MY CHICKENS ESCAPED

So, they will grow from this:


to something like this ...


and produce multi-coloured eggs like these?


http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/ameraucana,chickenhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2556/3938778187_ff1f4b261a_m.j

Without the ghastly life of battery chooks.
Go little chickens!

Aaaaaw! Dem's cute.

Them South American Indian chickens is all potentially goin' on the warpath . . .

The Araucana and AMericauna breeds are a bit different but they both produce colored eggs. You pictured the Americauna variety. The Araucana is the original stock , as Set said, named after a SOuth AMerican culture. The Araucana is a bit stockier and the hens have a distinguishing tuft of feathers on each side of their beak giving them a quizzical look. They also have closer set eyes and are able to see binocularly like meatatarian birds. They are always looking at you strait on and that can be disconcerting to folks unfamiliar with chickens. They are like little plump raptors. They are also mild mannered and dont get into these "Chicken panic attacks" that afflict all other breeds. Its common for hen house kept chickens to go into violent panic attacks whenever anyone walks into the coop. Imagine an industrial egg production facility with 50000 chickens in these individual coops. SOmeone comes in and the chickens go nuts so violently that when all the panic ends, seeal hundred chickens can be dead just from banging against their cages.

Araucanas arent the greatest egg producer (Ill get maybe 4 eggs a week from the hens. BUT, their tempereament, the colored eggs, their acceptance and connecting with people (We get a lot of people at the farm), all makes them great birds to have for small operations and house flocks. We also have 4 guinea hens and a guinea cock that take care of all insect pests in the barn and the garden.
Guineas are flighty but very protective of everything as soon as they become imprinted with the site and they set up their territory and all their charges.

Heres a picture of a "blue phase " guinea fowl. Its a;lmost impossible to tell males from females.

Guinea fowl lay green eggs, no?

Green ham is easy . . . you just leave it out on the counter for a couple a days . . .

Heres a picture of an Auracana (I misspelled the previous posts, I am so embarrased at how my spelling skills, usually impeccable, were degraded a bit)



You can see their tufts which give them a special look. ALso their more forward eyes and stocky build . The AMericauna is a special breed that is mixed with some other breed to make it more "Egg production" centered. BAstards

Sorta greyish -green with some having spots. Guineas will go into this amazing fit of egg laying to make up a clutch of 25-35 eggs and then they will hatch and rear em like cockroaches. They are ammazingly fecund(Fortunately they taste like pheasant) so we never are burdened with an overruniing population of guineas.

Well I figured it was one of the varieties pictured in the link. So I took pot luck.
They have quite chunky bodies, don't they? Must get quite heavy.
I love the whiskery tufts!
Yours are all white like this one?

we have about siix whitish with darker cream colored breasts. The rest are variants of reds and daplled light browns. They are rather handsome little firls and they are already displaying the curiosity of this variety. They will run up and take food from your hand and then walk over and look you strait in the eye-head on.
Now get some sleep.it gotta be like 9PM over there where you are

They sound absolutely delightful!
I wouldn't mind a few running around the place, myself.
Yep, it's 9:30-ish.
And cold & dark & raining here. A bit early for bed, but soon.

Farmerman says

Its a;lmost impossible to tell males from females.

I've heard that before. How many times have you used that excuse in the past?

I guess this means that there is now a hidden cache of chicken poop somewhere in the house?

arrrrghhh

That's the problem with letting birds loose in the house... "here a poop, there a poop, everywhere a poop poop..."

I had a terror bird when I was a kid (actually it was a parakeet, but I had a good imagination) and every time it escaped its cage it was guaranteed to leave some calling cards around my room.

we did a complete house check on the first floor and even the book cases (of which there are several). NO POOPS except for one teeny deposit where they escaped.

I will learn how to upload some pix of these guys and you will know what a true terrorbird is about. I was hand feeding the little guys today and they were watching me, always watching me.

That was a short vacation..

(looking forward to photos)

I raised ducklings when I was a kid. They imprinted on me and tried to follow me around for the rest of their lives. They followed me to the bus stop for years.

mmmmmmm duck is delicious. Ive never had the problem with any pet ducks. I did have a turkey that was my own and thos bird lived to be almost 15 years . It died about the time I left for college.
I wrote a story in my freshman english comp about that turkey and how he lived as my friend and died somewhat alone. There wasnt a dry eye in the room when our instructor decided to read part s of it.

It was actually a business trip that required a Sunday meeting near Pittsburgh . My wife went along because we rented a car and drove back and visited Falling Water . We had originally scheduled a Mothers DAy Kayak paddle and that had to be postponed till week after next.
The meeting was totally unecessary but the ride to Faqlling Water made up for it.