"I do not like chickens!" That's what I would tell people. "They have lizard eyes, with no expression."
I can honestly say I never thought I would own, let alone enjoy having chickens. That is one of the many reasons we started with quail. I was AFRAID of chickens. Let's be honest, there are days I still am. Though I'm much braver with a pair of gloves.
However, this past spring we purchased three beautiful, white silkie bantams. I had read that they were the most friendly and quiet chickens that you could own, so it seemed like a good breed to start with. I went on Craigslist and found a listing for three white silkie hens. I asked the man if he might exchange the hens for my trio of khaki campbell ducks and drake. He said he didn't need them, but he would. I was delighted! The ducks were terrified of us and made such a ruckus every time we went out to the pen.
I drove two hours with the four ducks in our dog's crate in the back of the Pilot. A word of advice, scared ducks make a mess, and it stinks! If you insist on taking them in your vehicle put down a large tarp first!
When we got there we took a quick tour, swapped the ducks for the chickens, and started to drive the two hours back. We stopped at a McDonald's for lunch so I opened up my hatch to check on them. All of a sudden I heard a girl's voice yell, "Are those chickens?" It was the employee who was working the drive thru window. "Yes!" I exclaimed almost proudly. Another girl joined her at the window. "Awwww, they are so cute!" they said. And they were right. They were so cute! They were also pretty sweet once you caught them, and so much friendlier and quieter than our khaki campbells were.
We still own two of our original three chickens, Momma and Rosetta. Our children named them. The third was the prettiest and sweetest of all! It had long white feathers down it's neck and it was slightly bigger than the other two. Jonathan named it Hau nani which means "beautiful snow" in Hawaiian. My husband and I even talked about entering this hen into the fair. We had the chickens for a couple of weeks and one Sunday morning something funny happened.
"Is that crowing?" our daughter said at the breakfast table. We opened the door. Yep, it was crowing! Now remember, we live in the city. A crowing rooster is a big deal! Mortified, I immediately contacted the man I had bought the silkies from. Thankfully he said I could bring the rooster back and exchange him for another hen, but I would have to wait a few days. I started texting all my immediate neighbors to apologize for any crowing they might hear for the next couple of days, and to reassure them that we were taking care of the rooster. I have the best neighbors. None of them had even heard the rooster and were quite sympathetic.
Several days later, I made the long two hour drive back to the farm where I had bought the rooster. This time with a cat crate since I was only getting one and I felt bad for stealing the dog's crate so often and covering it with chicken poop. I said goodbye to our beautiful sweet silkie rooster and said hello to our new hen.
She had a slight golden tan color to her feathers which I thought was kind of pretty and set her apart from the other two. It was already really hard telling them apart so I was grateful for something a little different. She also did not have a beard like Momma and Rosetta. This meant she could see much better, and avoid human contact with ease. Jonathan named her Goldie, but I had a better name for her... Punk! She was a great layer and a great mother. But she was mean! Even when she wasn't broody. She was also very noisy and would express her dislike for the muscovy quite often!
Since we had a rooster on our little homestead and witnessed him mating with the hens we decided to save and incubate some of their eggs. Meanwhile, Momma had gone broody, but since this was her first time we gave her some quail eggs to sit on while we excitedly waited for the silkie eggs to hatch. We were delighted when they actually started hatching in the incubator and got five adorable chicks! Four that would be white and one (which was my favorite of course) gray. As expected, the quail eggs under Momma did not hatch so we let her take over as surrogate mother, and she did great!
Soon enough, these babies had three mothers looking after them.
Sadly, we lost two chicks inexplicably when we went away on vacation. And we were left with three white chicks. We decided to separate them from the larger chickens and muscovy since we were still not sure what had happened to the other two. We'd go visit them each day. Catch them and pick them up to eat Japanese beetles off the grape leaves. Eventually they developed there own personality. The one was so sweet, my daughter named her Cupcake. She would come over to our feet and just wait to be picked up! The other two were not so friendly and quite hard to catch. They each also had an extra, extra toe on one foot. Let me explain. You may or may not know this, most chickens have four toes. Silkies have five. These guys had five on one foot and six on the other. One chick was quite large so I assumed it was a roo. I named him Mo and the other Bo, which could also be short for Bo Peep if it happened to be a girl. A few weeks later and it became more apparent that we had two hens and a rooster.
Yes, a rooster. What to do with this rooster? Do you know how hard it is to sell a rooster? You can't sell them by themselves. Especially one with an extra toe. As it turns out our coop setup works really well for three broody hens so we decided to keep Momma, Rosetta and our favorite chick Cupcake and get rid of Goldie a.k.a. Punk, Mo and Bo as a set. So I listed them on Craigslist and sure enough, I was able to sell them. With one catch ... I had to drive again!
To make it worth the gas money to get there I was given two laying barred rock hens. Hanna and her daughter Susu. "Are they friendly?" I asked the young man? "Yes." He replied. "Okay, as long as they are friendly." I said. (I was still a little afraid of such a large bird.) My daughter is not. What a brave little 9 year old. Even when she was helping to exchange the chickens and Goldie pecked at her she wasn't afraid. "She is not a nice bird!" I made sure he knew. So now we had five chickens, but at least we did not have any roosters. Everyone was getting along just fine. Momma had hatched out three duck babies. Rosetta had hatched out 10 quail babies. And my daughter and I were satisfied with chicken snuggles from Cupcake every time we'd go out.
We took Rosetta's quail chicks away and sure enough she was broody again in no time! It was early fall and Susu started to hang out with Rosetta quite a bit during the day. I am a novice so I thought she was acting odd, but I thought maybe she was just going broody too. Then I noticed her comb was not very bright. I started to worry. You can't really see the silkie's combs so I hadn't really thought to check them as a a sign of health. Susu's was quite dull compared to her mothers. A day or two later she was gone. Inside the coop, close to Rosetta on her empty nest. Our daughter cried. "What if it happens to Cupcake?" she said. "It won't happen to Cupcake. Susu was sick." we reassured her. The next day my daughter said to me, "I promise, I won't cry about Susu again because I still have Cupcake." She went out to feed them and came in yelling "Mom one of the silkies are dead!" So I came running out, and sure enough, it was Cupcake. We both cried and cried that day. Who knew I would get so attached ... to a chicken. We will never forget Cupcake. We are planning on hatching more silkie eggs in the spring with hopes of replacing our beloved chicken.
Cupcake
Cupcake sitting at my feet, waiting to be cuddled.
Comments