Bianca's first egg

Bianca is 23 weeks old and joined us, and our other 6 chickens, 5 weeks ago along with her friend Imogen.

Today, Bianca laid her very first egg. It was easy to tell that it was hers, because it was tiny, and bright white. We knew she would lay a white egg because she is a White Star chicken.

There it is, along with her friends' eggs. Not Imogen's, we're still waiting for her first egg.
Strange thing was, when I went into the run this afternoon, Bianca, who is normally very shy and runs away as soon as you go anywhere near her, hunched up her shoulders and sat waiting for a cuddle. So she got lots of fuss and cuddles. Obviously very proud of herself. Clever girl.

And it was delicious. Thankyou, Bianca. 

Feed the chickens

This is a fab chicken cam, with goats and ducks too.
The best bit is feeding the chickens, you really can! Looks like they run out of food periodically though. Or I fed it all to them in one go!!!

Chicken cam

10 things I've learnt about keeping chickens

I stole the idea for this post from someone else, so if it was you, thankyou very much, it was a good idea :o)

I've been keeping chickens for a year now, and it seems like forever. I have learnt oodles of things....some that I really knew anyway, but thought were just a myth, like pecking order, for instance. So, here goes.

1. Chickens have personalities and feelings.
Our chickens have their 'best friends' who they sit next to, and hang out with. When Portia lost her 'lady-in-waiting' she was visibly mourning her. Moping around, and all that.  Missy is our 'top personality' chicken. I wish we could have got a photo of her in the passenger seat of the car when Hubby drove her up to the Church Hall to show the children at playgroup. She's unflappable.

2. Chickens lay eggs of all shapes, sizes, and colours.
We've had teeny tiny eggs (usually their first eggs), massive goose-style ones (usually double-yolkers)  elongated, short fat, every shade of brown, beige, and a lovely plummy pink. We are now waiting for our first blue egg. Fingers crossed.

3. Eggs come with or without shells.

Shells have huge varieties, too. From no shell at all, so you just get the egg itself as if someone cracked one open into the nesting box, through soft-shelled ones, which might have a floppy shell, or just the membrane. Then there's thin-shelled ones, which shatter as you look at them, and the ones which are made of concrete, much harder than shop-bought ones. And wrinkled ones.

4. Chickens can have very different pitched voices. Missy has a little squeaky 'peep peep' voice. Miranda has a man's voice. She sounds more like a duck. Portia lost her voice altogether because she was loud and very vocal. So then when she squawked, nothing came out. Bless her soul.

5. Chickens can die suddenly. Sadly. If you find a chicken out in the run, stretched out on its back, it's most likely died of a heart attack.

6. Chickens can sneeze.

7. Chickens can fly quite a bit. They can fly up to the top of a fence, and they can skim along the ground for quite a distance. They like to perch as high as possible, and try to get right to the top in a new run/coop. We had to rescue one from a roof bar. She squeezed in between it and the netting, which was directly on top.

8. Pecking order is very real, and can be very vicious. When a chicken leaves the flock, and when a chicken joins the flock, pecking order has to be re-established and there is a lot of fighting that goes on. Feathers fly!

9. Chickens come in loads of different colours! We currently have 2 each of black, grey, white and brown, but they're all very different from each other.

10. Chickens make wonderful pets. They're friendly, they follow you around, they're entertaining, relaxing, cuddly, cheap to keep, recycle your waste food, easy to maintain, and best of all, they make eggs!

Permanent Chicken Cam

I've just posted a permanent link to the live chicken cam (top right of this blog)

Yesterday, the baby girls went in with the big girls. Everything seems to be going quite smoothly at the moment. The little girls are keeping their distance, sensibly.
FYI, Bianca is the pure white chicken, Imogen the toffee coloured one. You can see that they are quite a bit smaller than the big girls.

New girls!

Much excitement here in Chickenland.

Two new girls have arrived.

This afternoon we visited Newland Grange Poultry for the first time.

Lovely place. Very well kept, clean and tidy.

We had a look around, at the fancy chickens, the ducks, (avoiding the little dog because of Ellen's phobia), and chose our 2 new girls.

Bianca is a White Star. She will lay porcelain white eggs, when she is ready in a few weeks, but she's only 17 weeks old at the moment.

Bianca, say 'hello' to everyone. She hasn't said much yet. She's a good girl, went to bed nice and early all by herself.

And here's Imogen. She's a Columbine and has an 80% chance of laying a blue egg. Nice.

Imogen seems to be very vocal.

After they've been here for a couple of weeks, we'll integrate them with the big girls and we'll be back to our 8 chickens again.

We look forward to our first '8 egg day' which we sadly never achieved previously, because the lovely Portia stopped laying before Miranda and Rosalind started.