Divas

On June 12 the chicks that I excitedly ordered in February arrived. When I ordered them it was winter and our egg production had gone down because the old girls lay less in winter after their first year and the new girls were just ramping up. I was thinking that we needed to have some new girls this winter to ensure that we had eggs through the winter. Also there are so many different adorable breeds of chickens – I kind of just got excited and wanted to “collect them all!” Well, maybe not all, but I do like the eclectic look of our flock and I wanted to continue the diversity.

They seemed to have gotten misplaced at the post office and spent an extra night in transit but the box was peeping wildly so I was excited to pick up our chicks.

Here they are! Only one bird was DOA so given that I don’t know why it took an extra day I considered that a success.

 

We got:

• Buff Orpington – a hen and a rooster
• Partridge Plymouth Rock  – dead
• Golden Laced Wyandotte – hen
• Silver Cuckoo Marans – hen
• White Cochin – hen
• Black Silkie Bantam – hen

They brooded in the garage for about a month

and as they feathered out and started to look like their breeds they started to get names.

It all started with the white cochin who has feathered feet and looks like Elvis.  We thought about calling her “Elvis”, but since she’s a girl-bird we settled on  “Priscilla” instead. Then we decided to name the Buff Orpingon male/female pair “Sonny” and “Cher” and after that we started a theme and named the Golden Laced Wyandotte “Donna” (as in Summer), the Black Silkie Bantam “Tina” (both because she is small and because of Tina Turner), and finally the Silver Cucoo Marans “Nina” (Simone). Collectively we have started referring to our third generation of chickens as “The Divas”.

Today the Divas made the big move from the shed to the chicken sunroom: