Hello! Your birds are lovely. What breeds do you have and where did you get them?
Oh, thank you! I think the ladies are lovely too, and I love having a few different kinds. We have two sexlinks of some sort - they were called Isa Browns, but some experts on this site have questioned whether they are real ISAs, or just some generic cross ... anyway, Isa Brown TYPE chickens, two aracaunas, two black marans, two white leghorns. The ISAs are Hester and Hattie. Aracaunas are Constance and Calliope. Marans are Dot and Doris. Leghorns are Maude and Myrtle. And then we have a pen with three younger babies who came along later ... Americaunas who started out named Petunia and Periwinkle, but Periwinkle is showing some alarming signs of being a boy, so we're calling that chicken Perry for now. And then, the darling of our flock, the fuzziest little thing, Tillie, a light brahma.
And then, because we're crazy people, we also have a group of 12 guniea fowl keets who we are raising for free range on our large property, because we've been seeing more and more ticks every year. A neighbor has them and she says that they really do a good job of patrolling for bugs, as well as alerting when visitors come, or alerting the chickens when predators fly overhead. So ... a dozen 4-week-old guineas are growing up in a temporary pen, until they're old enough to be released. They are all named Artemis, after the kids book series Artemis Fowl ...
We got the first 8 chickens from
Tractor Supply Co., and everyone else from Family Farm and Home - but all of them were hatched at Townline Hatchery in Zeeland, MI.