Friday, February 15, 2013

My tub floweth over

This morning the girls and made the trip to Kiowa to pick up 4 chicks. 

It didn't work out quite like that.

We picked up the 2 Welsummers,  layers of dark brown eggs to replace Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Cuckoo Marans)  I admit some hesitancy in this as they do have a reputation of being loud.  But they are also colorful and new to us.

Also on hold were 2 Iowa Blue chicks.  These I picked because I had never heard of them before. Their heritage is mostly unknown but the story is good.

The Iowa Blue was developed in the early 1900's near Decorah, Iowa.  A folk legend tells the story of a white Plymouth Rock hen emerging from under a building with a clutch of chicks colored solid chestnut to striped.  Old-timers tell the tale that the chicks were sired by a pheasant.  With its plucky attitude and proud carriage, the Iowa Blue is a dual-purpose homesteader chicken, known to be an excellent forager.  Hens will go broody, exhibiting good maternal characteristics.  Though very aware of their surroundings in a free-range situation, the breed is fairly docile and not particularly flighty.  (Quoted from the Iowa Blue Chicken Club)

They are also supposed to be a smaller hen, not quite a bantam, but with the 2 bantam cochin frizzle roosters . . .

Honestly that was all I was planning to pick up.  I do want a couple new Amerucanas to round out our color selection, but I was going to wait until the local feed store got theirs in.

Then Mesha saw this chick:

She announced (to the amusement of the people working) that she had 3 weeks of  allowance with her and she wanted her own chicks.


This one is a Silver Campine.  It is the most colorful chick I have ever seen.  Under its wings it is patterned similar to a Bengel cat.  She also picked out a black cochin.



Then Juju found the buff bantam silkies.  To be fair, last January she used her allowance to purchase chicks and I bought 2 for her sister.  Turnabout seemed fair.



Chris had mentioned he would like Brahma hen.  They happened to have them in the Elizabeth store so we stopped there on the way home.  We picked up 2 buff Brahmas, 2 black giants (not sure what makes them different that the Jersey giants but they were 50¢ cheaper) and 2 Golden comets.

With the 3 pullets we got earlier there are 17 chicks living in the guest room bathtub.

I do not plan to keep them all.  But I plan on losing some to cats, dog, or carelessness.  Others I will trade (in theory) for meat rabbits.  The rest will go to the poultry swap in June or July.

Yeah, that's the plan.

No comments:

Post a Comment