Three Headed Chicken
Not really a chicken with three heads. But three chicken heads popping up out of the feeder they play around inside. I caught a fourth hen on the roost, looking down into the pileup like she wanted to jump in and add to the fun.
Two Rhode Island Reds, one Cuckoo Maran and one Buff Orpington (which you see on the bottom here) will make their daily egg deposit in the feeder, preferably when it's full and soft and cushy. They must need the privacy. I know how they feel.
The ladies are up to about 15-20 eggs per day, except when it rains and they decide to be mad about the weather. The Buff eggs are almost a mauve color, brown with a tinge of pink. So pretty next to the medium brown of the Red's eggs. Then the jumbo sized chocolate brown egg from the Cuckoo. I love that egg.
The new little ladies are growing up quickly and if I'm counting correctly, we are about 6 or 7 weeks away from seeing the first of their eggs. I have either three or four Cuckoo roosters in this pen of new pullets (one bird is having an identity crisis and I can't tell which way it's going to go!) I'm very interested in sequestering the mature Cuckoo hens with one of these roosters later this summer, to see if they'll go broody and hatch our first on-farm chicklets. Free chickens. That would be an improvement!
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