New Chickens!!

Colin was out in the barn this morning, walking by the chicken pen.  He stopped because he heard a ‘funny’ sound.  Upon investigating this is what he found:
This is one of the ladies in the maternity ward.  We think the chick is a Chantecler.  It’s hard to say for sure since the Chantecler and the Banty Hens seem to be sitting on whatever eggs they feel like.  Now that the chickens are sitting we can go back to collecting the extra eggs.  Colin hasn’t been going into the coop for a while so he wouldn’t disturb the broody hens.   This hen is one of the Bantys.  We have 3-4 hens sitting on eggs.

This is Ralph.  He’s our Banty rooster.  We’ve had him for a couple years.  We used to let him run loose in the yard.  But when the first winter came, Colin couldn’t catch him and his mate Henrietta.  They were out in the cold for too long, Henrietta froze her feet and died.  We also found out that Bantys let go of their tails when in ‘danger’.  The first time Colin tried to catch them he came in the house with two beautiful tails.  Ralph sure looked funny with no tail.  We also discovered just how well Bantys can fly, they ended up in the top of the 10 ft cedars outside of the barn.

One of these days, I’m hoping Colin will have time to make an outside run for the chickens.  Their coop is along an outside wall, so it wouldn’t be too hard.