DonyaQuick
Songster
I’ve only been keeping chickens for about a year and a half; earlier this year I decided to get a rooster for my hens to have a more complete experience and to turn chicken keeping into a larger project by hatching my own chicks to maintain a larger group. These are current my adults minus my broody. I've hatched eggs from Dingus and Buddy so far.
Roosters are supposed to be dinosaurs, but Ziggy is more like a moody version of Barney the purple dinosaur. He’s a group hug kind of guy that occasionally gets bent out of shape if I set the feeder in the wrong spot, but even then he just tugs my pants. He's a very sweet boy.
Buddy is my smartest chicken and is a hefty girl even though it's not obvious from the photo. She’s probably a little on the chunky side because she uses her smarts to eat more junk food than the others, but she also has a lot more muscle than my other hens. She lays medium sized pinkish to light brown eggs with white speckles. She is a lap chicken that likes to be pampered.
And Dingus, aka The Dingus Baby, aka Big Ol’ Baby Dingus...she wails and cries if she doesn’t get to shove her face in my armpit each morning. It started when she was a chick. None of my others do this. Dingus lays light brown to nearly white eggs that usually have brown speckles.
Another odd thing about Dingus: I believe she is far-sighted in one eye and extremely far-sighted in the other. She has almost no up-close depth perception, which was obvious from when she was just a couple weeks old and couldn't figure out how to jump out of the brooder with the others. She's still rubbish at jumping and will snap at bugs that are 2ft too far away, but she can also spot a predator in tall grass clear across a good-sized field. If she sounds off, I know to just trust it and go in the direction she's looking, because there will be something out there even though I can't see it until I'm halfway there. So, her weird eyesight issue has turned out to be half disability and half superpower. I was on the fence about whether to hatch her eggs because of the vision issue but she gets along just fine and seems like a hardy bird otherwise. Doesn't seem like either of her offspring have inherited her far-sightedness.
I wanted to hatch some from Chungus too, but her eggs were all duds unfortunately, so for now I just have 4 chicks, 2 each from Buddy and Dingus.
And they were hatched by my little Dimple here. Please forgive the state of the room; I had everyone set up in my home office for the first couple weeks and the chicks got into pretty much everything.
Dimple is my bantam size hen who grew weird little bricks for spurs tried to be the rooster more than once before I got a real one. She probably will never have fertile eggs of her own because she doesn’t squat. Instead, she does the Dimple Dance where she furiously drums her feet and scoots about with hunched up shoulders. Being broody is probably the most normal hen thing she’s ever done. As soon as they were able to leave the nest she started bringing them over to take naps on me, so now I have super-friendly chicks. They are all around 3 weeks old now.
As for the individual chicks, Dingus’s vision issue doesn't seem to have been passed along to her children but a certain something else apparently was. Two days out of the egg and it started. How on earth is there a shove-head-in-armpit gene?
Buddy made what looks to be a barred chick and another that is white with some random black feathers coming in. I’m actually excited that it looks like I have a cockerel with the white one; I think it could be a very pretty bird. The white buddy baby is the only one so far making suspect it's a cockerel - comb coming faster and in red at the base instead of skin tone and wattles coming in early and on the redder side.
And this is Dingus’s other chick. It took me a few days to realize what was up with it's face, but I think this poor little one actually broke its jaw during hatching. It got stuck after pipping and I wonder if that's why. It could also have been from being bopped around because it was last out with its beak protruding from the egg for some time. It had its foot right up by its beak through the hole, and I had to assist by tearing the membrane a bit so it could push the shell apart the rest of the way with its foot, which it did on its own. On its beak, it initially had had a big dent that swelled up at first, and it wanted to sleep in my hand a lot more than the others for the first few days. The injured area turned dark red first and then purple, but it now looks to have healed and the discoloration is gone. It’s a strong eater and catching back up in size to the others. I know this type of injury in a chick can lead to scissor beak but I’m not seeing any sign of curvature so far. I hope it does ok even if it has a bit of a snarly face.
Now I'm in the process of trying to figure out names for these little fluffs. It will be fun to see how their colors turn out as they grow.
