Turkey Tracks: February 10, 2013
Blackbird’s First Egg
Chickie Blackbird was the only female among the three dog house chicks of last summer. She is a cross between a Copper Black Maran rooster and a Wheaten Americauna mother. I was led to expect that her eggs would be olive green.
Blackbird laid her first egg just after John’s funeral. Everyone was here at the house after the funeral, and when I went outside to lock up the chickens for the night, there was her first egg. Olive, as expected. The dark brown egg is from my only remaining Copper Black Maran female. The blue egg is from Pearl, one of two Wheaten Americaunas. Aren’t the olive eggs beautiful?
Blackbird’s “mother,” the hen who sat on the eggs and who raised her, was Chickie Sally, a Wheaten Americauna. Sally taught her chicks to be careful, careful, careful, which is ironic, since Sally and Chickie Annie, whom I raised from an egg, got eaten by fox? later that summer. (Both are missed.) Anyway, Blackbird is so careful, careful, careful that it’s hard to get a picture of her or get near her. That situation is made worse as she is the current “low chicken on the pecking order,” so she is always a bit away from the others who are mean to her. Blackbird is coal black and beautiful. This is the only picture of her I have–taken when she and her brothers (who are beginning to color up as roosters) were three months old.
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