This weekend I became obsessed possessed with the need to find some new chicks. I'm not sure why this happened to me. Perhaps it was the fact that I ended up buying two dozen eggs from the store over the last week, I'm not sure.
If you know me at all then you know I have a strange quirkiness for owning the "slightly rare and/or unusual" (eg: Irish Dexter cattle, although they are not so rare anymore; Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, and now his replacement Clyde, the goofy Bracco Italiano).
On my quest for a "different" kind of chicken I remembered reading in another blog a commenter who has Speckled Sussex chickens. She mentioned how they are extremely friendly and lay nice brown eggs. As my search for this type of chick went on I stumbled across some other chickens that were categorized as rarish and brown egg layers.
Eventually I made a list of four breeds I was interested in. They were the Barnevelder, Marans (several varieties), Welsummer, and the Speckled Sussex. (You can do a Google Image search to see what they each look like.) They each had attributes I liked (which to me sounds slightly silly to say about a chicken!) and so the real search was on.
I checked a bunch of commercial hatcheries and most were sold out for 2009, or they didn't carry the breeds. I'm one of those people that when I get something in my head (and it's not too expensive) I really want it now!
What to do next? Why, e-bay of course!
I've looked on e-bay before, just browsing things like jewelry or cow bells, but have never purchased anything there. The only on-line auction I ever did was about 15 years ago from a video auction site when I won a VHS of the movie
"The Final Option" (called "Who Dares Wins" in Britain).
So guess what? They really do sell everything on e-bay! Some of the prices for some of the fertilized eggs were already too steep for me, so I found a couple of egg auctions that hadn't yet gone too high, and that were scheduled to end fairly soon. I watched and waited until virtually the last minute and made my move, but was outbid. That's when I learned about the automatic bidding. Also, I hadn't yet opened my PayPal account so I vowed to do better on the next one. I got ready to go and again, in the last seconds entered my bid. Someone else had done the automatic thing and I was outbid again, but I had enough time to post one more bid and I won. (Or as my friend says, You didn't "win"; you "bought" something. I prefer to think I won!)
I received my precious 6 + 2 eggs today. (I've learned that most egg sellers will usually add about 10% eggs in case of breakage during shipping.) They came in a big box.
Each egg was carefully individually wrapped, first in a paper towl, then bubble wrap, then a sheet of newspaper.
Then they were placed in the big box of shredded paper. I was afraid that I would break one just trying to unwrap them all!
Here is a picture of the unwrapped eggs with a white egg from one of my leghorns. I didn't have any brown eggs to really compare. But you can get a good idea of just how dark brown these eggs are.
I had contacted a neighbor a couple of houses down who raises quail and pheasant. He has an incubator and he said I could use it if I needed to. Fortunately for me one of the banties I adopted from next door just got broody. I replaced each of the eggs she was setting on with a "Wheaton Marans" egg. I didn't feel like getting pecked so I wore gloves for the transfer procedure.
Now hopefully in 21 days we'll have 8 new baby chicks. And all but one will be pullets!
Keep your fingers crossed for me!
PS-Did you know there are actually several on-line auctions dedicated to selling poultry and poultry eggs? Just Google "egg auctions" and you'll see. Who knew?
My husband told me the peacocks at Hart Park were doing their breeding displays and I thought it might be cool if I could catch them in action. As it turns out I only got the one (above) displaying and he unfortunately was in the shade.
My trip wasn't totally in vain though because I still got a few shots of the birds. Their peacock blue is really stunning and the photos just don't do their brilliance justice.
This was a beautiful male. Unfortunately he was in the shade. Look at his gorgeous train. I did enhance it just a little so it was more visible.
These three played ring around the tree trunk for at least five minutes or more. It was kind of funny! Silly birds!
And this peahen is all white! I'm not sure if she is a true albino because her eyes are not pink. She kind of looks like a turkey.
And finally today I leave you with a closer shot of a male. He was sitting on top of a tall cyclone fence. I just can't get enough of that blue!
