Here a Chick, There a Chick!

I must say - I do enjoy my chickens. Most of the time - they make me laugh. Sometimes - the roosters really tick me off when they won't leave the hens alone. But lately - these two little devils have made me late for work every day. (It's a good thing I'm pretty much self employed).


Aren't they just the cutest little chicks. They are bantam cochins. I've been raising them since they were a few days old. They are incredibly friendly little hens. Every morning when I go out to the barn , they come running to see me, then have to be picked up and put on top of the old dog house (where I keep feed and water). Then they want to be petted and carried around and talked to. I spend entirely too much time playing with these chicks - pretty soon - they'll grow up to look like these two hens here.
These two white bantam cochins aren't quite as friendly. But I really like the cochin - they have a friendly personality - and are just the cutest darn things.


This beautiful black cochin is probably one of my favourite hens. She is so incredibly friendly. She also loves to be carried around - and in the evenings when I go out to do barn chores - she comes running across the barnyard to meet me - then walks along with me into the barn. I love the way her feathers are so black - with the green sheen to them. My friend Cate has another of the black cochins, and she's going to give her to me - hopefully next week when we get together.

This is a buff cochin. She's a bit on the nervous side. Her tail feathers are finally starting to grow back - but she is a nice little hen. She's terribly funny in the evenings when she's trying to get up on the roost - a bit bottom heavy - and she has to fly over from the water trough to the edge of the ram stall. Looks a bit like a lead balloon floatin g through the air.This last picture is of a Brahma hen. I picked these up from my friend Jesse a while back. Brahma's are a new breed to me. She's a bit stretched out in this picture (afraid of the camera), but they are very much like the cochins in many ways - they have the feathers on the feet, and the little fat bodies - they have lovely feathers around the neck - and the tails are like a little puffball of feathers - very cute. The two Brahmas that I have were obviously not handled at all, as they are incredibly wild - this picture was taken on zoom - and she was still pretty nervous.

When I got back from Newfoundland last week - I was greeted by 21 new chicks in the barn - hatched out of 4 different nests. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get some good pictures of them. We've put them in a separate stall so that the roosters don't bother them. So that will put me somewhere up around the 40 mark for chickens - lots of eggs around here. In a few weeks, Cate and I are going to a sale up near her place - it's called the fur and feathers sale, and it's held 2X a year. People come from all over to buy and sell chickens, ducks, peacocks, dogs, cats, sheep, llamas - you name it. I'm hoping to find a couple of full size cochin hens for my flock - and possibly a few more welsh harlequin ducks.

I'll also have to get a picture of Wren for everyone - and maybe the kittens as well - they will be leaving next week for their new foster homes.