Gratituous pet chicken blogging: Look at these eggs!
By Gina Spadafori
April 28, 2008
I’ve had pet chickens for a three days now, picking up three young hens on Saturday and three more on Sunday. The girls are all getting along, and all roosted together last night — cramming by choice into one big feathered blob into four cat carriers! The chicken coop and yard won’t be done for a couple of days. Right now everyone is in Clara’s Secret Garden, except Clara, who doesn’t really care for birds as big as she is.
Yesterday, three brown eggs. Just now … one of the Aruacunas produced green egg so lovely I’d paint my bedroom this color. Plus two more browns. Can you believe this? Eggs, fresh and beautiful, from my lively little flock: Agatha (a Delaware), Beatrice (a Rhode Island Red), Charlotte (a Barred Plymouth Rock) and the South American girls, Paloma, Isabella and Viviana (the Aruacunas).
The hens are all friendly and well-socialized, especially the Aruacunas. They’re all so beautiful and fun to watch, and the dogs have taken seriously my request to leave them alone, showing little interest from the other side of the fence. And Velocity The Rabbit seems to be enjoying the extra company while Clara refuses to visit her invaded space.
Boy, those must be happy hens, to be producing such lovely eggs so quickly! I may have to get some chickens just to have gorgeous eggs like yours for still life paintings. More hen pics, pleeease.
Comment by Susan Fox — April 28, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
Oooooh…I am so envious!
Comment by Nadine L. — April 28, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
Wow!
Comment by Marcy — April 28, 2008 @ 9:42 pm
That is a stunning shade of green!
Comment by Alex — April 29, 2008 @ 5:16 am
You make me wish I could have chickens. I have no idea if zoning law would even allow such a thing.
Comment by Georg — April 29, 2008 @ 6:20 am
In many cities, you can have a couple or even a handful of hens. (Roosters are a problem because of the noise.)
Here’s a list of ordinances in many cities:
http://home.centurytel.net/the.....nlaws.html
Really, a small, well-cared for handful of hens shouldn’t be a neighborhood problem in any way, if the chicken area is kept up to keep flies from being a problem. For one thing, chickens are quiet at night! (And even by day, they mostly just chuckle and cluck quietly among themselves, with an occasional outraged outburst over heaven knows what.)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 29, 2008 @ 6:37 am
Real eggs…so that’s what they look like!
So what are you going to do with all those eggs?
On an unrelated note - I recall you had a post on the Thankgiving family meltdown over your pets. Dare I ask what Mama is saying about the chickens?
Comment by 2CatMom — April 29, 2008 @ 8:17 am
My mother has given up and now thinks I am simply certifiable.
Hard to argue that, no?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 29, 2008 @ 8:39 am
I have such a case of chicken envy! I decided to wait on the chickens and work on the kitchen garden this spring. I’m building boxed beds and cold frames for year-round gardening and I need to build an official composter. By next spring, I’ll be ready to have 4-5 chickens and will have a great place to compost the waste for my garden. Will you please post a picture of the coop and chicken run when they are finished? I’m still researching coop designs.
Comment by C.L.H. — April 29, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
At our senior’s get-together today we had a woman come in with her chickens. She brought 4 of 10. A bantam, pult, aruacuanas and Polish hen. The aruacuanas was beautiful. I got a couple of her loose feathers. The hens are family pets as well as egg suppliers. She said her kids carry them around all the time and one who had a deformed foot from an injury has gone snow-boarding, swimming and several other activities with the kids.
Comment by VJ — April 29, 2008 @ 4:46 pm
Gina-how are your chickens doing now that its July ?
I am a new chicken owner ( 2months) and I love it ! I talk to my chickens and they follow me all around. I love to sit and watch them. I have 9. 7 can lay and 2 are pullets, but they should start laying soon. I have been running into some problems. I am only getting 5 eggs a day, and someone is breaking an agg about twice a week. and the shell is in tiny pieces. I am afraid they are eating them. I let them out early this morning hoping that will put a stop to that. I don’t let them out til after noon when I get all my eggs. so, this is a test. I never thought I would like them. I wanted fresh eggs. My friends laugh at me cuz I tell them the antics of them.
Comment by DJD — July 17, 2008 @ 6:17 am
Comment by DJD — July 17, 2008 @ 6:17 am
“I have 9. 7 can lay and 2 are pullets”
You have 9.7 chickens?!
Sorry - I work in a lab and this just struck my funny bone (kind of like the statistics about families with “2.3 children” and so on!)
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 17, 2008 @ 6:31 am