My new chicken flock

Here are my babies as of 4/9. First round of them I bought on 3/21 from a farmer on one end of town. From him, I bought 2 Dominiques, 2 Ameracaunas, and 2 Buff Orpingtons (supposedly). 1 of the yellow chicks died 2 days after arrival. The other, suspiciously began developing dark feathers. Then one week later I bought 2 marans (ostensibly blue marans) from a farmer on the other end of town. 1 ended up being a black copper maran. I sure hope the one blue ends up a girl. She's my favorite!

Today, I finally bought a coop. Really thought I'd have more time, but they're already really good at flying and clearly ready for a larger home. Made a temporary pen outside, and they ran around very very excited. I think they're ready for their new home (with a heat light of course).

Anyone know what the yellow chick with dark feathers is?

Here's a picture of them when I first got them

Chickens for the urban backyard flock

I'm a little torn. These are my top contenders all available from breeders near Birmingham except Araucana which I can't find anywhere.  Incidentally all the eggs from these birds are either brown or blue except the hamburg which is white. White egg birds are usually smaller (and eat less). Leghorns have the highest egg ratio for feed cost of any egg layer but they're flighty and not usually as friendly as these listed below

Heres a good chart comparison: http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/chooks/chooks.html

Blue Maran: has a really beautiful color and lays an unusual dark brown egg. Marans come in lots of colors but blue is my favorite and luckily there's breeder of just that color. They don't lay as many eggs as some of the others but if you tried to sell eggs, these would likely be popular. 

Buff Orpington: chunky little golden colored chicken that lays light brown pinkish looking eggs. Known for being friendly. 

Black Australorps: black obviously. Feathers get a pretty green irredescant color to them too. Broke records for most number of eggs (355 in a year or something).  Their eggs are pinkish brown.

Dominique: all the birds I've mentioned have been "heritage" breeds but this one has more heritage than most, I think. I see this chicken and think pilgrims. They're not as chunky and slightly more graceful than most the other chickens I've mentioned so far. Their eggs are a light brown but not pink. More of a yellowish brown.

Speckled hamburg: this little chicken is one of the prettiest but it's flighty too. That's good for free range birds that need to escape predators though. Their white eggs are small just like them. 

Amerecauna: they have cute feather puffs on their cheeks and lay blue eggs. Have had these before and they seemed super sweet, even the roosters 

Rhode Island Red:

That's the chicken in the back on the ameraucana picture. Their feathers are irredescant. Eggs are medium brown and they lay a lot! 

Deleware:

Fat white chicken with coloring under the wing

Aracaunas:

These are rumpless chickens with huge feather tuffs on their cheeks that lay blue eggs. They're really hard to find though in my parts. I've all but given up. They come in all colors

Duck vs Chicken for Egg Laying

Duck vs Chicken Egg

I've always loved chickens and ducks, even as a child. My neighbor had both and was kind enough to allow me to try and hatch an egg. It didn't pan out. We lost power and the eggy died. A few months later, mom and dad were kind enough to surprise me with 4 ducklings for Easter. I raised and released them never giving a thought to collecting their eggs for food (that's for chickens, right?....wrong!).  Funny thing is, the ducks I raised were actually bred for egg laying (the Khaki Cambell duck).

Duck vs Chicken Yolk

So what's the benefit of having a duck egg laying flock vs chicken egg laying? My first thought was surely chickens lay a lot more eggs, but nope, the some ducks bred for egg laying can produce just about as much.

Duck vs Chicken Egg Taste
Duck eggs tend to have a larger yolk and lower water content. Supposedly makes cakes and pastries fluffier. It's more difficult to make meringue with duck egg whites. The eggs tend to be firmer, in general, when cooked up. Duck eggs tend to be a fair bit larger (filling up the palm of your hand).

Duck vs Chicken Egg Shelf Life
Due to thicker shell, a duck egg has up to a 6 week shelf life vs ?? for a chicken egg.

