Then and now

On June 18th, this little parcel arrived at Canada post for me:



Now, they are free range little road runners!

Beep beep!

They live a free life.
This does entail some danger of course,
from maurauding border collies (since Jet left we have not lost one chicken...) to owls and hawks.
That's the price of freedom.

However, things are looking good.

All have survived and are now ranging in ever larger circles around the chicken coop. They have a nice thick wooded bush right next to the coop to hide away  if danger does lurk close by.

They go nicely into the coop at night and have learnt to roost high in the rafters.

This is a young rooster.

This breed has a sex-colour linked gene.
That means, that you can tell the difference between the males and females by the colour of the feathers.

Even as a day old chick.

The males in this "breed" ( it is actually a cross breed red rock) have a yellow tip on their heads,

and grow out to have a grey barred feather colour.

The hens are black at birth and can vary from brown/ black shades to totally pitch black.

I love having the chickens around,

they add so much life onto the farmyard,
and can be very comical at times.

If all is well, we should be getting a whole bunch of free range eggs next year.

perhaps,

I will need to start a bed and breakfast to utilise all these eggs!