We did finally manage to get a photo or two of the new girls - not at all flattering to any of them, but then they are still a bit grubby and tatty from their former lives, or in Spot's case, still growing.
Black is one of the fairly ubiquitous blackish with a gold head variety that you find round here and is a bit older than the other two - you can see this from her comb and beak. Once we got her home and had a good look at her, we could also see this from a bald patch on her tum where she is coming out from a moult. She seems to have lived in a shed, as she doesn't really know about scratching or greens, but she is enjoying dust baths a lot, which is good.
White is a Light Sussex, still quite immature (size and development of comb), but seems to be the one laying (second egg today). She is a good size and will get bigger but is also rather grubby - we hope she will shine a bit later in the year. White has got scratching sorted out, and is starting to be interested in greens - sort of!
Spot is probably a Marans, but we won't really know until she starts laying as the big hint of a Maran is the practically chocolate colour of the eggs they produce. She is definitely the youngest of the three and can get shoved out of the way when heading for food, but is also quite adventurous in her own way - she pecked one of the cats yesterday that shoved a paw through the wire.
More tales from the chicken run to follow......
And hot news is that another chicken is laying - we think it is Black. We have a small but perfectly formed chocolate brown egg, still warm from the chicken's bum (probably too much detail...).
Posted by: Jane | 14 March 2008 at 01:27 PM