Duck vs Chicken Egg Nutritional Difference

• duck eggs are alkaline, chicken eggs are acidic
• 6x the Vitamin D
• 2x the Vitamin A
• 2x the cholesterol
• 75% the Vitamin E
• Morere Vitamin K2
• higher in calories
• higher omega-3 fatty acids
• yolks are darker, yellower, indicating a higher nutrient density
• 100 gm of duck egg = 185 KCal of energy vs 149 KCal for chicken
• slightly  higher amounts of selenium, manganese, zinc, copper, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, calcium and iron
• slightly higher amount of thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, folate, vitamin B6, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and retinol.
• 100 gm of duck eggs = 3.68 gm of saturated fat vs 3.1 gm in chicken
• 50% higher monounsaturated fat
• slightly higher amino acids: threonine, isoleucine, trytophan, leucine, methionine, lysine, cystine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, valine, serine, glycine, proline, aspartic acid, histidine, alanine, and arginine. 
• 100 gm of duck eggs = 884 mg of cholesterol vs 425 mg in chicken

Good Duck Laying Breeds

• Indian Runners: Skiddish, quiet, small, don't fly, interesting upright posture, not a good meat bird, greenish white egg, don't need water to swim in 

  

  Indian Runner Duck

  
  

  

  Indian Runner Duck Bluish Green Eggs

  

  Indian Runner Ducks

  
  

  

  Indian Runner Ducklings

• Khaki Campbells: Pretty, highest egg production of any duck or chicken breed 

  

  Khaki Cambell Ducks

  
  

  

  Khaki Cambell Ducklings

• Pekin: ideal meat bird that's also pretty good egg layer 

  

  Pekin Duckling

  
  

  

  Pekin Duck

• Black Cayuga: Pretty beetle green bird lays an interesting black egg (100-150 eggs per year)

  

  Black Cayuga Duck Egg

  
  

  

  Black Cayuga Duck

  

  Black Cayuga Duckling

Spinach Baked Egg Galette

Me = not an egg lover. Hubby = very much the egg lover. This breakfast = perfect compromise. The whole family really loves this dish.

1 pie crust divided into 4 pieces. Fold up edges and shape into 6" discs. 
1/2 finely diced medium-sized onion
1 tsp diced garlic
spice: nutmeg, red pepper flakes, black pepper
feta
1 bag fresh spinach, chopped just a bit.

Saute onions, garlic, and spice first. Then add spinach and cheese. Scoup mixture into crust, make a little hole in the middle, and top with one raw egg and black pepper. Pop in 350F oven for 15-30 minutes until egg is white and crust starts to brown.

Optionally: use ham, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, etc…

Note to self: Next time, I think I'll cook everything except the egg first, until the crust looks almost done, then add the raw egg and cook 5 more minutes (I like my yolk runny!).

Eggs and Avocado Toast

My husband adores eggs. He wants them with every meal. I on the other hand am a once a month egg sorta gal. In an effort to please though, I've been trying to come up with clever, tastey egg meals that even I can enjoy more than once a month. Pretty simple too. Next time I"ll try it with an english muffin and a little fresh cilantro.

More About The Baby Chicks

Found out the 2 new babies we brought home from Ed's Pet World were 3 weeks old and came from a teacher who had hatched several chicks for a classroom project. Explains why the babies seem so traumatized. We still can't seem to make them as friendly as the original 4, although I think if I feed the black fiesty one enough worms, he may warm up to me a bit. He's always best friends with me for about three minutes after worm time. For the record, feeding baby chicks worms, is about the cutest thing I've ever seen. One will grab it, start peeping in this weird way, and running as fast as possible in circles around the brood with his prize. All the other babies will start chasing the one with the worm. Life's simple pleasures.

The original 4 are now 14 days old while the 2 new ones (and smaller ones, strangely enough) are 25 days old.

Peepers (the one using only one leg) is still , eh hem, only using one leg, but using it much better! She's starting to flap her wings a little bit (the others started flapping well over a week ago and some are almost flying outright). Once she gets good use of her wings, she'll probably be in much better shape with just her one leg. The joint isn't swollen anymore, mostly b/c she's just so good at using the one leg that she doesn't lean/limp on the other one anymore. Definitely starting to look like she'll never use that leg, but she seems happy. She's still very small compared to the one's she hatched with, but she's about the same size as the new black one (Beej). They're buddies, it seems. They snuggle. It's soo sweet. She was the loner before now.

