Here are a few of my young pullets. I think 3 of the 12 are starting to lay now. Should be getting busy around here soon!

And since that worked, here are our two favorite young roosters. They are 22 weeks now.

Nice pics, Susie!

Here's a pic of Alex (age 11 & 1/2 and the "1/2" is very important to him) with a breeding cockerel in our blue egg project, George Washington. GW is 1/2 (true) Araucana and 1/2 Leghorn. He is really big for his age and he is sooooo wide.... He is rumpless, clean-face and has the characteristic "bubble-gum" comb that is typical of this line of ours.

Hello,

Susie and Infomaniac, you both have so good pictures, all thoses chickens are beautiful. Susie, tell me the breeds, Bye, Johanne

Infomaniac....cool rooster!

Johanne, I'm raising Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, Production Reds and also have 3 Black Australorps who didn't make it into today's pictures.

Susie

Other nephew, Evan (10 years old) wanted to get his picture on the internet so here he is with one of the birds we are calling 'greybars'... the barring is grey and white although the barring looks darker than it is in reality....

This little cockerel is a feisty little devil and is part of our black barred breeding project. If he were a Barred Rock, one would think he just has poor barring.

Thanx for the nice pics, everybody!

Ok, I'm going to add one more! Hee-hee! Snapped a picture of one of my black Australorps. I promise I'll stop now. ;-)

Hello, dont stop with the pictures, I love it, the birds are all lovely, we see that you ( Infomaniac, Susie and Evan )are taking good care and you are proud of them. It is so nice. Bye, Johanne
PS: thank you Susie for your reply

Thank you, Johanne....I need very little encouragement!!!! LOL!

The first picture is of the hens charging out of henhouse #1 to the 'corn line'... I started giving them a line of corn every morning long ago to encourage them to come out and forage again after having been inside for weeks during the harsh dead of winter here.



Here are about 70 or so hens from henhouse #1 crowding into the corn line.



The next pictures are of the F2 chicks from our blue egg project in the brooder pen....

P.S. You can see the corn line in the first picture. It is the faint yellow line at the foot of the hill that is in the background

This is the little "black-top" pullet I posted before. The ver top of her head is black while her neck is basically white. If she keeps this trait into adulthood this will be evidence that the top of the head can be isolated genetically with respect to plumage color. The second picture is a close-up from the first one.

You can see that we have a number of those birds with the 'shafted' frosted-lace pattern.

Wow Info, looks like you got a heck of a spread. How many acres is your farm? Your birds look great.

Susie, you have some wonderful healthy looking birds too!

It's really nice to see everyone's chickens. I hope people will post more pics .... (I'm trying to figure out how tall Susie is from the perspective in her pictures! LOL!) Sometimes I'm a little embarrassed about our farm junk, but that's part of what a farm is... what's a farm without farm junk? And sometimes you can put a chicken on some farm junk and take a picture then the farm junk becomes art. One person's farm junk is another person's art! particularly if there is a chicken on it!

Hannah, the farm belongs to my brother and his family. I am always here because I work part-time for his company, and he and I and his kids are the poultry enthusiasts. I don't know the number of acres, but he is always complaining that it is getting to be too much for him to take care of. He puts up a lot of hay in the summer to sell to the local horse people. He is a chemistry professor at the local state university.

Info...LOL! I was sitting on cement blocks (we have "farm junk" too!) when I took the pictures. If you're dying of curiousity, I'm about 5'8"!! ;-)

I love seeing the pictures too. You have quite a few beaks to feed there! We currently have 19 chickens and although we have the desire to do some hatching later this year, right now this is plenty for me. I have a husband who always wants "more, more, MORE" and is never home to do the icky chores!

Susie

Susie, you are taller than I by an inch or so, Honey. I am somewhere between 5-7 and 5-8. Aren't men like that? Never around to change diapers, wash dishes, mop floors, clean toilets... Before the men get in an uproar... I know this is a sterotype... but sterotypes are founded in truth... the problem with sterotypes is that they don't allow room for the individual who is different.

So who has time to mop floors, change diapers, etc. but i may if SHE would just milk the goats, make the cheese, feed the pigs , brushthe horse, hitch the horse to the wagon, go to town and get the baler twine, make the hay,( we do 5 acres by pitchfork). Infomaniac, you must have other stock on your place. i see a baler and set of old "Alice Chomper" plows.

LOL! Yes... there's a baler behind that old Allis combine! Sharp eyes ya got there, Robb!!!! Allis plows and gang of 4 discs. Lots of Allis tractors....

I have read the COOP for sometime now and finally decided to join in on the fun. Being from Canada, I find the pictures very interesting. Info, what is a "blue egg project"?I would love to send a picture of my very handsome red Leghorn rooster but I donot have the machinery necessary to do it.

Thank you for your post, Parchy. Our blue egg project is a breeding project in which we (my family and I) are trying to develop a layer of truly blue eggs. We are trying to exploit (suspected) color enhancing and inhibiting genes of Leghorns. It is believed that the stark white of the (commercial) Leghorn eggs is due, in part, to these color modifying genes (genes that suppress brown eggshell color and whitening genes).

We are on the 3rd generation if one counts the parent (P) generation. We have the P generation, which are (true) Araucana and Ameraucana sires and Leghorn dams, the F1 (first filial generation) which are the offspring of the P generation, and we have F2 babies (second filial generation) that are offspring of the F1 birds. Two of our F1 pullets lay very nicely blue eggs and we selected them for breeding when setting up the hatch for the F2 generation. These two F1 pullets lay eggs that are more blue than any Araucana or Ameraucana that we have. Most of the F1 pullets lay blue eggs, but their eggs are not as blue as the Araucana and Ameraucana we have and so they don't represent progress (improvement) in the eggshell color. So, we don't breed those ones. They go into our regular laying flock to produce for our egg business. The F2 generation, which we have about 200 now from hatches that I've been running constantly since last summer, range in age from 14 days to three months. It may be another 2.5 - 3 months before any of the F2 birds begin to lay. And those babies EAT AND EAT AND EAT!!!! Dang, those babies eat a lot! They eat about a 10 gallon bucket full of feed every day. But half of those 200 F2 babies are roosters, and until I can tell them apart, we just have to feed them all. (I have tried to learn vent sexing but I was really poor at it... a dismal failure.)

If the F2 generation pullets lay an improved blue egg, the F2 cockerels might be more valuable as breeding stock than as Sunday dinners. We'll see. It isn't likely that we achieve our goals with the second filial generation. We are expecting to have to take this to F5 or F7 or beyond. We are also expecting to have to breed back into the Leghorn line again to catch color enhancing genes that are recessive.

I am aware of one other 'colored egg' project that is similar to ours, but I believe the breeder lost interest in that work of his. Supposedly, he developed a very blue egg and even a true green egg (not just a blue+brown = olive drab type of green). But, I haven't been able to contact these people in the year that we have been working at our project.