I'll be sad if the leghorn is a boy - I picked this group to have the widest range of egg colors and s/he is the only one that would give me white ones. (The silkie would too, but I didn't buy her for her eggs, but for how cute she (or he) is. Looks like I will be rehoming a few of this batch... probably just as well because 11 chickens is too many for my tiny yard! But I'll be sorry to see them go. I had hoped that maybe we could keep a bantam silkie rooster - maybe its crow isn't too loud? (My year-old hens cluck their heads off and the neighbors don't seem to mind!)
The keepers (so far, anyway) are two easter eggers (each with very different very pretty coloring), a welsummer and a RIR. My older hens are a Columbian Wyandotte, Golden Laced Wyandotte, Penguin the Blind Chicken (easter egger but her eggs are brown) and a very mean and cranky Olive Egger. She'd kill the new chicks if she could.
Funny story about her: she is a master escape artist - she's always finding new ways out of my run into the yard. And every time she does, she starts a new nest - I'm constantly combing the yard for her eggs. Once I found six. Today I found 3. I figure the easiest thing to do is to just let her out and then watch where she goes. If she can't get out she paces hysterically and squawks incredibly loudly - she's miserable. She has completely forgotten how to lay in the nesting boxes and is absolutely compelled to find a bush somewhere!
Anyway, if everyone except those three turn out to be girls, I'll have eggs in light brown, olive, blue (whatever the EE's end up laying) dark brown (the RIR) and Chocolate brown (the welsummer.) It will be a lovely array, though still no white eggs! Last year I started out with six chickens and the one white egg layer (an Austra White) also turned out to be a rooster. I want a fully multi-cultural egg selection - no discrimination here!
