Because it’s been too long since I posted about the chickens…

They’re about half grown. They’re eating a lot and pooping a lot. They’re roosting on their roosts. I can pretty much tell the girls from the boys, though they don’t stand still long enough for me to count how many I have of each. I’m pretty sure I have 10 to 12 males, though, which is perfect. Some of the males are developing really gorgeous iridescent dark green tail feathers. I’ll try to get some good pictures of that next time. 

For now, here’s a picture of three pullets perching on the perches:

(Pullets are females that haven’t started laying yet. When they start to lay, they become hens.)

And this is Thanksgiving Dinner:

 

You can’t tell very well from the photo, and I couldn’t get a better one, but he is developing the “wrong” kind of comb. Chanteclers have “pea” combs: very small combs that are just a little red bump on their foreheads, unlike the big, showy “fingered” combs that some breeds have. This is because the big showy combs are prone to getting frostbitten in cold weather. So one of the adaptations that Brother Wilfrid of Oka (who originally bread the Chantecler chickens) developed was the small comb that sits tight on their heads and therefore doesn’t freeze and fall off. 

This fellow is developing a fingered comb rather than a pea comb, and so in order to keep my flock “true” to the Chantecler breed, I don’t want a rooster with the genes for the wrong kind of comb fertilising any of the hens. So he’s one of the roosters destined for the cookpot, and I’ve started calling him Thanksgiving Dinner.