A Very Fowl Update

It's been over a month for the chickens and almost a month for the guineas being released into the coop and run. They've taken to things pretty well. Though they stick with their own, they don't seem to mind each other as is evidenced by the current roosting arrangement.

Bigger chickens and "top" guineas sharing the top of the roost

You may have noticed that I said "bigger chickens" in the above caption. Well, another tie-in to my love of baseball involves a mid-season trade. Tomorrow (July 31) is the deadline for baseball teams to trade players for the remainder of the season. A couple of weeks ago we traded in a few chickens.

It seems that the lady who sold them to us wasn't as good at sexing them as she'd hoped. (Full disclaimer: She did say she wasn't 100% certain on how many roosters we might have gotten.) Out of 8 chickens (4 Orpingtons, 4 Easter Eggers), 6 of them were roosters. That's about 5 too many for that small of a flock. She'd previously agreed to switch out any roosters we wanted for hens.

Original Easter Eggers - Of the 4 pictured, only the bottom left chicken is a hen.

Original Lavender Orpingtons - Only the chicken on the right is a hen.

So we kept one Lavender rooster and switched out the remaining 5 roosters. When I arrived to meet her for the swap she told me she still wasn't sure if what she brought with her were all hens. It was still a best guess. Armed with some advice from my brother-in-law and advice I gleaned from the internet, I chose the ones that I thought were hens and brought them home.

The newbies. 3 Easter Eggers and 2 Lavender Orpingtons (with our original Easter Egger hen)

Their initial reaction to joining the flock, which I did while feeding the others mealworm treats as a distraction, was to hide in fear in a corner of the run. Pretty much what we expected. After a week or so of being "hazed" by the bigger chickens and learning their place, they have settled in and now seem to be accepted members of the flock. They do still get pecked at by the two bigger Lavender Orpingtons occasionally, but that's pretty normal for the new kids on the block. Here are the newbies:

This one looks like a Roadrunner

This one looks like an osprey (at certain angles)

This one sometimes looks like a hawk and other times like a Killdeer

These are the two new Lavender Orpingtons

We kept SideEye Bill - our only rooster

Our original Lavender hen

Our original Easter Egger hen

As for the guineas, they're doing fine as well. Here they are at the feeder.

I asked everyone, chickens and guineas, to pose for a group photo

The guinea close-up you didn't know you needed. Nice eyelashes!

Our next experiment is allowing the guineas to free range. Recently we let two out and they were panicked the whole time pecking at the wire trying to get back in. The next day we let four out and they seemed much more calm. Pecking at bugs and grass. It was the guineas inside that were worried this time. We hope by the weekend we can let the whole flock out about a hour before "bedtime" and see how they do.

Of course we also have to teach Lulu that the guineas aren't quail or other game birds that she needs to retrieve. We'll see how that works out.

They've got their eyes on each other.