter, girlfriend!

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Now onto the post related to the title above…….   

For a while there I thought one of our Welsumer chicks was a rooster. She was bigger than the other Welsumer chick and she was more aggressive. She was also very independent and would rather roost in the apple tree inside the chicken coop, instead of inside the chicken house with all the other chickens.

I’m relieved that my suspicions were wrong, though. Because apparently Wanda, whose name has now been changed to Hershey, is most definitely a hen…..

A hen who lays lovely chocolate eggs. Hershey has given us five chocolate eggs over the past week. You can see her first two below.

The first chocolate wonder was tiny, as you can see. And the second egg was much bigger. I placed them beside our Rhode Island Red’s brown egg and one of our Easter Egger’s blue-green eggs for comparison.

 

I should have realized that Hershey was just older than the other two chicks, including the other Welsumer chick and the Cuckoo Marans chick that I brought home at the end of August, from the Poultry Swap.

Recently, instead of running away when I try to pet her, Hershey squats down and ‘presents herself’ to me, as if I was a rooster. That’s the first sign that a chicken has moved past the pullet stage into an official egg laying hen.

    

The other Welsumer pullet, we’ve decided to name Cocoa, and we can’t wait until she lays her first chocolate egg so we can compare it to Hershey’s eggs.

Our third chocolate egg layer is the Cuckoo Marans pullet, who has been named Snickers (do you get the theme here? Are you hungry yet?), will probably start to lay around the same time as Cocoa, and it will be interesting to compare the egg color and shade of chocolate between the Welsumer and the Cuckoo Marans.

It’s also interesting to compare the differences between the Cuckoo Marans and the Barred Rock, as in the photo above. I used to think the two breeds looked the same, but when placed together, it’s easy to see the differences in their feathering.

Some have asked why eggshell color matters. And it’s true, egg color on the outside doesn’t affect the taste of the egg inside. But to many folks, a brown egg means farm-grown, not store-bought. Case in point, I have one hen, a Brown Leghorn, that lays a single, huge white egg every day. The White Leghorns are the breed of hen that are used in production/factory-farming because they are such reliable egg layers, but sometimes when I have included a couple of my Brown Leghorn’s extra-large, white eggs in a carton for sale, I’ll get a customer that asks me, “Why did you put a store-bought egg in there?”

So, now I keep those big, tasty white eggs for my family and only sell the brown or blue/green eggs to my customers. And that is why I added some new brown egg layers to my flock this year. The darker the eggs, the better.

Chocolate Eggers

 

On Saturday I went to the much anticipated Poultry Swap located in my nearest town, hosted by a feed store. I just found out today that the event was a success and the vendors sold more than 100 chickens, ducks, geese, pheasant, and quail! It was such a success that the organizers plan to do this event once a month. Yay!

Between losing two chickens this year and my birthday this Friday I knew I wanted to bring home two new chickens. And I’ve been coveting the large, dark-brown chocolate eggs that the rare Welsumer and Cuckoo Maran breeds produce.

(Welsumer Eggs. I love that they are sometimes speckled)

(Cuckoo Maran Eggs)

(Welsumer on the left and Cuckoo Maran on the right)

The Poultry Swap started at 9am, so I got up about 7am, so I could let the dogs out, feed and water the woolies and the chickens, prepare the crockpot with Posole for dinner, and get to the event early.

Good thing, too. There was only one person selling Marans and Welsumers and she sold out by 9:15am! She ran a special: Buy two for $20 or three for $25. Of course I had to buy three! lol!

(When I first got them home, I placed all three in a separate area away from my older chickens, just like I did when I integrated my 2 Polish and 2 Silky chickens to my already established flock.)

   

Right away I noticed that one of the chickens (the above pullet on the far left) was larger and more aggressive than the other two, and they were terrified of her. I was also concerned that maybe I was given a rooster instead of a hen, but after doing some research, I don’t think that’s the case. Rather that the two chickens on the right are younger than the chicken on the left. (What do you folks think?)

 

Well I realized immediately that the small intro cage wasn’t going to work well in this situation, so I rigged up a pen in the corner of my coop using t-posts and chicken wire, and placed the girls inside.

  

The new chickens seemed to like their temporary house and pen and were happy to march right inside that first night and go to sleep as soon as it was dusk. The next morning, though they had flown the coop!

Well not exactly. I keep bird mesh above my coop to keep my chickens safe from hawks, eagles, ravens and vultures, which also prevents my new chickens from flying out as well. I was actually impressed with how well the new chickens were integrating with my established flock with only a few stern pecks from my older hens just to remind them of their seniority.

And the new chickens were relieved to have the temporary pen to escape to if things got a little too overwhelming or they wanted to eat or drink in peace.

The next evening was weird, though. I watched the larger Welsumer pullet fly out of her pen right after I closed their gate. I figured she’d either fly back in and crawl into the temporary chicken house when it got dark, or she’d be waiting for me to put her back in once all of my established flock had gone into their house.

Nope. When I went back out later after dark, the larger Welsumer was nowhere to be seen. I was afraid she’d gone into the established flock’s house unprotected (where my flock would have probably ganged up on her), but instead I finally found her roosting in the apple tree in our coop all alone! I’ve never had a chicken who wanted to roost in our apple tree…and all alone, too. What an independent chicken she is!

 

(See how rooster-like she looks? Especially her tail feathers. Except she has no beetle-black coloring on her chest or tail. She was very alert in this picture listening to two of my hens announcing to the entire world that they had both laid eggs.)

The Welsumer coloring reminds me a lot of my Brown Leghorns. But I really like the looks of the Cuckoo Maran as they look so similar to the Barred Rocks, except the Cuckoo Maran has blue legs and the Barred Rocks have yellow legs. And of course, there is that huge difference in the egg color, too. *grin*

And I can only think of one thing better than chocolate colored eggs, and that is chocolate flavored eggs. Yum!

From the Tower of,