A couple of my chicken friends and I went along to the Goulburn Poultry Auction last Sunday. If only I had 10x the room, I would have arrived home with a massive and very pretty rooster, some gorgeous Australorps, a Brown Leghorn hen and about 20 bantam game birds of some description or other. There were a lot of gorgeous game birds up for auction there. Nobody knows why that kind of bird is so attractive to me. It is just the way the cookie crumbles.
But as I only have a little space in the coop and run, I came home with Blackie and Floppy. These were named by the other half. I have been oddly silent on the naming front. I thought names would come to me but they have not. :|
Blackie is a Bantam Rosecomb. She is a shy girl who prefers being up on the roost to socialising with the other girls. Given some time I am sure she will get used to the others and get down to interact, scratch, peck and chase mealworms. Until then she is getting spoilt with room service. ;)
Floppy is a Bantam Ancona. She stood out to me at the auction because she kept trying to jump into her water cup. She has shiny black feathers in between her white dappling. Personality plus!
She had some rip roaring fights with the Light Sussex on Sunday, to the point that the other half climbed into the coop to referee for an hour or so. Since then things have calmed down a fair bit and I believe they have sorted out the pecking order. I can’t be sure who is above who at this stage, it is hard to tell..
Light Sussex looks so innocent in this photo however she had climbed up onto the roost after one of those fights which would not be out of place in a chicken action movie. She is still a bit pecky with the two new girls, but nowhere near the flapping screaming tooting fights we saw on Sunday. She was bottom of the pecking order before the new girls arrived and I am pretty sure she wanted to make sure she didn’t stay there. She has grown a lot in the last 2 weeks.
These top of the pecking order ladies sat by and watched the fighting, barely batting an eyelid. They know they are top chicken. It is an attitude. And look how meaty their little chicken breasts are getting.. their chicken feather outfits don’t meet in the middle anymore.. plenty of mealworms, spinach, treats and scratching about. When they jump down from the roost you can hear how meaty and well built they are from anywhere in the house, they make a discernible landing thunk.
Light Sussex with Red Comb in the background.
The girls happily doing their doings while the garden is being watered.. It looks warm but this past week has been awful weather – atrocious winds and icy cold. It never got to 6 degrees in Goulburn on Sunday and the winds were scary, roaring and rattling the sheds. I am so over these cold winds. I want to be able to go and sit in the yard and enjoy watching my girls.
This morning I awoke to a happy – our first egg! I don’t know who laid it.
Congratulations!!