Odd Bird! A Red Frizzle Cochin Bantam Chicken

This is one of the chicks that we bought back in February, well actually it came free in the order.  It is known as a Red Frizzle Cochin bantam.  Our friend Megan ordered the same kind and for some reason they sent a second one along so I decided to keep that one.  Randomly choosing this chick of the two we ended up with the hen and she ended up with a rooster.  Who I'm told at a very young age of 4 months is already crowing and quite randy, looking for love.  By chance we ended up with a hen.  Roosters, unless you are raising baby chicks, aren't good for much so we lucked out and I do feel badly for Megan as she is the one who really wanted that type of chicken.  At a day old there is really no way of telling the sex of this breed as they are too small and don't have sex specific characteristics as some breeds do so it really was luck.
It is quite small and when we introduced the new chicks to the old chick flock, merging the two the chickens were dumb enough to think the others were there all along because they didn't look any different.  Therefore there was no picking on the new girls.  This one however looks different, a lot different, with her curly feathers so it was obvious to them that she was a new girl and just like middle school girls they picked on the odd looking one.  Since then they seem to have eased up a bit.
Email me at erickancar@yahoo.com if you have any name ideas and we will consider them all.
My wife Sarah is holding her in these photos and this is as big as she will get, bantam chickens are small.

Love her "curly" feathers.  She has hair just like me.

2 Become 1 or Trouble at the Henhouse

In the dark of night 2 flocks of chickens become 1.  In order to introduce my new chicks (now 4 months and fully grown) into the main flock I moved them from their stall into the main coop in complete darkness.  If they wake up and they (the new chickens) are already there this will allow the chickens to confusedly think the "impostors" were there all along.  Chickens are sedate and somewhat stupid at night so this works.  Otherwise they would probably kill the new ones.  Felt a bit like Fantastic Mr. Fox as I snatched them up one by one to move them.  Or perhaps Seal Team 6 (think stealth mode) as I worked by the light of my cell phone in complete darkness.  In and out in 10 minutes tops, moving 11 chickens.  The (almost?) full moon helped only a bit.
The morning ought to be interesting and loud in the coop because while they are more accepting of new blood they still know that something is slightly off.

Henrik Watches Chicken TV!

The chicks are 3 weeks old now and we have been having unseasonably warm, and gorgeous, weather for the past week with temps in the mid 70's to upper 80's!  For mid-March in the Buffalo area this is unheard of.  I actually cut the grass today because it has already grown so much!!!
I thought it might be nice to get the chicks out of the garage and out from under their red heat lamp to actually see the real sun.  I moved them out on the grass in their temporary housing and they loved it.  You know who loved it more?  Our 5 1/2 month old son, Henrik.  I put him in his Boppy pillow to prop him up and he watched chicken TV for quite a while.  They watched each other very intently not quite sure what to make out of the other.  So cute!

And here is what the chicks looked like the day they arrived.  We split an order of 27 birds with my friend Megan of which we ordered 9, all from McMurray Hatchery (click here to watch a video of their amazing operation that hatches millions of chicks each month).  A week later we picked up 2 more birds from a local feed store for a total of 11 new birds to add to the flock.  We got the following breeds: Araucana (aka Americana) which lay blue, green or pink eggs, Barred Rock, Partridge Rock, New Hampshire Red, Cuckoo Maran which lay chocolate colored eggs, Black Australorps, a Red Frizzle Cochin Bantam (gotta see it so click the link here for a photo of what it will look like), a white mystery chicken that I didn't order and possible one more, can't remember.  They grow so fast and go from cute to awkward teenagers in no time as they are in the photos above.  All the chicks that we got aside from the Red Frizzle are heavy layers in that they lay large brown or colored eggs and lay them often.  Gotta earn their keep!

The chicks are born at McMurray Hatchery in Ames, Iowa (Gangloff if you are reading this, yep these chickens were once your neighbors) and are shipped at one day old arriving by 3 days old in this specially designed box.  

Here they are all huddled together to keep each other warm which is why they ship a minimum of 25 chicks.

This is one of Megan's chick, what she believes to be a Dorking Bantam.  I could not believe how small this bird was in my hand!

Here the chicks begin to eat and learn how to be chickens.  Immediately after arrival you have to dunk each one's beak in water to teach it to drink.  The seem to have eating down without any tutorial.