Since the babies are getting pretty big, and I still don't have their coop ready, I've been leaving the door open to their brood (the large dog carrier w/ a light) so they can run out for a few minutes a day. At first, none of them ever left the brood even if I left the door open. I started to think, I could have stuck a lamp on a mat, and that would have worked fine for these babies. Eventually all of them, except Peepers started venturing out a bit though. But today, Peepers came out.

I keep trying to take each one outside (outside, outside) to explore, individually, but they mostly just seem scared, uninterested,.... and scared. Maybe they need to all go out together to stay brave, but I'm too scared for that :). We have a viscous cat in the neighborhood. Pebbles was out today when Normal (the cat) came creeping up. Usually Pebbles isn't afraid of me, but when I saw Normal and immediately threw my hands out to scoop up Pebbles, of course, Pebbles starting screeching and fleeing me (towards Normal of course). That was a little scary. Lesson learned: Don't act afraid around a chicken unless you want the chicken to be afraid too. They pick up on those things.

New Baby Chicks

For some reason, raising chickens has always been something I've dreamed about, but since I lived in the city, I thought it wasn't possible. Now at the ripe old age of 29 (still living in the city), I purchased 4 perfect babies. Did a good bit of research and discovered chickens are legal in the city (most at least) and decided on two breeds: Amerecauna's and Rhode Island Red's. Amerecauna's lay blue and green eggs and the birds come in all sorts of color patterns and sizes, but they usually have these cute little beards (fuzzy cheeks). Rhode Island Reds lay plenty of brown eggs and their featers are reddish/brown (very pretty). Both breeds are known to have good personalities.

When we purchased the chicks, they had just hatched. Matter-oh-fact, they were still wet. The farmer had eggs in an incubator hatching, so you could watch, wait, and carry home if you wanted (very cool). This was at the Chicken & Egg Festival in Moulton, Alabama. The chicks had a two hour ride ahead of them. It became clear, right away, how much they wanted to be warm. So each of us held one in our laps on the way home. They seemed to like that very much. They're pretty easy to read, really. They peep very loudly when they're unhappy sort of like realy babies (substitute peeping for crying).

Once we were home, they didn't seem to understand food and water just yet, so we dipped their beaks in water a few and finally it clicked. They've been eating, drinking, and pooping non-stop ever since. Truly it's amazing how much such small chicks can eat. At one day old, they were already eating a full handful of food/day.

After more time went by, it became pretty clear one of the baby chiks was having a trouble walking. She peeped a lot more than the others (thus her name, Peepers). She didn't eat as much as the others either and eventually became too weak to move aruond. So we started hand feeding / watering her, and she slowly regained her energy. At age 11 days, she still isn't using her leg (and now the joint is swollen, it seems from leaning on it and jumping around), but she does ok on one foot and eats plenty now. She's still much smaller than the others and seems to be at the bottom of the totum pole and always seems to need more rest than the others (more work hopping on one foot), but I think she'll be OK. Checked back with the Chick Farmer and he said sometimes this happens and that chickens can end up living with the use of only one leg. We'll see. She'll always be in a small group.

Anyhow, we were at Ed's Pet World in Homewood (Suburbia Homewood) and they had two baby chicks they were trying to give away. They seemed about the same size as our 4 10-day old baby chicks, so Mark brought them home. Well these two new chicks, I'm pretty sure, weren't doted on non-stop the way our 4 were, and boy do they not like us very much. We've only had them for 1 full day now, but they still peep ALL the time. Our other chicks only seem to peep loudly when they are unhappy, so I can only assume that these new baby chicks are unhappy. It was kind of funny, b/c when we first introduced the 2 new chicks, our seemingly senior chick, Ruby, went nuts! She chased and chased the two new ones around the brood. Figured they were too young for the pecking order, but apparently not. They don't really peck so much, but they certainly make it known whose boss when it's feeding time.

Now to get a coop built! Anyhow, I'll post more in the near future. That's all for now.