But, that crappy line is apparently true.
Coop 3.0 was barely settling in with the 3 red hens (ha!) when I got a call from the friend who gave me 2 of the red ones, Brittany and Suzanne (the chickens, not the friend, the friend is Cindy and human), had 11 hens given to her because the owner felt that the hens "bicker too much."...Uh...they are chickens. Chickens are persnickety assholes. Like most of the women in my family (sorry, but you know it's true). Cindy has a full flock of heavy layers who don't eat much and these 11 weren't worth integrating to the big group, apparently.
Anyway, she called to see if I wanted more. Given the size of Coop 3.0 and my unwillingness to build Coop 4.0 so soon, I said "no more than 3."
Cindy picked the 3 specialty breed hens and brought them over.
Here are the chickens.
The reddish ones I've had for few weeks. Others are new and very different.
Porky and Pearl
Porky is a Barred Rock (the black and white one). She's big boned...actually, she's a fat ass. Pearl is a Leghorn and quite shiny with an oddly large bosom just like Foghorn Leghorn in the cartoons.
Brittany and Suzanne with Porky and Pearl.
Brittany and Suzanne are "Novogen" breed. A cross between Rhode Island reds and Leghorns. They are super tame and lay HUGE brown eggs. Porky, I think, also lays brown eggs. Pearl is the only one laying white.
Brittany is a scrawny red-neck runaway. Suzanne is a follower who wants you to think she's tough, but she's not.
T-Bone giving the camera the stank eye, and Prudence looking put out behind her.
T-Bone came from the community garden in Worley. All the rest are from my friend Cindy who is the bomb. T-Bone was a runner who spent her days escaping the chicken run and digging up the garden. I don't have a chicken run so she saves that escape time and spends it in the garden...digging shit up. T-Bone is tough. 10 minutes after I let her out of the transport cage on my property, she had a mouthful of Brittany's feathers. 10 minutes after the 3 new chickens (Porky, Pearl and Prudence) arrived, she had a mouthful of Pru's feathers. Suzanne just follows T-Bone around all day and gets panicky if she loses sight of T-Bone...basically Suzanne is T-Bone's bitch.
Prudence (Pru) is an Ameraucana big, and prissy (hence "Prudence").
Pru lays BIG pale blue eggs that are a bit on the green side.
They were laying in the laying boxes, but today, no one could be bothered, apparently. So I got one egg from the floor and covered in poo! Jerks. Tomorrow they will have to stay in the coop until there are eggs...at least 5 (they don't all lay every day...I think 5 eggs per week per bird is pretty good). They will have plenty of food and water. And it's a big coop and there is a giant storm tomorrow so I'm sure they will all be in there most of the day anyway. When it rains they either sit under a table I have outside or go back in the coop.
UPDATE: I actually wrote this last week. The hens lay more in the coop now, but not entirely. We may need more prison days (not full days...) to encourage them to lay in the coop. Today (for real today) Pru spent HOURS just sitting in a nesting box not laying an egg. What the hell? The original 3 were busy sitting under the table I got out of a dumpster a few years ago:
No comments:
Post a Comment