{napoleon, the big boss, a bantam brahma rooster}
{not jack - fergus (with a heavy scottish accent) - our bantam rooster, napoleon (again) and gloria - our buff brahma hen}
{dust bath and nap time. ducky, our white americauna is in the background. left to right are mopsy - a bantam brahma, merida - our reddish americauna with her wing on sandy - a production red, and big mama - another production red. in the foreground is elanor - our brown and black americauna}
{mopsy and flopsy - our two bantam brahma hens. brahmas have feathery feet. bantams are short. these girls look like two dust mops brushing along. they lay tiny, sweet little eggs.}
{rose - one of our black stars}
{is that spot? or is that dot? one of our two barred rocks}
the winter wasn't easy on our chickens, but it wasn't too hard on our little flock. after this post, jack went back out to rejoin the ladies, but he never walked quite the same. then we had another stretch of really cold weather. the heat lamps stayed plugged in, but jack was already so weak . . . isaac brought him in again. we set up the box again. but by late afternoon that day, we could see that one of jack's legs was totally black and, well, dead.
so, we talked about not keeping an animal who is in pain or who is very crippled. a one-legged rooster . . . not so good. isaac decided that he wanted to be the one to do the deed. he took jack out back and carefully took care of everything. i was at work, but ben told me that isaac had come in very somberly and said that he knew that was best, but he never thought he'd have to shoot his brother. jack was the only other "boy" around here. the next day ben told isaac to "take good care of the girls while i'm gone." isaac replied, "yeah. that's a really big job now. i have mom and maddie and zoe (our chocolate lab) and all the chicken ladies, too."
about a month ago, we all started counting our chickens - over and over. we all felt like one of the black chickens (we had seven of them) was missing. and finally maddie confirmed that we were down to six. then ben found a pile of black feathers in the woods.
the final casualty was a balck austerlorp we had all taken to calling "pest". she was the biggest chicken we had, and she kept picking on the other chickens - rather mercilessly. then we discovered that she was also eating eggs. she'd break a hole in a shell and eat out the entire inside of the egg. so, isaac and i took her down to the river. her carcase floated away down the river while we walked back up to the house.
so, in our first winter as chicken owners, out of 19 birds, we lost 3, especially since only one loss was due to the crazy weather. i think that's pretty good.
our other ladies weathered the winter quite well. gloria got a little stressed, and as the winter hung on through april, she started plucking her own feathers and quit laying eggs. now that the sun is shining and she is outside almost all day, every day, she is growing her feathers back and laying some eggs again.
the production reds (6 of them) looked like they had been roughed up a bit - some scraggly feathers here and there, but they kept laying. the black stars held their own quite well. and the americaunas and barred rocks wintered extremely well, staying beautiful and healthy and laying eggs almost every day.
this spring ben decided we should get a new rooster, so he got to looking on craig's list. he found the two bantam roosters and two bantam hens. we decided to take our date night (i told you i'm a crazy chicken lady!) to go purchase them ($10 for all four). as ben was talking to the owner about our chickens and how we keep them, she asked if we would be interested in two americaunas as well. yes, we were. so, merida and elanor came home with us, too.
when we first added the new six, all the chickens were pretty wild for the first two days. and there wasn't a whole lot of egg-laying going on. but now they are settling in. everybody is more calm. eggs are coming. and our chicken run and yard are quite colorful and happy.