These two are Queenie’s daughters from 2 years ago, unimaginatively called Queenie Baby Pale (QBP) and Queenie Baby Blue (QBB) on account of the colour of the eggs they lay. QBP (on the right) is smaller but she is looking even smaller than usual because she is moulting at the moment and, poor love, has no tail feathers at all.
We find it fascinating to see which birds stick together like this. Bonding amongst poultry isn’t always as obvious to see as with other smallholding animals but it is there. These two for example, aren’t always together but are never too far away from each other. Most of our chickens tend to group themselves according to age, probably because they grew up together, but these bondings do last for their lifetimes. At night, they tend to perch in similar places within their own groups and if we were to mix them up a bit, there would be much jostling and pecking as they tried to sort things out.
We currently have three cockerels, a Jubilee Indian Game, a Dark Indian Game and an Exchequer Leghorn. The Exchequer should have gone in the pot as it were, but at our last dispatching day he just seemed too small to go and since then we have become quite fond of him...
The Jubilee IG is the dominant cockerel and he tends to hang around the poultry paddock all day, the Dark IG on the other hand heads out of the paddock towards the barn along with his little ‘harem’ of young IG girls and a few of this year’s crosses. This obviously is his group now and he seems very happy ‘not’ to be around the Jubilee cockerel who, if he spots him, doesn’t think twice about chasing him away!! This is why we give our birds LOTs of space, it is important that they can esacpae like this!!