Kitchen chicks

New addition to our household: the first two chicks that hatched! One was born yesterday, the other one today. As far as I know the chickens are still brooding on four or five more eggs, but it's hard to see. For some reason my chickens always brood in pairs: they co-parent the eggs and later the babies. That's fine with me, but the only problem is that when you lift one chicken up to see how many eggs are underneath her, the other chicken hurries up and covers the eggs with her feathers (and warmth). I'll have to be patient and let them surprise me.

I brought the chicks in the house to have them pose for me. Isn't it funny how the brown chick is almost twice the size of the yellow one? They're different kinds of chickens, that's easy to see.

Not a chicken

Sometimes I'm so glad I'm not a chicken. Imagine having to lay a 7 cm (2.75 inch) egg!

Ok, I hadn't meant to make this an anology. But all of a sudden I'm reminded that I'm pregnant and that the average baby is a lot bigger. Mm, I guess I'm not going to think of that yet...

Family portrait

Prairiecowboy had asked me how the baby chicks were doing. Time for an update!

Here's a before picture:

The little one that is face down didn't make it. But two other ones did, so four chicks survived. Three of these babies turned out to be roosters, one of them is a hen. She's lucky. Check out Prairiecowboy's site to see what will eventually happen to the roosters.
Let's start with a photo of Bjorn and Marloes. Bjorn is the white rooster, Marloes is one of his wives. Both these chickens were born here October last year.


If you wonder why Marloes's feathers are a little jagged on the side, well, let's just say Bjorn is to blame for that.

Here's a slightly scary picture of the four chicks in a row. The big ones are Marloes's boys (or her sister Piri Piri, it's hard to tell because they're identical).


Left to right: rooster, rooster, rooster, hen. They're all the same age, though different in size. The first rooster and the hen's mothers are a lot smaller than Marloes and Piri Piri. That's why their kids are smaller, too. Bjorn is the father to all of these kids.

This is Ellen and her son. You can tell they're alike. This little boy is the dark chick from the top photo.

The chickens were pretty freaked out by the camera's flash. That's why none of the pictures turned out to be World Press Photo candidates ;-). That's ok though, you get the idea!

Fiery Chicken

This week is Easter break and I'm a week off. So today I decided to cook a really nice dinner, because I love doing that. I still had a rooster in the freezer so I took that out and fixed it. But the minute my husband got home from work and I started to put everything on the table, he was paged by the fire department. That's why I ate by myself... But the dinner was good enough to share it with you. I thought it was about time for another recipe!

Nic's roast rooster with vegetables

You will need:

- 1 whole chicken
- 1 stem of leek, chopped
- stalk of celery, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 onion, diced
- about 10 cherry tomatoes, halved (a few big tomatoes in chunks are ok too)

- 1 big carrot, diced
- 3 potatoes, peeled and diced
- rosemary
- paprika
- salt and pepper
- about a glass of red wine
- the same amount of bouillon (chicken or herb)
- margarine and olive oil

Dry the chicken and season generously with rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper. Melt the margarine and olive oil and heat in a large skillet. Brown the chicken on all sides (this may take a while). When the chicken looks crispy and brown, take it out of the skillet. In the hot grease, brown the onion, garlic, carrot and potatoes. Stir for a little bit, then add the celery and tomatoes. Pour in the wine and bouillon and stir gently. Put the chicken on top of the vegetables and cover the skillet. Let simmer for a good long while (I think it may have taken me two hours), turning the chicken every once in a while. When the meat is so tender it starts to fall off the bones, you can be sure that it is done.

I served this with homemade biscuits. It tasted really good!

Roosters Goodbye

The four white chickens you see here are roosters. The two brown ones are hens. All of them were hatched October 29. The roosters eat a lot, poop a lot, fight and aren't very productive. That is why I gave three of them away to our uncle, who promised to return one (deep-frozen). One is allowed to stay and rule over the hen house (as long as he isn't too noisy, like Tandoori was). Some people say this is cruel, but I guess that's the way farm life can be...

More chicks

Look, now we're chicks with feathers! Out of the ten eggs, nine hatched. One chick died on the second day, so now we have eight little chicks. Four are dark yellow and four are light yellow colored. I wonder what color they'll have once they're grown up...

Here we are!

Yesterday, there were two. Today there were four (one still wet) and one egg was moving. This is so cool!!

Making babies

No, not me! I know that we are married now, and that I am 26 so in the making babies-demographic, but sorry: we're not ready yet. However, two of my chickens are working on making babies: Kuifje and Ellen. They had both been broody for a few days already, and I had tested how determined they were by letting them brood on one of their own eggs. But since we don't have a rooster anymore, that would never work out. M's uncle donated some eggs from a chicken who does have a husband, and now they're both hard-working brooding chicks. In about three weeks we'll hopefully have ten little ones in the hen house!

A really cool egg

Look what I just found in the hen house! It must be the smallest egg ever...

Chicken news

Tandoori the rooster was a very noisy animal. He turned out to be noisy at the most annoying times. He cried 27 times at 4:30 in the morning on Christmas day, for example. So when my uncle offered to adopt him I was only glad, because our neighbours had started to complain.

After I had given him away, I only had 2 chickens left: Kerrie and Miss Tok. I decided to give them a good start of the new year: I was going to clean their house. Their house is half of the chicken shed. Usually when I clean it, they walk around in the other half of the shed until everything is in order for them to go back. But that day they decided the world was bigger than the chicken shed and walked outside. When they were on the lawn I thought they looked so cute that I would let them be outside. After all, they couldn't do any harm.
But then the neighbour and his hunting dog came walking through our yard, on the way to his business which is on the other side of our house. The dog discovered the free roaming chickens and dove right in. I heard a lot of noise and saw the chickens fly away. We could easily catch Kerrie but Miss Tok was nowhere to be found. I was all worried, but at the end of the afternoon she was found by M's father and put back in the shed.

While she was away, I had found an internet ad for chickens for €2, only 10 km away from here. So I called the guy and M and I picked up 2 new additions to the hen house last night.
So now we have four young ladies in the hen house. From left to right: Ellen, Kerrie, Miss Tok. And the little girl on the left's name is Kuifje.