Roosters are supposed to be dinosaurs, but Ziggy is more like a moody version of Barney the purple dinosaur. He’s a group hug kind of guy that occasionally gets bent out of shape if I set the feeder in the wrong spot, but even then he just tugs my pants. He's a very sweet boy.
Buddy is my smartest chicken and is a hefty girl even though it's not obvious from the photo. She’s probably a little on the chunky side because she uses her smarts to eat more junk food than the others, but she also has a lot more muscle than my other hens. She lays medium sized pinkish to light brown eggs with white speckles. She is a lap chicken that likes to be pampered.
And Dingus, aka The Dingus Baby, aka Big Ol’ Baby Dingus...she wails and cries if she doesn’t get to shove her face in my armpit each morning. It started when she was a chick. None of my others do this. Dingus lays light brown to nearly white eggs that usually have brown speckles.
Another odd thing about Dingus: I believe she is far-sighted in one eye and extremely far-sighted in the other. She has almost no up-close depth perception, which was obvious from when she was just a couple weeks old and couldn't figure out how to jump out of the brooder with the others. She's still rubbish at jumping and will snap at bugs that are 2ft too far away, but she can also spot a predator in tall grass clear across a good-sized field. If she sounds off, I know to just trust it and go in the direction she's looking, because there will be something out there even though I can't see it until I'm halfway there. So, her weird eyesight issue has turned out to be half disability and half superpower. I was on the fence about whether to hatch her eggs because of the vision issue but she gets along just fine and seems like a hardy bird otherwise. Doesn't seem like either of her offspring have inherited her far-sightedness.
I wanted to hatch some from Chungus too, but her eggs were all duds unfortunately, so for now I just have 4 chicks, 2 each from Buddy and Dingus.
And they were hatched by my little Dimple here. Please forgive the state of the room; I had everyone set up in my home office for the first couple weeks and the chicks got into pretty much everything.
Dimple is my bantam size hen who grew weird little bricks for spurs tried to be the rooster more than once before I got a real one. She probably will never have fertile eggs of her own because she doesn’t squat. Instead, she does the Dimple Dance where she furiously drums her feet and scoots about with hunched up shoulders. Being broody is probably the most normal hen thing she’s ever done. As soon as they were able to leave the nest she started bringing them over to take naps on me, so now I have super-friendly chicks. They are all around 3 weeks old now.
As for the individual chicks, Dingus’s vision issue doesn't seem to have been passed along to her children but a certain something else apparently was. Two days out of the egg and it started. How on earth is there a shove-head-in-armpit gene?
Buddy made what looks to be a barred chick and another that is white with some random black feathers coming in. I’m actually excited that it looks like I have a cockerel with the white one; I think it could be a very pretty bird. The white buddy baby is the only one so far making suspect it's a cockerel - comb coming faster and in red at the base instead of skin tone and wattles coming in early and on the redder side.
And this is Dingus’s other chick. It took me a few days to realize what was up with it's face, but I think this poor little one actually broke its jaw during hatching. It got stuck after pipping and I wonder if that's why. It could also have been from being bopped around because it was last out with its beak protruding from the egg for some time. It had its foot right up by its beak through the hole, and I had to assist by tearing the membrane a bit so it could push the shell apart the rest of the way with its foot, which it did on its own. On its beak, it initially had had a big dent that swelled up at first, and it wanted to sleep in my hand a lot more than the others for the first few days. The injured area turned dark red first and then purple, but it now looks to have healed and the discoloration is gone. It’s a strong eater and catching back up in size to the others. I know this type of injury in a chick can lead to scissor beak but I’m not seeing any sign of curvature so far. I hope it does ok even if it has a bit of a snarly face.
Now I'm in the process of trying to figure out names for these little fluffs. It will be fun to see how their colors turn out as they grow.
Also getting the first adorable "bokity bokity awwww" sounds from him like his dad used to make when greeting me. And he's starting to seek out the treat bags in the house to drag them around and try to get them open, but then he doesn't always eat the treats straight away when put some down for everyone. I'm increasingly having to directly offer him some for him to start snacking, otherwise he just yodels and watches the ladies eat it. They're all 8 weeks old today.
