The last three months have been a blur of activity. Those tiny fluffy chicks in my last post? Practically at point of lay now, a day over 16 weeks old! Though, recalling their respective parents' record on the POL issue, we could be waiting for another ten weeks yet before we see any eggs. That's the trouble with Rare and Minority Breeds - the trade-off against all that cute fluffiness/ginormous size/weird feather coloration is that (a) they often take much longer to mature than utility breeds, and (b) when their eggs do finally arrive, you can't expect one a day, every day, as you would from the more extravagantly-blessed utility hybrids like Amber Links or Black Rocks.
Having said that, we've been pleasantly surprised by the almost hybrid-like laying regularity of our two Araucana girls, Sooty and her daughter Nimbus. And our Orpington girls lay one most days, unless (as in the last 3 months) they can't make their minds up whether to go broody or not, and instead opt for the grumpy-and-noisy-but-not-laying-OR-sitting-on-eggs route.
Tufty Duck is back in the Funny Farm along with her brood. Lord Bailey literally raced to her side when I put her down in the pen, then, as the soppy smile was still forming on my lips and I was thinking 'Ahhh, he missed her,' he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and leapt aboard. The old romantic. Nimbus tends to be too fast for him to catch, and Mrs Pepperpot is so big he'd need a ladder, so I guess he'd been feeling somewhat deprived in the marital department!
Which reminds me of one of THE comedy moments of 2010... alas, all enacted within ten seconds and me without a camera to record it. I was up one lunchtime to feed the nags and potter round a few stable-y jobs, and as I emerged from Mags' box, heard a huge squawking commotion in the Funny Farm pen, and looked over. There was Mrs P, a huge flapping ball of humbug-striped feathers, pounding up the length of the pen like an ostrich on steroids, and - impossibly - there was Lord Bailey on top of her, hanging on for dear life. As I watched, Mrs P put on a last burst of speed, and Bailey toppled off backwards, head over heels, like a feathery casualty in some 70's road safety campaign. (Think Once, Think Twice, Think Yikes!) I can only guess that he surprised her while she was sunbathing in one of their hollowed-out dustbaths, walked aboard thinking 'what luck!', then found himself seeing things briefly from a previously unknown height!
The two Silkie chicks, Velveteen and Honey, are the same size as she is now, but her two Orpington foster-chicks, Little Dorrit and Hattie, loom over her like gormless giants. Think they can go in with their own kind very shortly.
