I made a very interesting discovery this weekend:  I do not, in fact, have 4 Welsummer girls.  I have 2 girls and 2 boys!  Ain’t that the way the cookie crumbles…

I noticed last week that one of the Wellies seemed to have a very prominent comb so I started watching them a bit more.  I noticed that two of them did a lot of “play fighting” while the other two would perch quietly and watch the activity in the barnyard.  Then I was taking some photos and noticed that the coloring and tailfeathers were different.  The girls are very light colored at this point and the boys have black feathers jutting out of their backside.  Now when I look at them I can’t see how I missed it to begin with!  The difference in their combs is pretty clear.

They're all still pretty tiny right now and these traits only just started to show.  But next time I raise Welsummers I'll probably see the signs much sooner.

Well, I really don’t think it’s prudent to have 3 roosters running around when I only have 9 hens…unfortunately, in these days of  urban chickens, most folks aren’t looking for a roo around their house because they tend to be a little on the noisy side.  Personally, I enjoy the sound of a rooster crowing but I've discovered that I'm an anomaly.  Because it would appear thaton that my immediate neighbors do not.  Hopefully someone will want to take these pretty boys home; otherwise they’ll have to go to freezer camp with the extra drakes I haven’t been able to send to new families.

Of course, looking at them now it's so obvious... live and learn.

  It looks like Buffy had Independence Day on her mind when she decided that it was time that her 4 baby Welsummers needed to learn to fend for themselves.

For the first couple of days they would tag along with Buffy for food, but she no longer makes that clucking noise letting them know where to find the food.  Buff wants to hunt for bugs with the other hens or eats her own food just for herself instead making sure the Wellie babies get their share first.  By the middle of the week the babies got the message and now fend for themselves at the feeder and forage for themselves when they're free-ranging; so now they've formed their own little 4-girl flock.  

Before Buff "pushed them out of the nest", when I would lock them up at night the babies would be under the cover of Buffy's wings away from the other hens on a far roost.  But now Buff has taken up her old place and sleeps with the other layers and the little Wellie girls are still on the far roost but sleeping bunched up together without a mamma hen.  And now there is that familiar pinkish brown egg to make up 7 eggs in the nest box again every day :)

They seem to have taken to it well, but like all teenagers they like to stay up late doing Lord-knows-what and forget to get into the henhouse with the rest of the girls when it's dark.  One morning when I went to unlock the henhouse I saw 3 of the 4 fly out of the holly tree in the henyard!  They must've been out hunting bugs late because I didn't lock everyone up until about 9 pm (the hens usually hit the roost by 8 - but those ducks like to stay out late).

My little Welsummer cockerel (see him at the bottom of this page) decided a few weeks ago that he absolutely was NOT sleeping in the henhouse and would rather roost up in the holly tree - no amount of convincing was getting him to change his mind either.  But I guess those baby Welsummer girls figured they'd roost with him for the night since they'd missed curfew.  He's a scrapper already by the way he bosses those big ducks (the Chickens boss him terribly so I guess he's lashing out) and I reckon they were as safe as they could have been outside of their house.  I still tsk'd at them and told them that if that foolish young cockerel didn't have enough sense to be in the safety of the henhouse they sure didn't have to follow his example by making themselves owl food too!  Now I do a flashlight headcount when I lock up the doors at night.  I haven't had any more trouble so far. :)
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Buffy’s babies have grown so much!  They’re all feathered out now and running all over the property chasing bugs and scratching in the grass.  I’ve got to say that it’s a million times easier to let the chickens raise up the babies! 

A couple of weeks ago she moved them into the henhouse with the rest of the chickens.  I was surprised to see them all perched way up high and thought, “how in the world did they get up there?”  I guess they’re light enough and those little wings can carry them pretty high.  I should dig out the ramp I used to have in there when my layers were just little pullets.  I took it out when they were big enough that they didn’t need the ramp.  Once those Wellie girls start to put on some weight I think they’ll have a harder time hoping up that high. 

I guess I’ll be getting my first eggs from these girls in November (or maybe even October).  How egg-citing!

This weekend I had so many chores to do but I kept finding reasons to head over to the henyard.  Buffy's Welsummer babies are so fun to watch!  She's teaching them where to forage for all the yummiest foods and they're learning fast.  I even noticed one of them was already trying to dust herself.

They love it when I salt the yard with fresh straw... they all run right out to eat up the seed heads.  Must be like hershey kisses in the chicken world!  Then they scratch around under it to see if any bugs might be hiding down there.  One of those chicks caught herself a cricket or something and I heard this ruckus of complaining cheeps then I saw her running across the yard with this bug sticking out of her beak.  All the babies were chasing her, complaining the whole time, and she was playing a good game of keep-away.  The early bird catches the grasshopper!

They're doing a lot of hopping, flapping and general running around and I can tell that Buffy feels that they're safest when she has the henyard to herself.  So I let everyone else out - except the two juvenile birds who are still too young to wander - and Buffy just lets her babies run like crazy all over. 

 

Buffy has been very serious about raising up her babies.  She stayed in the interior nest area of the broodie-box for the entire first week.  Finally I saw her come out into the tiny attached outdoor area but if you got too close to the box she'd round 'em up and head back inside.  But at least everyone was getting some fresh air.

I opened the front gate of the box today and just let her decide if she was ready to venture out into the henyard with the babies yet.  She must be going stir crazy being cooped up in that nest for a month!  Well, she was very cautious but finally brought them out into the 30 x 30 enclosure that surrounds the henhouse.  I had already let the other girls out onto the property to free-range so she had the whole space all to herself.  It was nice to see her out laying in the sun with the babies all around her, some snuggled up into her fluffy feathers.

Buffy went broody on me and was fully committed to hatching this crazy purple plastic egg I had put in some unused nest boxes to encourage the girls to lay there.  I don't have a rooster so I got on ebay (gosh, you can buy anything there!) and ordered her some fertilized Welsummer eggs to set.  I built a broody box with her own extra large nest box and tiny outdoor run while she doted on her new eggs and 20 days later she had 5 babies!  She likes having her own private space and I'll like it when she gets off the nest long enough so I can clean it out.

The Welsummer's can be sight-sexed at birth - female's have a distictive triangle on top of their head and clear eyeliner, on the males all these marks are very fuzzy - each of Buffy's babies have well defined, sharp markings so I think I just got 5 more hens!  Yay... what luck!