This year's chicks have turned into a tremendously fine large and colourful flock. The little master of the house is now walking on his own two feet and loves running about among the hens. At one point he discovered that he can let himself in through the netting gate, and of course he did not shut the gate behind him. The next moment the whole flock was scattered about the yard. Grandfather saw it and shook his head: oh dear, Mathias. Now you have to get the hens back into the run.
The next moment the boy picked up the nearest hen and carried her back to the run. The hen only looked over her shoulder with curiosity, as if to ask what was going on, and was perfectly calm. The boy is only 2 years old, but he carried the birds back to the run like that, their legs almost touching the ground. The hens ran out of the run again in the meantime, of course, but the boy was very busy. It was a delightful and rather unbelievable sight.
Sadly we did not get it on camera, how the hen was picked up. They would not let him that close again. The boy, though, then deliberately opened the gate of the hen run again and again and called the birds out. He ran after them himself, squealing: hen, come back, hen, come back.
I opened the gate myself.
He also likes throwing grain to the hens. The hens are all craning their necks through the netting and waiting for their grain. Sometimes they get a handful into the grass, sometimes one at a time along the netting. And sometimes straight out of his hand. The dog, an old and tired little friend, keeps a jealous watch beside him, hoping for a little attention too, alongside this whole feathered flock.
My flock is especially mixed this year. For the first time, alongside my own chicks, I brought home pullet chicks from a hatchery. That way there is no need to put so many cockerels on the block in the autumn. It is a shame about them, after all. And since a fox carried off one clutch of chicks along with the mother hen, I had only 4 birds of my own left, and 3 of those happened to be cockerels.
So among the young birds I now have only 3 pullets of my own. One of them is a young lady with lavender plumage and a high hairstyle, who will lay green eggs. And 2 crosses with black copper plumage, with Brahma blood in their background too. Alongside them are a couple of BC Marans, and all the rest are hatchery birds: white and brown Lohmanns, white ISA Sussex and black Moravia Barred with white bars.
The birds are endlessly peaceable this time. No squawking or bullying since they were chicks, even though the age difference within the flock was close to 2 weeks.
The young birds are now 4 months old and the first little brown eggs started dropping as early as week 20. The eggs are as small as chestnuts, 34 to 37 g.
The Sussex and the Moravias started laying first. Then the brown Lohmanns, and a week later the first white egg dropped as well, that of the Lohmann White.
Here are a few pictures of the birds and of the little man laughing triumphantly into the camera: I opened the hens' gate.
