Stories from the Farm

I have been staring at our chicks wondering if they are boys or girls.  This is the down side to hatching eggs and liking a breed that you can only buy straight run (unsexed).  There are inevitably going to be boys.  We have 6 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and 2 Olive Eggers and I have been keeping my fingers crossed that the boy to girl ratio is better than it was last year.  Of the 4 Blue Laced Red chicks I ordered last year, 3 of them were boys.  I can finally see little clues and I am ‘tentatively’ happy with what I am seeing.

It looks like we have 1 Olive Egger girl and…

1 Olive Egger boy.  You can see subtle differences in their combs and waddles.

It looks like we have 4 Blue Laced Red hens – YAY!  I was really afraid we were going to end up with a bunch of boys again.  This is one of the hatchery chicks, a girl.

This is one of the chicks that was hatched by our hen, a girl.

and yet another pretty girl!

I am hoping this is a girl too, but I am not 100% sure.  It could be a late blooming boy – what do you think?

This one is definitely a boy.  I was kind of happy to see that this one was a boy because he doesn’t have very good lacing on his feathers.  A lot of his feathers are solid red instead of having the pretty blue edge on each feather.

The other boy is the black variety.  The Blue Laced Red is genetically the Andalusian type of blue – as a result, there are three possible colors on the lacing within the breed.  The colors are Blue Laced Red, Splash Laced Red, and Black Laced Red.  You can visit the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte page for more information and pictures of the three colors.

All of the other chicks that were ordered as girls, appear to be girls.  Here is one of my son’s Rhode Island Reds, he has 3 of them.

This striking lady is a Speckled Sussex.  She is one of the chicks we are raising for a neighbor.

I have no idea what the little Polish chick is – any ideas?  My son is really hoping it is a girl so it can stay and I must admit that it is growing on me too 🙂