We've had life and death since last I wrote: Jazzy died. However Mojo still seems to be doing well. Carolina's milk dried up due to a mastitis infection, and for some time I was dividing my time between sleep and four hour feedings. We're past the worst of it.
The newest babies have hatched and are doing well, although we had one little girl with spraddle leg. A splint seems to have helped. She was a "peel" baby... something many people recommend against. However, she had pipped successfully, but I could see her position was wrong to be able to make it out on her own, and I chose to help. Poor little thing.
Hatching is tiring in any event.
The other chicken babies--not so young, now, perhaps--are doing well in their coop. They have caused my daughter to roll off her chair laughing as they fly to my back or the top of my head to see if there's anything interesting up there. Occasionally Fanny, always the troublemaker, will launch herself into flight and break out of her enclosure. For now, it's more of a temporary playpen until we get the electric fence hooked up.
She takes off like a rocket for no apparent reason, clearing the two-foot chicken wire and then skimming the ground in wild flight toward the apple trees for 20 or 30 good feet. Finally she comes to a halt, and--distressed to find herself so far from her companions--comes screaming back, panicked, until she can find a way back inside.
I can't say that I am fond of Wyandottes if she is a typical specimen. Bossy, noisy, willful, always picking on the other two... how much more pleasant are Jean-Jacques and Marguerite! In my darker moments, I can smell the curry...
Perhaps she senses it here. She looks a bit cowed. Really, though, I won't have a creature terrorizing my flock, be it coon, 'possum or diva.
They won't all fit in the bath, though they do try.
You see Fanny here getting ready to drive out Jean-Jacques. She drew blood. He's the rooster, for goodness sake--you'd think he'd be a bit more inclined to defend his territory, but Faverolles are simply not fighters. They're genteel. Driven out, he mutters astounded at her gall, but nothing else, really. He thinks of her as a mannerless ninny, I should guess. Marguerite, timid though she is, does try to stand beside him when Fanny is at her worst, and Fanny usually backs down, then, because Marguerite is so much larger... though I don't think marguerite has the least idea of what to do should push come to shove. In fact, Fanny is always stealing her food, and would much rather steal a goody from Marguerite than come to The Hand and get a fresh bit of her own. Poor Marguerite. She's always so bereft. It's especially sad, too, I think, because Marguerite is the one with the quickest eye, most likely to catch a tasty bug or grub to begin with... while Fanny simply waits for Marguerite to find something to steal. How I love curry.
Beautiful Marguerite:
A pleading look:
I will have to get some more Marans from MX Farms. Marguerite has such a wonderful temperament. I hope she'll lay well, too. I'm hoping to have eggs by August or September. And I have hatched new plans, as well. For more chickens... naturally. It seems to me that our Cellar house would make a wonderful chicken coop. At 12' x 20', I could probably house 6o chickens in it (although I think I'd want 20 or 25 layers at the most. But the flexibility would give me the opportunity to raise out extra chickens and choose my favorites. Here is the cellar house. What do you think?
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