WHO HERE LOVES CHICKENS? WE DO!
Sunday, November 29th, 2021: The park curators (aka Mark and Mary :-) visited the Funky Chicken Farm in beautiful Melbourne Florida. The purpose of this visit was to vet four female hens for mates with our definitely funky roosters, Punky-Blue and Puffy-Doo (aka Dusty). These two roosters have been forced to live alone because they can't stand any other roosters near them. They are definitely lonely so our goal is to find them girlfriends and hopefully, love and friendship.
Saturday, December 4th, 2021: We returned to the Funky Chicken Farm and picked out four, six-month -old hens. After paying $30 each ($120 total purchase price) we put our four new girls into a large Walmart carton and brought them home.
We already had a large Formex chicken coop set up in a new 10' x 10' pen which was open on the top. We wondered if the new hens would go into the house at sunset on their own initiative. One girl did but three of them decided to give us a hard time by flying up to the top of the pen, followed by the obligatory chase around the yard. Mary, our lead Zoologist, "grabbed" (technical term and technique) each hen carefully and brought them to the door of the coop where Mark (our extraordinary chief architect) awaited. Mark would open the door and Mary would "stuff" a hen into the coop. We carefully repeated this operation until all four hens were inside for the night, safe from predators.
Sunday, December 5th, all four hens went into their coop at sundown, all on their own. They waited until the last minute to decide to go into their house. They would pop back out the door, circle the pen and then go back in, this happened several times. Our intrepid lead chicken wrangler (Mary) carefully snuck up on the coop and slammed the door once all four hens were inside. Keep in mind, this was only the hens second night here and they went into their house all on their own.
Monday, December 6th, all four hens went into their coop for the night about 45-minutes before darkness fell. No indecision, they realized they could find the optimum perch location if they went in early.
MEET THE "GOLDEN COMET" LADIES OF P2
SHANNON
She is light orange (in her orange areas). Shannon has a tail which has a white tip.
PENNY
Penny is dark orange (copper colored) in her orange areas. She has a tail which is white and orange.
RED
Red has no tail and is a darker orange color. She has some white'ish spots on her but is mostly dark orange.
SHORTY
Shorty has no tail, she is rounded off on the back like a 2020 Miata sports car. Shorty is shorter in length than the other three Golden Comets.
PERSONALITY- the new ladies have been stressed out about their move to a new home. We've tried to not handle them and just let them adjust to their new "digs". These four hens came from a much larger group of 20-40 chickens which spent their lives in a nasty, closed-up pen. The ground in their original pen was muck and they had to battle with all the other hens to gain access to food and water.
Shannon was speaking to Mark immediately with a soft little voice, almost a whimper. When offered raisins (chicken treats) she immediately came to the side of the pen to eat from Mark's hand while the other three stayed back away. By Monday all four chickens were coming to the side of the pen to get raisin treats. They are still speaking in soft, whimpering tones but overall the new P2 residents appear to be slowly adjusting to their new surroundings.
WHAT'S A GOLDEN COMET CHICKEN?
The "Golden Comet" is a specially bred chicken and is generally considered to be a mutt. Our four golden girls are about six months old. They are full size, standard chickens while our roosters are Bantam Silkie males. Supposedly, full size female chickens are fine with Bantam size males, time will tell ;-)
The Golden Comet is bred to produce chicks which allow their sex to be determined by their color. It's complicated and their is plenty of information on the internet about "Sex Link" chickens if you need to know more.
Our GC ladies are mottled orange and white in color with large yellow legs that are not feathered.
QUARANTINE
We have kept the four new hens in quarantine so we can observe them and determine if they have any latent disease we should know about. Thankfully they all appear to be healthy.
FLOCKING CHICKENS
These four hens were part of a larger flock in their previous living arrangement. They had "pecking order" all worked out in the larger group and our four were probably fairly far down in the order.
Now that they are living at P2 they are reevaluating their pecking order and becoming a flock unto themselves. Previously they were acquaintances, now they are becoming a family and working together to understand their new world.
WHAT DO THE ROOSTERS THINK?
Monday, December 6th: We allowed "Puffy Doo" to come up to the new ladies pen but we kept him outside so he could only talk to them and do some sideways dancing. After about 10-seconds of interest Puffy went back to harassing YoYo and Raven (two of our other roosters). Puffy can't see very well due to his extreme fluffy face (and fluffy everything else too). We are going to catch Puffy and give him a trim around his eyes so he can better see his future brides. So far there was no magical attraction between Puffy and the Comets.
Punky-Blue (our other Silkie rooster) did not get a chance to hang with the new ladies yet so we don't know what his opinion is.
NEW HOMES
We have acquired two additional "Wayfair" chicken pens which we're assembling, one for each rooster and two hens.
After we get the Wayfair pens constructed, the Formex coop will be joined to one of the pens and be the new home for Punky and his two hens. The second pen will have a wooden chicken coop inside to house Puffy and his two hens.
PUFFY AND PUNKY ARE KIND OF CRAZY
These two Silkie roosters are kind of crazy. These two guys were brothers from Flock-2 which we bought at Tractor Supply back at the end of March, 2021. We had to separate them from Flock-2 because they were harassing the other hens and they consistently tried to do physical harm to each other.
Mary and Punky have a very cute relationship, he comes and sits in the kitchen window to talk to us. Punky is adorable, he has dark purple skin where standard roosters have bright red skin. Punky is never aggressive and he puts up with Mary carrying him around like a fluffy "Raggity Andy" doll under her arm. Punky has big ear lobes which are light blue in color, they are very soft.
Punky also comes into our gym to workout with us. While we lift weights Punky struts around and crows. While Punky never specifically acts like he wants to be held he consistently follows us around and seems to know his name, if you're lucky he will come when you call.
Puffy has a big beard and less comb on top of his head. His eyes are more blocked by feathers than Punky so he can't see very well. Puffy gets confused when he is anywhere near Punky (they hate each other a lot). Puffy sometimes has misplaced aggression issues which are probably due to his inability to see well. Punky's eyes are not blocked by his Silkie feathers so he has little difficulty seeing past them.
WHY MORE HENS?
We raised Punky and Puffy since they were two days old. They were adorable baby chicks and as adult roosters they can be challenging but we still love them and are trying to make a home for them. After carefully considering every possible option at finding mates for Punky and Puffy, Mary hit upon the idea of getting the full size hens for them. Our end goal was to find love for our beloved Silkie roosters as fast as possible, whether it will work remains to be known.
HOW MANY CHICKENS
After our last chicken acquisition (six little hens from My Pet Chicken) we SWORE we would NEVER, EVER, get more chickens yet here we are with four more beautiful birds.
We were at 22 birds, with our new ladies we're now up to 26 little pets.
WHY CHICKENS?
We both love little winged animals and chickens are some of the most adorable birds of any we've ever seen. They don't try to get away f they get out. Every single bird has a very unique and identifiable personality if you take the time to get to know them. Generally speaking chickens don't like to be picked up or handled but there are exceptions (the Minkies, another story).
We love being around our little friends, they are always enjoyable. I feel my blood pressure drop to nothing when I spend time with the chickens, they are so easy to please and always glad to see me.
Good chickens to you!
