My Wild Homestead: Chick Season Continues

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Chick Season Continues

We made it through the power outage with day old chicks just fine then had a quiet Friday. In addition to our six- day old layers we ordered we also reserved some cochins from a breeder in our state. The fun thing about their cochins is that they come in fun colors like calico and some have frizzled feathers. I messaged the breeder to find out why I hadn't heard anything in awhile from them. No answer but I found out through a chicken group and then checking the cochin breeder's own page that they were shutting down their business for the year. They had hatching/incubator issues with various power outages and also suffered predator loss :-(. So no calico, no frizzle for me or maybe....When some of us were chatting about this situation in a chicken group another breeder stepped forward to mention her Tolbunt Polish chickens which are calico type coloring and she was hatching frizzles too. I made an appointment to visit that farm on Saturday so off we went. The Polish chicks and also silkies and mixes that were available were all so adorable! We ended up choosing a Frizzled Tolbunt Polish, a Smooth Tolbunt Polish and just for fun a little showgirl (naked neck) brown silkie. The breeder then offered another silkie for free and we chose a lavender. What a fun little bunch of chicks. So now we had our just good layers and our fun and fancy chicks to raise this spring. We knew from the start that we had one frizzle and one smooth feathered Polish since they were several days old. With the silkies though it was a mystery that we had to wait a few days for since they were newly hatched. It has developed that the lavender silkie is smooth feathered and the little brown showgirl is...frizzled! I love surprises and that was a fun one. Now we have to think girl thoughts since these latest four chicks are straight run, it could go either way.

What a face!