The Chicks

Here's today's picture of the chickens. On the left is Dougal, the champion, but idiot chicken. On the right is Gandalf, the fluffiest chicken on earth, relaxing on the food container. In the background is Matilda.

Below is the first picture i took, where Clancy jumped in at the last second, scaring the daylights out of me. 

The Wizards!

Meet Gandald the White. She is a 5 week old silkie chick. These birds are awesomely cute. They are not fantastic layers, but are totally adorable enough to make up for it. They are littler than other birds, and stay really fluffy all their lives. They even have a big afro of feathers on their heads when fully grown. Gas!

And this is Merlin. She is a silkie too but is a mix of black, grey and ginger. These two girls are the smallest of our chickens by far.

This is Dumbledore. She is an araucana chick. Also 5 weeks old. Araucana's aren't the best looking birds, but they are good layers, and they lay a turquoise coloured egg - cool! Dumbledore is the tamest of our new chicks and is quite happy for us to pick her up, unlike the other who scatter whenever we get near.

And last but not least, this is Zabulon (the lead vampire wizard of the forces of darkness in the Night Watch series). She hates being picked up the most. She is also losing her feathers at the moment so looks a bit rough. I think it's because she's starting to get her adult feathers.

So these are the wizards, and they join the ranks of our priests, Ted Jack and Dougal. We are keeping them separate at the moment. The chicks have the cage, and the biggers birds have the garden. The newcomers are too small to mix yet, as chickens fights pretty brutally whenever a new chicken is introduced. We are hoping to keep them separate for a few weeks until the chicks get bigger and can handle a bit of pecking from the others.

Buff Orpingtons

 This is what our hens will look like when they are fully grown. Isn't she magnificent? Ours are still teenagers and may end up to be roosters, eek. They are getting braver these days and now follow us around the place. Our neighbour Bill built us a fence last weekend so now we can leave the hens have the run of the garden. They love it. But the first thing they did was to eat all my vegetables. Lesson learned.

Look how great they are when they are chicks though, awwwwwwwwwwww.

Chickens!

We finally got chickens! I've really wanted them for ages, and Hugh started coming around to the idea when we saw some Buff Opringtons in a petting zoo in Wales last year. They are lovely birds, very big and pretty cool looking.

Hugh and Deborah from john Septimus Roe went and collected 3 of them last Thursday. At 14 weeks old they are still teenagers, and it will be a few months before they start laying. They are living in the aviary cage in our back yard. They are seriously scared of us though and run away whenever we get near. Laura says that giving them tasty treats is the key to winning them over, so we'll have a go off giving them watermelon this evening.