Farm Friend Friday--Peeps!

Tuesday night we heard the unmistakable sound of a peep! Adelka, the Buff Lace Poland, has been dutifully sitting on a dozen eggs and Wednesday morning a little one appeared from under her.

Peekaboo!

It's extremely rare for this breed to hatch their own chicks, and these are the first to be born on our farm, so it's pretty exciting! I bought an incubator for the task, but there was no need for it.

 Look at me!

By yesterday afternoon there were eight little balls of fluff!

 

Peeps!

I was hoping some of the offspring might be Karina's, but her untimely passing was 25 days before first hatch and chicken eggs hatch in 21 days, so I'm suspecting they are all Adelka's.

 Kryzsztof and gal

Prior to hatching, the father Kryzsztof had been moved into his own apartment, and has been steadily pacing around in his loneliness since. Today I carried him over to view them through the hardware cloth. His head shot up like a muppet in astonishment at seeing all his peeps, and Adelka gave a soft purr of contentment.

 Everyone eating from my hand

Today she let me handle the chicks, watching carefully to see that I was gentle with them and returned them to her. They were all eating out of my hand, so the co-parenting has begun! I like to be able to handle my adult chickens and for them to be gentle around people.

 Nap time (click to biggify!)

When she feels nap time is over she starts barking a repetitive sound and they all scurry out from underneath her fluffiness. She begins the tidbitting process until several are eating at the feeder. They all seemed happy to eat from my hand. When she feels they’ve had enough recess she emits a low growl and they all run back under her breast held up like a garage door. She uses her beak to tuck the last little cute tushie back underneath. Adelka is a great mom!

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Farewell Rooster-o

In the beginning, we never planned to have roosters, but we didn't read the fine print that said there was a small percentage of error on sexing peeps on the first day of their life. Soon after our original batch of layers began to grow, we noticed something different about this one. It looked like a rooster.

Soon we were absolutely, positively sure he was a rooster, and thinking he was the only one, named him Rooster. You could say he was our first rooster, even though much later we were to discover three other of our 'hens' were also boys! They happened to already have girls' names that we could change to the masculine by adding an 'O'...thus Ava became the infamous Avo, etc. This is how Rooster became Rooster-o.

He was the smallest of all our roosters, and we never knew exactly what unusual breed he was. As a young cockerel, he excelled at sports, namely 'grape ball'. This is where we would toss a grape into the flock and he was like a quarterback that would run around dodging the other chickens who also wanted the prize.

Rooster-o was also a gentleman, always very kind to the ladies who, quite frankly, adored him. Especially the ill-behaved Egyptian Fayoumis. They knew he had the biggest wattles around and took advantage of that any chance they could get. He was the only rooster I could not easily pick up and handle--that is until he became sick. Because of this I never knew he was losing weight. Birds have a way of disguising illness by fluffing their feathers.

At first I thought he was malnourished from having a very hooked beak, which you may recall in an earlier post I clipped and filed. This definitely helped him eat more, and he had a voracious appetite up until the end. He regained his strength, and I moved him from the utility bathroom back into his coop apartment when the new peeps expanded into all our spare space.

But his health went slowly downhill. After the new flock moved into their coop, he came back in the house where I could more easily tend to him and he didn't have to endure the summer heat. I began cooking for him, meals that Farmer Rick says were better than what I cooked for us! In the afternoons I'd take him outside where he'd flirt with the hens from the comfort of my lap.

Farewell, Rooster-o, you will be missed by all of us!

Appenzeller Spitzhauben

This week I hope to photograph and share the rare breed chicks with you. Since they are wiggly balls of fluff, this is no easy task.

Here's an Appenzeller Spitzhauben chick. This breed comes from Switzerland, and is actually their national bird. (I believe Benjamin Franklin suggested a turkey as ours, but was ruled out in favor of the eagle. Note that politically Switzerland has been know for peace, and the U.S. for war...) They were named after the local lace bonnets worn by the ladies of Appenzellerland as apart of their traditional dress. As is beginning to be seen in this chick, the breeds' most recognizable feature is its forward crest.

There are very few in America, and they have not yet been admitted into the American Standard of Perfection. They are mainly raised for their white eggs. I can tell these chicks are already full of personality!

Peeps!!

If you've never raised chickens before, you might be surprised to learn they come in the mail. The moment the box arrives the postmaster calls to let you know.



These hatched yesterday morning at 10 a.m. and are very cute!


One of the Cuckoo Marans didn't make it, and one of the Faverolles has a badly swollen eye that we are treating. She/he kind of looks like Festus on Gunsmoke, and is the only chicken I've ever seen run backwards, so I hope this isn't an indication something more is wrong.

I am disappointed the hatchery shorted us the two White Crested Black Polish, as I was hoping to breed Ruzina and greatly miss our rooster Apollo. It also appears we did not get three of our other Polish (we aren't sure which ones yet) and that more Brabanters, or possibly something else were substituted.

The only substitution I agreed in advance to was Feather Legged Cuckoo Marans instead of Clean Legged ones. The Feather Legged were the original breed from the Island of Marans in France. They were later imported by the English who bred the feathers off of the legs.

Overall the peeps are very healthy and energetic. I am feeding them Quick Chick and GroGel in addition to chick starter feed and I'm beginning to suspect one of them is loaded with caffeine, as they are racing around and leaping over each other! By comparison, our previous peeps slept a lot.

They have since been transferred to the guest bathtub with an infrared heat lamp above them because they need to stay around 90-95 degrees the first week. We use beach towels instead of litter at this point, because it gives the chicks better traction (so they don't end up with spraddled legs), and they don't have any wood chips or newspaper to mistakenly ingest. Towels are also washable and reusable around the farm.

I'll be taking some close-ups of the different breeds so you can follow them as they grow.