New Friends

mellow girls, just hanging out

I wasn't planning on getting banty hens. They are incredibly cute and sassy chickens, but I'm more a fan of the full sized hen. But Penelope kept making that noise, calling over and over again and it was so sad. I let her out of the coop yesterday and she patrolled the perimeter of the yard keening. Henrietta used to make the same sound. She and Ursula were inseparable, and when Ursula went to the coop to lay her afternoon egg, I'd know it because Hen would set up with her racket. It is kind of a low growly purr occasionally punctuated by a full-throated "bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk baKAAAAAWK!" Just imagine the volume ratcheting up until that last one is a triple-f fortissimo. Louder than any rooster. The longer they were separated, the more bawk bawk bawks there would be before the cathartic shriek at the end.

Penelope had never been alone for a second of her entire 5-month life. She was hatched in a bin of eggs, put in a cardboard box with hundreds of other hours-old chicks, mailed, and set up in a bin at the feed store with 50 other chicks. She came home with friends, joined our flock, and never was alone. I was amazed she was still eating, actually.

Godzilla-sized Penelope!
They will get bigger, but there will always be a size difference.

So operation: companion was launched. I couldn't go with baby chicks (though I had no idea Tranny Annie had reproduced! Congratulations!) because you can't integrate until they are several months old. I only found one listing at the feed store, written in the crabbed but perfect handwriting of an 85 year old woman. She lives out in Bothell, a rural area a bit out past us. The previous owners of her house had left behind chickens, and they were reproducing too quickly for her to handle. They just ran wild on her property with no coop or anything. She didn't really know anything about chickens, but treated them as pets all the same. Trouble was, they were banties and she didn't know to tell me that on the phone. Bantam chickens are about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of standard chickens. They lay diminutive eggs. Their tail feathers are usually held in! an! exclamation! point! I tend to cook with my eggs, so wanted to keep standard size hens.

I was already at her house, with my cat carrier, and there they were. A whole basement room of crazy running around banty chickens. Amazingly the hen must have hatched a clutch of 15 eggs, since they all looked like her (or the rooster) and were about three months old. Perfect age. I picked two and brought them home. They don't have names yet, since Charlie is at work and he is the Official Chicken Namer. The girls are amazingly docile and wickedly cute. There was a little squabbling in the coop at first, but I think that the three of them are going to get along just fine. In the spring I'll add in probably three new standard chickens and my flock will be perfect!