Look at how Goong-bao has grown! She was a teeny tiny handful, and now she's magnificently fluffily plumaged, and gorgeous to boot!
She's a little bit independent minded, too. While she and Siyao (the mostly-black, gold-laced Barnavelder) hang out together, Siyao is always where the food is at. Goong Bao hangs back a little, watches everyone else snatch up the food, and then comes in for a nibble - usually too late!
Above are the four chickens of the apocalypse. LOL. Well, maybe not quite.
Here are Coldie (white) and Siyao (black) queueing up for the laying boxes.
And here are Goongbao (mostly black) and Shantung (brown) occupying the laying boxes.
And here's what happens when you don't collect the eggs for a day!
(Wait, how many chickens do we have?)
Honey Soy Chicken, one of our two Original Recipe, is gone, alas. She never quite recovered from her bout of peronitis (egg infection) earlier this year. When faced with an operation that might or might not help vs. putting her to sleep, we chose to put her down. She now rests in a deep hole in the front orchard/triangle garden, with an apricot tree in a pot on top of her to keep any other animals from trying to dig her up.
RIP Honey Soy. You were the peckiest chook there ever was, a hard-core layer from beginning to end, and a great scratcher of the soil. Your eye for a possible food source was unerring, and your saurian origins never in doubt!
Interestingly, Hainan chicken's implant ran out and she laid an egg! It was very unexpected, and a little unwelcome since we don't want her to lay herself to death. We got a new implant put in, so she doesn't keep laying, and we'll hopefully get to keep her a couple years more.
On the whole, the chooks are all getting along. Everyone is roosting together, nobody is getting picked on. The sorting out of the pecking order was pretty hilarious to begin with. Pecking order is dependent on a whole range of factors, including age, laying status, size, breed, and personality. The babies (Goongbao and Siyao) were at the bottom of the pecking order, but Goongbao grew large, and she's a Wyandotte and apparently they're more likely to end up pretty high on the pecking order. But everything's still a bit young and unsettled for the moment. Everyone but Hainan is laying - four layers, and we're running out of eggboxes fast - and Hainan has the grumpy old lady schtick down pat, and the other hens fear her!
Anyway, it's going to be a high-egg season, I think: with five chickens, four of them laying.
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