Nutter Butter

We have 5 happy treat obsessed hens in our Flock.  Henny and Penny were introduced in an earlier post.  I'll introduce the others later, but I decided to write about Nutter Butter seperately because that is how she fits into our flock.  She wants to fit in with Henny and Penny who are at the top of the pecking order, but they treat her like an annoying little sister.

 Nutter Butter is a Buff Orpington .  She is large and shy with butter yellow feathers.   According to the breed chart at Backyard Chickens, Orpington , especially Buffs are one of the best breeds for family pets. The largest chicken in our flock, Nutter Butter also gets the prize for laying eggs the soonest.

    We added Nutter Butter to our flock as a replacement for Candy a.k.a Kenny the rooster.  She was younger than the other chickens, and that meant she was a nuisance.  Henny and Penny would peck her and chase her away, so at night we would put her in a pet carrier sparing her close quarters with bossy chickens.  It wasn't until we added our last 2 chickens that Nutter Butter was fully accepted into the flock. 

Henny and Penny

Chickens are hard to photograph.  They are social and curious, but mainly they just want treats.  Henny and Penny are "Cinnamon Queens".  The name Cinnamon Queens, while descriptive of their personalities, is a breeder designation not an official breed.  They are actually identified as Sex-links.  There are Red, Golden, and Black varieties.  With most breeds, it is hard to tell the boys and girls apart which explains why we accidentally brought home a rooster.  Twice. With Sex-links, you can tell the boys from the girls by color as chicks.   That's pretty handy, especially if roosters are prohibited where you live.  Sex-links are actually a mixed breed chicken.   So, I guess our girls are Heinz 57 chickens, but don't tell them! 

Penny

Pick of the Flock.  What made us pick these two?  They have good personalities, are docile, are good egg layers and were recommended by the breeder.  (a good local breeder is a big help when getting started with chickens)  They lay nice large brown eggs almost everyday.  Interesting fact, chickens lay on average one egg every 27 hours.  There are days when we only find 3 eggs, and the time of day we find eggs varies too.

Henny

The Pecking Order.  Henny and Penny definitely rule the roost.  It is interesting to see how the flock functions as a community.  There are the popular chicks, the ones trying to fit in and the outsiders.  Fortunately, we have peace, but as we have added chickens to the flock, well, let's just say we could film a reality show like Desperate Chickens or Keeping Up With the Flock.

Henny and Penny lay medium brown eggs.

I Want Some!? The breeder from whom we purchased Henny and Penny is not selling chickens currently.  We now get our chickens from Chickenville USA.  The Lacys have a beautiful farm outside of Terrell, TX.  They have several breeds of chickens for sale, and are very helpful. Another helpful website is Backyard Chickens. Here you can learn all about raising chickens and find information on different chicken breeds.

Coming soon! Nutter-Butter, the Buff Orpington. 

The Chickens

In May 2011, we began our Chicken adventure.  Why?  We are still wondering that.  Actually, we had heard of other people in the area with backyard flocks and we thought, why not? We would have fresh eggs and fertilizer for the garden (boy, were we right about that one). We started out with 3 chickens.  Henny, Penny and Candy.  Candy turned out to be a rooster, so back he went to the farm.  We replaced him with 2 more chickens, Nutter-Butter and Robin.  Again, Robin turned out to be a rooster, so back to the farm he went.  We replaced him with 2 more chickens, Daisy and Mei Mei, bringing our flock to 5.  Things we have learned.  Our son loves the chickens.  He talks to them, feeds them, collects eggs and tells everyone about them.  The girls are pretty social.  They follow us around the yard, hoping for treats.  So far, we have been letting them free range it during the day.  We have also learned that chickens poop, a lot, in very inconvenient places. For this reason, our project before we start the spring garden is going to be to convert our side yard into a chicken run.  The girls will have plenty of room to run around, and we won't be cleaning our shoes so much.  More on that later.

This is where our girls call home.

This is Penny, one of our original chickens.  She is a Cinnamon Queen (also called a sex-link).  We have 4 other chickens.  Henny, a Cinnamon Queen, Nutter-Butter, a Buff Orpington, Daisy, an Ameraucana, and Mei, Mei, a Silver Laced Wyndotte.  

 Mei, Mei is too young to lay yet so we get 3-4 eggs a day from the other 4 chickens.  Daisy, the Ameraucana lays blue green eggs, but my picture does not do the color justice.  The ceramic egg carton is from Anthropology and was a Christmas present from my sister-in-law.

(this image came from Amazon.com)

I bought this book for my son because the chickens on the cover look like Henny and Penny.  We also found the names for Daisy and Mei Mei from this book.  Jan Brett's illustrations are so detailed and beautiful!