Tag: poultry

Raising heritage chicken breeds

 

Prior to our Great Chicken Adventure, I was utterly unaware of the wealth of heritage breeds out there, with their variations of size, shape, color, plumage, temper, and various characteristics. A chicken is a chicken, I figured; any will cluck and lay                   eggs – so why invest in heritage breeds?

Read more in my latest Mother Earth News post:

“Unlike hybrids, pure-bred heritage chickens breed true. If you start with a flock of, say, Wyandottes, a few years down the road you will still have a flock of Wyandottes, with largely the same qualities of egg production, growth rates, adaptation to climate, and appearance (though you can improve your flock by hatching eggs from your finest, best-looking, hardiest specimens). With mutt chickens, you can always expect surprises.”

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More peafowl

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Though I didn’t mention this in my previous post about Little Pea (mainly because I didn’t really believe anything would come out of it), on the occasion we found him (or her), we also came across an unattended nest. Since it was dark, and the eggs were cold, I didn’t think they were viable, but a quick candling with our phone flashlight revealed chicks in advanced stages of development, and some feeble movement. After a brief inner struggle,  we decided to take them home and place them in the incubator.

To my surprise, the eggs continued to develop, and yesterday all five of them hatched – even one which had a hairline crack that I repaired with nail polish. The peachicks are now in a brooder hastily made out of an old cardboard box and a heating lamp.

So, all in all, we now have six young peafowl on our hands. When the babies grow up a bit, we hope to be able to move them together with Little Pea.

We don’t know yet where we are going with this unexpected adventure, but we sure are excited about it!

Little Pea

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A few days ago, we visited a beautiful campus which is one of our favorite spots; there are many magnificent peacocks roaming wild across the lawns, and as this is chick season, we were able to see adorable little peas trailing after their mothers.

At twilight, just as the peacocks were flying up trees to roost, this little one fell off and was nearly eaten by a stray cat at once. We saved it and, as it was in shock, decided to bring it home.

We have never raised peafowl before, but we were prepared for a flighty bird; Little Pea, however, wasn’t eating and looked distressed. We thought a companion might help; we had some chicks which could possibly do, but they were considerably smaller than Pea, so we had our misgivings. Still, we decided to give it a try, and almost as soon as we introduced two chicks to its cage, Little Pea became more relaxed and started eating. I’m gradually winning him over by feeding him treats, such as hard-boiled eggs and grapes, out of my hand.

Little Pea is very quiet around us, but vocalizes around his little companions. It sounds like a soft whistle.

Oh, and we have no idea whether this is a boy or a girl. If anyone can tell from the picture, please drop me a line!

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New addition to our poultry yard

guinea

My husband found this lone guinea languishing in a tiny little cage in a pet store and decided to rescue it and bring it home. I was never particularly interested in guineas and don’t know much about them (can’t even tell for sure if the one we have is a male or a female), but I was taken with this bird’s quirky appearance and how easygoing it is around the chickens – to be honest I expected something like a blood feud in the coop, but to my surprise the guinea fitted right in, eating and drinking with the flock and squeezing in between the chickens when the time comes to roost for the night.

Now I’m hooked and would like to get a couple more of these funny birds as soon as we have the chance. As a bonus, I found out that guineas are actually kosher and there is a tradition of eating them in some Jewish communities (we don’t bother raising birds for meat, but we might eat the eggs).

The only downside is the racket it tends to make, but on the other hand it helped us spot a sneaky fox a couple of days ago! Luckily, we don’t have neighbors near enough to be bothered.

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