Our Birds

I thought I'd do a little show case on our current flock of birds.

This is Fabio, the head rooster in our flock. He is a Buff Orpington, and looks very distinctive from the other chickens. He is not aggressive, as some roosters tend to be, and is a little selfish. I've read that roosters are supposed to protect their little harem and cluck to his ladies when he finds food so they can run over and eat it. There's no clucking with this guy. If we put something on the ground in front of him, its gone quick. That could be the reason we rarely see him running around with a group of hens. Who wants a selfish jerk to run your harem?

Sergio is our other rooster. He does not stand out as much as Fabio in appearance, but is just different enough for us to be able to pick him out. He is also a buff orpington. As far as we can tell he's second in command. We haven't seen him running around with a harem either. He tries to blend in as just one of the hens.

Fabio recently started crowing quite often. I love that. The two sounds I think make a farm atmosphere are a cow's lowing and a rooster's crowing. It makes me smile.

These are the ducks currently. They are three weeks old and growing nicely. We originally purchased six, but two have died. That surprised us because everything we've read said that ducks are hardier than chickens. We now do not have enough ducks to cook for Thanksgiving and try one before hand. If we lose any more we'll have to buy a small turkey to have enough food. Oh well.

These are the meat chickens at 3 weeks old. Man they're ugly little things. They look like these crazy little mutant birds. Their legs and breasts are HUGE compared to our laying hens. Their feathers are also coming in which makes them pretty ugly looking.

Regina has pretty much said that if the quality of the meat is poor that she will be highly unmotivated to try meat chickens again. Fingers crossed. We'll find out in 5 weeks.

This is the chicken lady and her little chicken protoge feeding the girls. They mob her every evening. It's like on TV where those throngs of fans mob a celebrity.

And yes, that's a baby attached to her front. My wife does the farm chores with a baby attached to her. Hey, remember our tag line here: "A land overflowing with milk and honey"... and children.