Feathered Friend Introductions ~ Chickens

Good Wednesday Morning! The weather man says it's supposed to be a beautiful day today here in the great state of West Virginia! Can't wait to see what the day brings here at the farm.
Today I'm planning on working in the garden and getting my garden post ready to publish for you!
It's the last day for introductions (yay!). You will finally get to meet the chickens and ducks on this special day.
First is the chickens!
 
As I mentioned in my introduction, we got our first chicks over a year ago, around Easter time. The dream of having 1 chick was quickly crushed as the Tractor Supply worker told us we had to get a minimum of 6. I definitely have no regrets on buying those first 6 chicks. They have started a wonderful thing here that keeps me busy.
Now, we have a huge variety of chickens, each with their own personalities.
Again, we have around 50 chickens all together.  

We have three full grown roosters on the farm. All of them are good at their job and have made chicks!



 

This is Chirp, one from our first batch

of chicks. He's a bantam rooster,

 and he thinks he's the boss of everyone.

 He has happily made one chick!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Tighty Whitey or Whitey Tighty, whichever you want to say, is a great rooster. He's made 9 chicks!

 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whitey+tightys is exactly why I didn't call him Whitey Tighty...Dan did!

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



This is the newest to our flock, Nugget the Rooster.

We got him the same day we got the black rabbits (Thanks Grandma!).

He's a beautiful Polish chicken, who's supposed to have a full head of feathers

 like the Polish chicken below, but he got too close to the heat lamp and it burnt the feathers

right off his head. That's okay though because we normally have to pluck the feathers from around their faces so that they can see.

 

 

 

This is our other Polish chicken, Mazy. She was supposed to be my sister's chicken, but I don't see her out there taking care of her, so I claim her. As you can see, she can't see. Like I was saying before, we normally have to remove the feathers from around their eyes so that they are able to see. You often see her running into things and acting clueless. It's kind of comical, but I start to feel bad when she gets to that point.

She lays an egg every-so-often, and it's normally in the nesting boxes! (Some of our chickens decide there are better places to lay their eggs.) What a unique chicken!

She is from our second batch of chicks.

 

 

 

This is our Easter Egger, Owl. Like Chirp, she is from our first batch of chicks. When she started laying eggs, I was amazed to find a light blue egg in the box! Now she lays 2-3 eggs a day and they are beautiful!

 

 



 

This is one of our Barred Rock hens (there was another one identical to this one). We recently got the pair, Zebra 1 and Zebra 2, and they have been a great part of our flock ever since!

 
 

 

This is Momma Hen and her 10 babies. After hatching her chicks without us knowing, we relocated her and the chicks to a new pen in the chicken coop for safety and shelter. They are all doing well, including Momma. They are around 2 weeks old now and they are starting to get some
feathers. Momma is very protective of her little ones, which is a good thing. For her first time going broody, she did fantastic! It was SO NICE not having to take care of them myself. The brown one in the bottom left-hand corner is Chirp's baby and the rest are Tighty Whitey's.
How cute!

 
 

 

These are just some of the Meat Chickens we raised this Summer. Talk about MEAN!

 

 

 

This is our Turken... Yes a Turken...No, not a turkey chicken mix. I thought that too at first, but after doing a little research, I learned that it's just a breed of chicken!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Neck  -here's proof.

Her name is Chip, and the little black chicken in the background of the Barred Rock picture in Dip.

We named them "Chip and Dip" because they are always together - Thanks Dan.!

 

I will just go ahead and show you 1 of our 6 Guineas. We just got them about 2 weeks ago, along with Nugget and the rabbits. I haven't really got to spend a bunch of time with them, so all I know is- they are sneaky and they like to fly. We have them in a pen connected to the Momma's pen. They can squeeze through the chicken wire and create a hectic mess with the Mommy Hen.
One has even escaped from the chicken coop itself! I was pretty impressed with it's work, even though I was worked up over it getting out. Luckily, We caught it and returned it to it's home. Now we take even more precaution when opening and closing the chicken coop.
(That's Dan in the picture :) )

 
 
Those were only a few of my many chickens here on the farm. I'm sure you will meet the rest in later posts.
Look forward to seeing all the duckies! I will be posting their intros shortly!
Thanks so much for all the support!(: Stay tuned in for all the buzz.