October 10, 2012 Baby's First Egg

Today Baby Amelia graduated to Young Chicken [also called pullet] because she laid her first egg!!

Notice that it is small compared with her (evil) step-sisters. This variety does lay small eggs...but it's darned cute and several would make a darling plate of little deviled eggs!

Amelia's first egg, lower center

Here she is braving the outside to scratch in the pasture with the 4 others. Curious, naturally, has to come over and make sure Amelia doesn't have something she wants! Every day Amelia is getting braver on integrating herself into the flock....yea!

October 9, 2012 And The New Name Is....

Amelia .... for the famous female flyer .... you guessed it .... this little girl can fly!  I was standing outside the playground area after feeding a batch of worms from the compost pile to the girls. Miss Buttercup was avoiding her mean older sisters and running back and forth inside the fence. All of a sudden, flutter flutter...she has flown over the 36" high fence and landed by
my feet. Uh Oh!!!  Luckily,  I was able to pick her up, say no no no and take her inside.

After hearing the story, my sister suggested Amelia [ Amelia Earhart ].....So I call her Baby Amelia...

Steve was really nice to do ANOTHER chicken project and raise all the fencing up. We had a roll of left-over 48" tall chicken wire, which he used in place of the shorter green plastic 'poultry' fencing...hahaha, they must mean fat chicks that can't fly hahaha.  We'll see if this keeps her in. So far it has.

If you read about the Sicilian Buttercup breed they don't like confinement and they are good fliers. DUH for this one.   Just hoping she would rather forage than fly. But, I have a feeling that the older she gets and more confident in living here, she will be flying around.  She can already fly into the side of the pasture that is newly growing from being re-seeded. This has got to tick off the others who are larger breeds and not good fliers - she can get in there to nibble and they can't. She seems to be able to get back out, too. 

All the others are making progress at not always chasing her, so she is getting more confident about coming out of the coop to explore, forage and scratch. They are all not running around together, but at least being more tolerant! She still runs away if Fearless comes near; I try to head off Fearless and Blondie if they look like they are going to peck or chase her. I'm pretty confident that they will all be flocking together soon.

Yesterday, the 8th., was the one year anniversary of the first egg, laid by Gabby.  Still no heavy molting signs, except for Curious. But, I know they have to molt and shed feathers - just sorry it has to be going into colder weather...okay, cold for Santa Rosa - which isn't North Dakota at least!

Cluck On!