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My pullets are laying up a storm, as well. An egg a day apiece, for the last several weeks... so much for the "3 eggs a week" one reads about. Creves started off as a production breed and these kids seem to want to prove it.
I had a silkie cross rooster jump the fence last week, so I'm holding off on selling eggs for the time being. New Urch chicks! Hurray. Did anyone else pick up on the Crèvecoeur being featured, in passing, in Hobby Farms' April issue? I was in TSC and the cover article on rare poultry caught my eye. It goes through ALBC's poultry critical list and tries to encourage the reader to consider all the different breeds. I only wish they had included a better photo of a Crèvecoeur. Sadly, the rooster in the illustration looks like he's had a lot of feathers bitten off... and the light is reflecting in a strange way that makes him look even more scruffy.
I've noticed the name seems to be a bit of a hurdle for people... even without the accent grave `.
So many vowels. How do you say that???
(Or if it's said rather than read: how do you spell that???)
Krev Curr (Krev as in "Rev your engines" ... Curr as in "Curry").
Only 2 syllables, the E in the middle is silent.
People also say "Coor" as in "Coors Light", but Curr is closer to the French pronunciation.
Crève = split or burst; Coeur = heart. Crèvecoeur-en-Auge (Krev Curr on OH!-zh) is the village the Crèvecoeur chicken is named after. (2008 population: 517 according to Wikipedia! That's a small place). The village itself was named after a noble family called Crèvecoeur (and the Auge country, an area of Normandy).
NB. if you want to make it sound "really French", you should sort of swallow your Rs - try to make the R sound in the very back of your mouth instead of in the front - and make the vowel sound in Curr by keeping your lips in position as if you're going to say "curr", but instead say "care". ...Results may vary, depending on your own accent.
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Crevecoeur translates to "Heart break" in French. I pronounce it like, "Crrrreve-coor." Coeur d' Alene is about 3 hours away from me so I go with that pronunciation of the "Coeur." Or most of the time, we just call them the "devil chickens" because of their horn combs.
The hyphenated word "crève-coeur" translates in French to "heartbreak" or "bitter disappointment" ... I thought this was odd and interesting, kind of goth, when I first looked for crèvecoeur in a dictionary ... but apparently the proper name, Crèvecoeur without a hyphen, is just a proper name, one of those odd monikers which dates back a long way and shouldn't be taken too literally. Like my neighbors whose names are "Pigman" and "Smiley", or our state representative whose name is "Grubb".
There are a number of places called Crèvecoeur in France, as it was the name of a rather prolific ancient noble family. Hence the "in Auge" which was added to the village name in the 1800s... to distinguish it from all the other Crèvecoeurs.
I wouldn't make a big deal of it, but Périquet makes a point of emphasizing the correct spelling of the name (no hyphen), that the breed is named after the village and not the state of mind, and that the village itself isn't named after the state of mind...
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Good to know....although they will always be "crève-coeur" in my mind. They don't lay all that consistently, don't sell well at all, take forever to sex and yet I still keep them around!
I have 9 eggs in the incubator (our first ever Cevecoeur). I'm sure hoping that we get a pair out of them. Feeling a little down today as when I candled them (only day 3), only 1 is showing clear veining. There are 2 that look like possibles (the yolk is not perfectly round), but the rest all look very clear and the yolks float to the top of the egg no matter how I rotate the egg. What do you think?