41 CommentsShare: |
Subscribe
Annabelle may think she’s a dog, but even I don’t know what’s going on in the chicken house.
The banty hen is sitting on three eggs.
You’d think that was almost not even worth the trouble, but she has been wanting to sit on a nest since she was big enough to fly up into the nesting boxes. I had three banty eggs in the incubator this spring and not one banty egg hatched, so I don’t have high hopes for her nest.
She will sit on it to the death, though. It’s been almost three weeks, so I’ll know soon if she is doing anything productive or just living out her fantasies.
Meanwhile, something did hatch in the chicken house–wild baby birds!!
There are three baby birds in one of the nesting boxes. My question? How are they getting out of there? I hope mama bird can figure out how to lead the way when they fledge.
What I do know? I’m not feeding them!
Meanwhile, back in the chicken yard, I kept looking and looking at this one little chick from the bunch I hatched out of the incubator. It just didn’t look right. Something was weird…..
Do you see what I see?
Do you see that tuft on the top of its head?
Do you see its nearly naked neck?
The eggs I hatched out of the incubator came from my original chickens, which came from the nearby chicken farm. They keep a grand mix of chicken breeds over there. They order every year from Murray McMurray, playing around with different breeds. They also let them intermingle and hatch out mixes. So, the chickens I got from them are a mix, and an unknown mix at that. They do have some Turkens (Naked Necks) over there, but none of my chickens turned out to be Naked Necks (and I wasn’t particularly wanting any, either).
But in the next generation, hatching out their eggs, the genes rose to the top and I got one.
It’s a mix, of course, not a full Turken, but it’s definitely got some Turken in it.
Turkens are a bit of a novelty chicken. This is what they look like full-grown. (See the odd chicken in the middle of the photo below?) They come in assorted colors.
I regret to announce that Stringtown Rising Farm is no longer 100 percent cute. We now sport a hideous novelty.
We have a Naked Necker!
