Kristin's Chickens: The Easter-Eggers

Easter-eggers were one of our first breeds and since we were down to three in 2011, we decided to replenish their population in our flock. I love how many different colors they can come in and I hoped desperately to have a rainbow of Easter-eggers in the batch we got. I was not disappointed. Not only did these birds have the beautiful colors I had hoped for, but they had personalities that were hard to beat!

I love Easter-eggers, whether they're friendly or not. They are so colorful and pretty, and they have always been the most long-lived of all of my birds, perhaps because of their mixed heritage! There will definitely always be Easter-eggers in my flock as long as I can help it!





Cressy is the eye candy of the lot. I find her feathers, a clashing of blue and red, to be absolutely gorgeous!



Here is a close up of those beautiful neck feathers of hers:



Cressy is a little on the quirky side. She began showing her quirks at about 10 months old, when she began putting the moves on the other Easter-eggers her age. Eventually she gave up on that endeavor, and instead decided to brood. When brooding didn't go her way, she began to molt--at the very end of June this year!

After her molt, she has behaves much more like a normal hen. No love affairs with her sisters, no broodiness, nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except her new-found favorite perch up in the rafters of the coop.



Peek-a-boo!



But then, in spring, Cressida's craziness begins all over again! Sigh...





Maggie is the smallest of the Easter-eggers in this group (and perhaps the smallest of the Easter-eggers in the flock), but still maintains a tough-girl attitude. Not a girl to be messed with, she'll even take a swing at you if you try to pick her up without her permission!



Maggie has always had the smallest beard of all the Easter-eggers, but the softest as well.



But you'd better not touch it, or else!!



Maggie has a bad habit of jumping up onto the feed shed right before free-range time, and then jumping off and flying at about chest height, all the way out of the chicken yard!





One of the Drama Queen twins, Mako is the floofiest of the young Easter-eggers and quite frequently amongst the loudest as well.



When it's free-range time and the gate opens, chickens are flying from all over. But Mako cannot just run to the gate and leave it at that. Mako screams as if something is attacking her all the way to the gate, and then cackles at the top of her lungs for a moment as if catching her breath. She fusses when someone is in the nest boxes before her. When she lays an egg, she is super-quiet about it--at first. She comes out of the box quietly, gets herself a drink quietly, and starts to move on. But then it's as if she just realized she laid an egg, and she starts into the loudest, most exaggerated egg song in the yard! See why she's called a Drama Queen?



Mako has gained the nickname, 'Madame de Floofy-Poof,' for, well, obvious reasons. She's not only dramatic, she's fabulous and cleanly!







The second bird of the Drama Queen twins, Wynne can be as loud as her sister and as dramatic over the small things.

Wynne can't make up her mind about her eye color. They started out orange:



They then turned a green-gray color:



...And then they started turning orange again! Finally, after some months of flip-flopping, her eyes seem to have stopped at green-gray.

Wynne earned her title as one of the Drama Queen twins because she is supreme dictator of the nest boxes in her own mind. Like her sister, she makes a fuss whenever someone is in a nest box, because obviously that is HER nest box. She will cackle and have fits and try to evict the current occupant by jamming herself into the box with the other hen. If that hen decides to move, well, then that box must not be any good! Wynne follows her to the next box and repeats the same thing again!




Wynne always has the biggest, fluffiest beard of all of the Easter-eggers--because she eats the beards of the other hens! Beard envy?



Wynne also apparently likes to advertise herself--her tail always has a W-shape to it, even after her molts!








names: Cressida, Maggie, Mako, and Wynne
sex: female
hatch date: May 11, 2011
breed: Easter-egger
egg color: Cressida lays a beautiful olive-colored egg with brown speckles and Maggie lays a nice, army green egg. The drama queen twins lay pale turquoise eggs.