The babies are growing up!

Remember these guys? These adorable little balls of fluff?

Look at them now! All grown up.

We have still have all 12 that hatched – even the little runty one made it through! 11 Australorps and 1 Barred Plymouth Rock. We’re still trying to figure out which are hens and which are roosters…we know for sure that the Plymouth Rock is a rooster – he may be the smallest but is he is definitely the boss and stands proud on the roost in the morning and crows his little heart out…well, sort of!

We have a good mix of the Australorp colours…1 “Splash”

5 “Blue” which are really a dark grey

And 5 black ones that have the most beautiful teal tint to their wing feathers (which you can’t see!)

I’m hoping that we get a good mixture of each colour that are hens as we will be keeping all the hens for layers. And yes, I’ll admit, that is only because I want my flock of hens to be pretty! We are planning on getting rid of the roosters but I’m tempted to keep one so that we can get fertilised eggs for the incubator. I’m not sure I can handle the early morning crowing but we found that with the last lot if we shut them in the coop until we were up they didn’t seem to crow. Might be worth a try…watch this space!