We’ve had so much rain and Buttercup hasn’t been enjoying it.

When we got our chickens so long ago Buttercup here was supposed to be a Buff Laced Polish. But she was the wrong color. Off white, with no lacing. Our Laced Wyandotte’s started to show closer to adult colors pretty early. But not Buttercup. Until recently I was wondering if her lacing would ever really look right.

Now she looks nice though. The lacing is really nice on her tan feathers. Even the afro is laced.

What does an afro chicken look like when they have a bad hair day? Well these photos should answer this age old question.

When I was looking through my recent photos I just had to post this one. It reminded me far too much of the famous Alfred Hitchcock profile shot from his self titled tv show. As far as I’m aware Jessie is not plotting some horrible murderous plot for the rest of the chickens…

It looks like Jessie might need a trim to her afro again.

Something fun in the background here as well. Something I’ve been trying to capture a photo of for a while.

On the right hand side you’ll see a very blurry Julian back there. She’s staring at herself in the side of my car. She does this basically every time I pull my car in when she’s out free ranging. She’ll actually do this for quite a while, 20-30 minutes sometimes. It decreased my respect for Chickens as it seems they aren’t exactly self-aware which is generally accepted as a sign of intelligence.

They do however, like myself (I have ADHD), have an uncontrollable attraction to shiny things. If only there were a fox with a dangling shiny lure it would never want for chickens.

I show lots of pictures of Buttercup. She’s so much different than our other chickens, she has such personality and she gorgeous to boot. She’s incredibly skinny. I’ve kept an eye out to make sure she gets to eat and she does. She even seems to be towards the top of the pecking order and pushes other chickens out of the way all the time. She’s just small.

Her neck is insanely long and her afro is starting to looking like Wolverine though not as angry. Her crest just happens to be growing in a way it doesn’t look like I’m going to need to trim it, at least not yet. Conversely, both of the other polish need a trim. I just gave them each a cut about 3 weeks ago.

It’s hard to see, but Jesse is eating a peach. We’ve taken to throwing out all sorts of things for the chickens to eat and they seem to like quite a bit. Especially fruits. Watermelon, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, oranges, grapefruit all seemed enjoyable.

We bought a ton of peaches from a local orchard and tossed out the pits. They loved them, chased each other around the yard for rights to it and all. I threw a couple of bruised peaches out for them. They had gotten pretty soft so I thought the chicken would like them. I came out about 15 minutes after putting them out and they were gone. I couldn’t even find the pits (which I know they couldn’t eat).

I wonder if I’m going to find peach trees growing in their pen soon? Won’t matter. They’ll dig them up and eat them anyway.

Jessie has been acting a little sick lately. She’s seemed lethargic, not moving around much and sleeping a whole lot. We’ve been concerned, keeping an eye on her poop and I checked her crop to make sure everything seemed ok. She even started roosting down on a very low rung despite normally climbing her way to the rafters.

I consulted some people the Backyard Chicken Forums and they gave a lot of good suggestions on what to look for (which is why I was checking poop and her crop). My wife had stumbled across something that said it’s important to trim the crest of a polish chicken so they are able to see. Apparently it’s even possible for one to go completely blind after not being able to see for a while.

We had noticed it looked like it was hard for her to see so we decided to trim the afro. We didn’t think it was connected to her lethargy but thought it would help ner none-the-less. Turns out, that’s all she needed. She’s been up and around like nothing ever happened. She ran for the first time in weeks on Sunday, presumably because she could finally see where she was going.

Since we just got to see a couple of nice pictures of Dahlia, I thought it fitting to spend a little bit of time on Jessie. This picture just might show the scale of how big they’ve gotten over the last 2 months. Without a person in the picture it’s hard to grasp how much they grow.

Jessie is being a little lazy lately and seems to like to sleep. We have been keeping a close eye on her to make sure there’s nothing more wrong. She’s growing quickly and is easily the biggest of the polish now and she easily has the biggest afro, an obvious breeding trait if you ask me. We’re getting close to laying time, about 4 more weeks. I’m honestly really excited about crossing Fred with our polish to see what happens.

A Frizzled chicken with an afro — sounds priceless.

I haven’t talked about Dahlia lately. I don’t want anyone to think that our old chickens are missing out on any love since the new ones have arrived. Our rockstar is standing strong and it doesn’t look like anything will oust her. Although soon enough she may make the move back towards punk, simply because those feathers are all in her eyes and she needs to be able to see. That means though, that the mohawk is coming back!

Just think, it was only 2 months ago that Dahlia was still small. She still had that mohawk. They grow up quickly but she’s just as much fun. It’s a strange thing seeing them go from chick to chicken.

We were amazed a couple of months ago when we were able to move our chicks outdoors to the coop and Ronnie just jumped right in to caring for them and showing them around. He showed them where food and water was. He guided them to the best foraging locations. He warned them when there was danger and he guided them all into the coop at night.

We didn’t really realize how much parenting and protecting is just built into a rooster. Without Ronnie showing them what to do they seemed so aimless, so purposeless. And for the few days they went without a Rooster when he was killed they kind of looked the same way.

Ever since they went outside the chicks seemed to have a sort of implicit trust of Ronnie. Once I saw Jessie staring at a beetle on the ground, obviously confused and scared to eat it. Ronnie came over and inspected it and him looking up seemed to be a type of approval so then Jessie ate it, but not before his inspection.