Today I am going to talk about chickens, the first animal we ever bought for our little hobby farm. We have had all sorts of different types of chickens, buff orpingtons, black australorps, and rhode island reds are the tree main types but we also had a few random chickens we acquired in one way or another. Recently we got 13 more chickens, which was 13 more than we were planning to get. We knew we were going to get three chickens from a family friend that didn’t want them, so me and my mom drove to our closest TSC. We went straight to the chicks and looked at all the kinds they had. They also had baby turkeys which look surprisingly like slightly bigger chicks. We ended up getting six isa browns. We chose these because they are supposed to be able to lay up to 350 eggs a year. Then we after we left we realized we forgot to get cat food so we went to Runnings. When we got there I instantly went to the poultry section to see if they had any cool breeds of chickens, and they did. They had Easter egger chicks, which can lay blue eggs when they get older. The eggs you buy in a store are white most of the time. Chickens like white leghorns lay white eggs. You have also probably seen brown eggs, which is what all of our chickens up until this point have layed. Now we have chickens that will lay blue eggs. There are actually a few different breeds that lay blue eggs, Easter eggers, Ameraucana, and Araucana. There are a few differences between these breeds. The Ameraucana and Araucana are both pure breeds and an Easter egger is a mix of a Ameraucana and a another breed, normally one that lays brown eggs. Our Easter egger chicks are a cream color with some brown stripes on it’s back, but ate the store there were also ones that were a charcoal gray. So now we have talked about chickens that lay white, brown, and blue eggs, but did you know that there is a breed called Olive Eggers that lay green eggs. Or maybe you want speckled eggs, then you should get Welsummers. Actual chickens themselves can be weird colors too. Ayam Cemani for example, these chickens are completely black. Their feathers, legs, bones, and even their meat is black. These chickens are like this because of a dominant gene that causes fibromelanosis, or hyper pigmentation. Chickens can also be extremely fluffy like silky chickens. These chickens are fluffy because there feathers don’t have barbicels. Which according to Oxford Languages are, “any of the minute hooked filaments that interlock the barbules of a bird’s feathers.” That is all I’m going to write about chickens today but I will keep you updated on the chicks this month.
Chickens
