The Broody Blues.
At least Auntie and Ember are sharing a box today instead of hogging individual boxes.
I can't break them fast enough right now and my other hens are hiding nests because the boxes are full of defensive broodies.
Father and son. Rameses (right), and Rameses Jr. (left). They're so close to identical that I can only really tell them apart by looking at the length of their spurs unless they're standing side by side. Rameses being a little fuller-bodied than his 10-month son.
Cheops, a Splash Australorp cockerel, is indignant about being held. He does not understand that he ought to be grateful because he is being spared the freezer in hopes of selling him.
I got a Blue Cochin and a Splash Cochin to keep my Whiting True Blue babies company since there were only 2 WTBs available. Cochins have the market cornered on cute as newly-feathered chicks. Like animated cotton balls.
Wow! He looks like he was assembled from leftover parts of other roosters. Cute though.
Wonder if any of the genetics experts could tell us what sort of genes are happening here?
This could be part of her problem. Chickens are flock animals. :(
Quarantine is very tricky for backyard chicken keepers. We generally have neither the space nor the facilities for a true quarantine...
What else does she have to do in her coop? Can she see the others?
Try giving her a big pile of dried grass clippings, a big pile of last year's leaves raked out from under the bushes, etc, or a couple flakes off a bale of straw so that she'll have something to scratch.
Once the integration...
Seti (Black Australorp), and Mocha (Mottled Java), are not Superboy's *actual* parents, but they make a nice family group anyway.
He's called "Superboy" because, though he's about 3.5 weeks in that photo, that big comb showed up when he was only 2 weeks old.
(Anyone want a fast-maturing...
You can't see it, but Black/Yellow (A Blue Australorp now to be known as "Auntie"), has one of the babies in the ground nest. Two days later she was up in the nestboxes as well.
Mocha (Mottled Java), and her babies (BBS Australorps). Now that they babies are older she's leading them up to the nest for overnight instead of using the ground nest.
What a cutie! Try Craigslist. Advertise him as "Rare White Crested Blue Polish" and ask money for him.
Strangely, people are more likely to take a rooster they have to pay for (unless you're giving a group away free to people who want to eat them).