I took a few pictures today, nobody wanted to hold still so they're all a bit blurry.
Neville in all his rooish glory, he's around 6 months old now and acting like it. His hormones are raging and he pounces on everything in sight.
Alice was the only girl who stopped moving long enough for me to get a somewhat decent shot.
We had a few visitors in the yard today, they actually held still and let me take a few quick shots, unlike the dummy chickens.
This giant waterbird was high up in the trees, the chickens made so much noise until he flew off. It's a Black Crowned Night Heron but it sorta looked like a weird penguin to me.
And a butterfly was enjoying all of the blooms on our citrus trees right now, I was able to get really close.
I've gotten a strange assortment of eggs lately, giant ones, normal ones and teeny tiny ones.
Finally, my latest broody is sitting on 8 special eggs, that I think I mentioned before. They are Dun Sumatra eggs. The rooster is Dun colored, the hens are Black and Blue. The resulting offspring will be Dun, Black, Blue or possibly Platinum colored. I am VERY excited about these eggs and I hope, hope, hope that I at least get a couple to hatch.
They were shipped, so there's no telling how they will do. My other broody sat on shipped eggs though and had a pretty good hatch rate. SO we'll see.
The Dun gene looks chocolate colored, however genetically it is different from the actual Chocolate gene (Choc). The Dun gene is not sex linked and it works similarly to the Blue gene (Bl). Dun and Blue are both Black diluters. With Blue, having 1 copy of the gene will give you a visually Blue bird, having 2 copies of the gene will give you a visually Splash bird. With Dun, having 1 copy of the gene will give you a visually Dun bird, having 2 copies of the gene will give you a visually Khaki bird. The Dun gene and the Blue gene can work together and "double dilute" a Black bird, the resulting color then is Platinum, bird with 1 copy of the Blue gene and 1 copy of the Dun gene.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyways... here's a few pictures of the parent birds that my eggs came from. You can see the rooster is a lovely chocolate color. Depending on what I get to hatch from these eggs, I've got a couple projects in mind using the Dun gene.