New Chickens

Linguistic note for international readers: "chook" is Australian slang for "chicken".

Spent the Easter weekend away in the country on Jacinta's parents' farm. While we were up there the opportunity presented itself to purchase some new chickens, so we did. We're now the proud owners of four new chooks, two Isa Browns (boring but practical), and two Isas with a Barnevelder grandparent (larger, but much prettier).

Everyone seems to get excited about what we name our chickens, but to be honest we're not good with chickens actually keeping their names. Our old chooks now being referred to as Black Chook, White Chook and Golden Chook, for obvious reasons of apperance. Our plan for the new chickens (at Ian's suggestion) was to name them after old coin-op computer games (Galaga, Gyrus, Super Mario, etc).

We've started referring to the Barnevelder-crosses as Dig-dug and Pac-man, but the Isas seem to be commonly referred to as simply Isa and Lace (due to her feather decorations).

Names for chickens are pretty irrevelant anyway. The only phrase they seem capable of learning is 'chook chook chook' for when they're about to be fed.

The new chickens are settling in well, and taking the lead from our old chooks about where to sleep at night, so there's no worry about having to haul them out of trees late at night. Some small confusion arose when the newer chickens didn't realise that they weren't allowed to go to bed until the older chooks had retired, and that one of the older chickens liked to stay up late. A few healthy scuffles resulted as the late-retiring chicken would knock the newer chickens out of the coop until it was sufficiently late until she could go to roost without losing honour.

I'm looking forward to getting five eggs a day again, instead of the one egg per day that we have been receiving. However it will probably be a couple of weeks before the newer chickens are old enough to begin laying.