It's been awhile since I've given an update on the chickens. I reckon I'll start with eggs....
I have seven laying pullets and am getting about five or six eggs per day. In the beginning, I thought I would keep track of how many I got from each breed, but this quickly became an exercise in futility. This is because initially, there wasn't as much color difference between the breeds as I thought there'd be.For example, Barred Hollands are supposed to be white egg layers, but mine lays more of a cream colored egg, identical to the color one of my Ameraucanas lays. Welsummers are known for their dark brown or speckled eggs, like the one on the left. Other than occasional, random speckles however, they are the same brown as the Delaware's eggs. That is, except for the Welsummer that is laying light pinkish-brown eggs (in the photo above). Not the least bit characteristic for the breed! Not that I'm complaining. It's just made breed laying record keeping a bit difficult so that I finally decided, "oh, well."
Of egg laying places, none of them have ever consented to use my homemade nest boxes. Rather, they consistently prefer to lay under the nest boxes. Except the Ameraucanas.
Though they lay the largest eggs, the Ameraucanas have turned out to be flyers. My Ameraucana cockerel flew out of the chicken yard every morning (the reason for that here.) My two Ameraucana pullets don't think anything of flying out of the chicken yard or the fenced in field, whenever it suits their fancy. Fortunately, they still stick close to the rest of the flock, and so aren't wandering to places I don't want them. The downside to this is that they fly out to lay their eggs.
As long as I can find them I don't mind. But if they change the spot, it's a proverbial Easter egg hunt.
I realize this is a problem with free ranging chickens, so I feel fortunate that most of mine lay in the coop. I think though, that the urge to lay elsewhere was motivated by two of our three roosters, the Ameraucana and the Welsummer. These two would hang out in the hen house, waiting to accost the hens when they came in to lay their eggs. Naughty boys.
This was just one problem we were having with our roosters. At my last chicken report, we had three of them. The other, bigger problem was the constant crowing and no little ruckus amongst the three. The rivalry was terrible. There were a few times, when I thought Lord B ....
... was going to kill one or the other of them. Anyway, we finally "did the deed," so that we now have only one rooster and there's peace in the barnyard once again. Not that Lord B doesn't ever crow, but he is much less stressed out. If I do hear a lot of crowing, I know to go see what's going on, because he's usually alerting the world to something he's concerned about.
It was interesting to observe Lord B's rise to "top cock." We had chosen him for the job a long time ago, simply because DH really likes the Barred Holland breed. At that time we had 12 roosters (to our 7 hens), so we knew we were going to have to cull most of them. Some of those 12 were simply greedy troublemakers, chasing the pullets around, squabbling amongst themselves, and eating all the food. They were the first to go. When we got down to three, Lord B was still too much of a youngster to step up to the plate. When he finally did reach the magical maturity day, it was as though there was unanimous agreement amongst all the chickens that he was the rooster. He knew it, the hens knew it, and the remaining two roosters knew it. There was never any contest over this that we were aware of, it was simply accepted by all.
Most of our rooster problems then, consisted not of the other two challenging him for the job, but for what they were constantly trying to do behind his back. Consequently he was in a constant tizzy over keeping them away from the hens.
He was the right choice and has been everything a rooster is supposed to be. The hens love him, even the gal at the bottom of the pecking order. She has no fear of him whatsoever. He is alert, watchful, ever clucking to them for some discovered tidbit, always stepping back to keep watch while they have first go at whatever goody he's found, and patient to the point where any pullet can snatch food from his mouth with no protest from him. Plus he doesn't challenge the humans as potential threats to his flock. In fact, when he sees us, he rounds the girls up and brings them running (in case we have something for them to eat.) His only compensation for all this is that he "gets a little" from the hens, and interestingly they let him. They always squawked and ran away from the other two.
So, we have a little flock of eight which seems a perfect number for our homestead. So far we've managed to keep up with the eggs, but I'm planning to try freezing them soon, for winter's use. More on that project here.
Best of all, everybody gets along like one big happy family.
by Marc Rogers. I mentioned this book last year, when I showed you how it taught me to save cucumber seeds (
