Our New Hens

Well, last Sunday my sister and husband took the kids to exchange their roosters while I was working. The kids [and my sister and my husband!] all had a blast. They picked 3 new hens.

Here is Monkey3 with her hen, "Midnight", who is a black australorp. She doesn't look very pretty in this picture, but in real life she's very shiny black with purple and green highlights - very lovely bird!



Here is Monkey4 with her hen, "Orange" [or maybe Yellow, Ducky, or Purple, it keeps changing LOL!]. This hen is actually a "rescue" hen from a factory farm. She is half white Leghorn and half Rhode Island Red I believe.... she spent the first 9 months in a 12in by 12in cage laying eggs furiously. For the past 3 months she's lived with our farmer friend. [They usually kill the hens at 9 months when they pass peak laying time, but they allowed him to adopt her instead of killing her]. She is a very sweet, very friendly chicken and a very good layer. I was surprised how sweet she is - you'd think she'd be mean having to live like that, but she's really people friendly. Like she's so grateful to be out of the cage she just adores you! She's about a year old so this will probably be her last year laying much.



Here is Monkey2, "The Boy", with his chicken. He fell in love with this little bantam chicken named "Little Mama" [she came with the name but he liked it and kept it]. She's kind of a strange looking little bird [she is full grown - this is as big as she will get], but she's friendly and fun to watch. He *adores* her. She lays tiny little eggs!



Of course, none of the hens are laying now. We have some sort of problem, because all 3 of the new hens have been laying fine at the farm, and now they aren't laying for us. We expected a few days of not laying since they had the stress of the move, but now its almost a week later...somebody should have laid an egg by now!

We think we may have one of two problems - not enough light in the hen house, or else our crazy lab mix dog is stressing the hens out because he is constantly at the hen house looking for a way in to get another chicken... the rascal. We are looking in to fencing or something to keep him away from the hens... wish us luck.

We are enjoying the chickens like crazy, but truly - I'd love to have AN EGG after all this work LOL!