"Mum. The Silkie hen is missing"
Sigh. Not again. We have had a run of losses in the chook yard. Just last week Little Hen, our dear and longest serving hen went wandering in the creek next to our house. Luckily, Hame went out for a bike ride and found a young man walking up the road with her under his arm. What a blessing. Little hen has been with us for about 5 years now and was one of our first homeschooling projects. We built a small A frame cage for her---also a homeschool buiding project. She was given to us because she no longer laid and was not happy in her home. She was supposed to live quietly out her days with us but proceeded to start laying again and has done so evert since. I was really surprised to see her head off into the layer box a couple of weeks ago to start her new summer laying season. Whata trooper.

Little hen is the tiniest chook but definitely the boss. She is the unquestioned matriarch and all the other chooks treat her with respect.

But back to the Silkie.
"How long has she been gone?"
 "Oh, I dunno. A few days. "

Well we found her under a spiky plant two days later and two days after that she hatched three gorgeous chickens. It takes 21 days to hatch a chicken so I guess we were not very observant.

Although she is a white Chinese Silkie the mother she was sitting on eggs from several hens and all those that hatched look like they are the Aracauna hen's chicks. The Aracauna’s name is Duck because she makes a  strange  sound like a soft quack.  Our chooks certainly are an interesting bunch.  The chickens might also be fathered by he Aracauna’s son Mohawk Man. We hand raised him because the hen that hatched him was a very young pullet and she messed it up and let nearly all the babies die of cold. But that is another story.

The other chick we hand raised is a lovely pale yellow and has just started laying lovely blue/green eggs.


 

The brown egg is from our Brown Isa hen. She is normal in size.
The white egg is from a hen that is a cross between a bantam and a normal sized chook so the egg is slightly smaller. The rest of our chooks are bantams and they lay lovely petite eggs.

I decided to do a log of the chicks growth when I saw these beautiful chicks, especially Emu. Maybe someone will enjoy learning about our little family.

Emu  has racing stripes that reminded Hame of an emu chick, so that's how she got her name (we really hope it is a female).

 


This is Emu’s head and if you look closely you can see the little sharp bit on the end of the beak. This is called a tooth and it is what they use to break out of the egg when they hatch. The chicken is curled up tight in the egg and their head is at one end of the egg. They just have a tiny bit of room to move so they push their head back and the tooth hits the end of the egg to make a small fault in the egg. The chick rotates slowly around in the egg, gradually hitting the egg in a circle and then it gets to a stage where the egg breaks open in a little hole at one end. A couple of days after hatching, the tooth drops off the end of the beak.
 

Emu’s family. I wonder if they  will have silkie feathers or normal feathers? There are two roosters with normal feathers and 3 Chinese Silkie roosters.

We have an odd assortment of names for our animals. One rooster was Sophy and another is Big Sister. You can see how bad we are at figuring out what sex they are when they are young.

Some breeds of chickens have a gene that is linked to the speed with which they grow feathers. The pullets (that's the name for young females) grow feathers faster than the males (they are called cockrels when they are young). This means that, in the first couple of days you can tell the sex because in the females he wing flight feathers cleary are longer and protrude past the soft downy wing coverts.
To see the names of a chooks parts see:
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/resource-room/general/poultry/chicken.htm

The part labelled “wing bow” is where the coverts are.
The picture below shows the feathers on Emu’s wing at one day old.



 

Notice the feathers are all wrapped in a round sheath to protect the growing feathers. These sheaths have a rich blood supply that helps the new young feathers grow and develop. After about 4 days, the sheath is no longer needed and the chickens will pull them off as they groom themselves. (see pictures below)

This picture is of Emu.