Yesterday our homestead’s population increased by 28. Here’s 12 of them.

Friday Andy saw a message on freecycle for two pairs of chickens, mottled cochins and mottled japs. I did a quick search online and found out that the japs are bantams (teeny), and I found that cochins are good meat birds. I asked Andy to ask the person if “pair” meant a breeding pair, and the person who posted said they were breeding pairs and to “Call Elvis” for more info.

I did some more research and found out that while many cochins are indeed full-sized and good meat birds, the mottled ones are bantams. Hrm. I don’t really want bantams because there’s not much meat on ’em and their eggs are tiny. By the time I came to this realization, Andy had talked to Elvis and learned that there were really 5 or 6 breeds of birds looking for new homes and many of them were cute, fluffy babies. We decided to go out and see what Elvis had…and hoped some of them were full-sized birds.

Elvis had a LOT of birds. Half of them were pigeons, which we had zero interest in…though the fan-tailed pigeous were pretty. There were the two pairs mentioned on freecycle plus some d’uccles, some silkies, and some other really tiny bantams that looked just like typical chickens but itty bitty. Elvis also had two bantam ducks and two very pretty quail.

We ended up with the dozen mixed chicks shown above, the pair of cochins, the pair of japs, a young silkie, and about a dozen d’uccles….some mille fleur and some porcelain, two grown up, a couple of teenagers, and a few youngsters. We also got a cage.

We put the d’uccles in the cage we got from Elvis, and the rest went into four cat carriers for the trip home. Elvis had said we’d have no problems tossing all of the (non-chick) birds into one cage, so when we got home we started emptying the cat carriers into the one big cage. Big mistake. The three grown roosters were incredibly unhappy, and we had to rush around trying to get the males separated again. In the process of doing this, the japs and cochins ended up running around free for a bit, and the two roosters got into a discussion.

We got the cochins into the duck tractor, and I rigged another pen with the top panels of the duck cage for the japs. The jap rooster, whom we named Elvis, is a diva.

Andy got to work and built one small chicken pen, which became the cochins’ home. The japs spent the night in a rabbit cage, and the d’uccles are pretty much staying in the cage we got for a while. Today Andy is building a second small pen for the japs.

All the birds are very pretty, but I don’t think we will keep them all. We don’t really have any reason to keep them all, and, well, that’s a lot of birds (especially when the chicks mature and go outside). I definitely want to keep the cochins, because they are very friendly and calm and don’t fly. And the silkie…s/he stays, too, because s/he is very extremely cute. (I don’t have a picture of her/him yet.) I think we may eventually rehome the japs because while they are very pretty they have teeny tiny eggs and are rather high-strung. Now, the d’uccles…I’d like to keep a few, but I don’t think we need all of them…most of the chicks are d’uccles. Here’s a picture of two young mille fleur d’uccles making faces at Priscilla the mottled jap.

Even though Elvis gave us all these birds for free, I’m thinking maybe we can ask a little bit, maybe $5 each, for the birds we rehome. Not only will that help us cover some of the costs for materials to build the new pens but also it will, I hope, help weed out some people who would maybe take free birds and not treat them very well. Sort of like an adoption fee.