Chicken Math at its finest!

If you can count properly you will notice that my FIVE new chickens are actually SEVEN. ahem. Yes. Chicken Math. Totally blaming it on that. Well and Corinne. Maybe Rayna too.

These girls are from my enabler and friend Lisa who got me in to the laying hens in the first place by trading fleece for chickens. Hey I 'needed' chickens, and she needed fleece. Problem solved. Lisa also taught me how to spin, and she knitted my hat/scarf out of Jazz fleece.

The two Barred Rock and the two Easter Eggers are the same age as the two layers I have left, Helen and Henrietta. So they are just about 2, but still laying well. The three Black Australorps are GORGEOUS girls, but are more aloof and tend to hang together. They are just yearlings.

There was quite the introduction yesterday Henrietta (my original barred rock and sister to these girls) made it quite clear that they were all peons and she was queen B. In the photo above where the two australorps are standing was off limits last night to the new 7 girls! The new 7 had to smash on to a tiny saw horse to roost, while Helen and Henrietta had the ENTIRE area you see above to lounge on during the night..... *SIGH*. those silly girls.

I checked on them during the night to make sure everyone was OK (while i was out doing lamb checks...which is in the NEXT post!) and those seven girls looked so sad crammed together. lol Below is a photo of one of the new girls modeling the saw horse.

And yes I have the 11 chicks yet too! They have upgraded to a larger area of the 'coop' pen. I was walking towards the barn from the house this am and heard a terrible commotion! The hens were all screaming, the bantam chickens were screaming and the guineas were all screaming and alerting. I dropped the bucket i was carrying and ran across refrozen snow drifts, mud and newly fallen wet snow to get to the coop thinking there was a weasel or mink in the barn.

It wasn't.

It was one of the White Wyandotte pullets who happened to fly over the wire caging keeping them separate from the big girls and was in with the new 7 and 2 original girls. WHAT A BUNCH OF WUSSES!! They were carrying on like the sky was falling. And they can even SEE the pullets so it wasn't like it was a big surprise or anything. Silly girls.

Below are the young pullets...

All of the adult girls are from breeds that are very cold hardy. And the new pullets, aside from the Sicilian Buttercups are all cold hardy. So the Buttercups are more of a 'let's see how it goes' trial and will report more as they are growing up. So far so good!

The chickens are of course all part of the sustainability i'm trying to get a better grasp of. If the layers can provide eggs for myself, the dogs, and my family then they are doing their job (plus being free range bug/frog/rodent eaters in the summer)!