Blue Tamago

Finally, about the chickens that this site is named after! Araucanas are well known for their blue eggs, hence Blue Tamago (tamago =  egg in Japanese). We got this breed for no other reason than to make our egg basket look pretty, we already had brown, beige and white eggs, now to add blue and you get a fantastic looking egg collection. There seems to be a bit of confusion in what an Araucana should look like. In America, Araucanas do not have tails (rumpless)and have some seriously funny handlebar ear tufts, no beards or muffling on their heads. The gene for ear tufts are called an incomplete dominant gene, only one copy of the gene is required to produce the ear tufts. Incomplete means that having the gene doesn't necessarily mean you will get ear tufts. To make matters worse, this gene is lethal when present on both alleles. This means that chickens with the tufts have a dominant copy and an recessive copy of the gene and unfortunately 1 in 4 chicks from...

There is only one word to sum up Barnevelders, LAZY.  If you have a small yard and you want chickens that take confinement well, then read on, Barnevelders may be the chicken for you. We got our Barney (yes yes, we are not imaginative with names at all >.<) at the Gawler poultry sale with our Leghorn. We paid $35 for this chicken, to this day, I'm not sure if she was worth the early morning start to get to the sales on time. We were told that she was 2 years old at the time we bought her. LAYING Well, according to all the literature that I have read, Barnevelders are supposed to lay dark brown eggs. We got swindled on this one, her eggs are speckledly at best. Nowadays, breeders go more for looks and do not select for egg colour. What a pity, we really wanted a chicken that laid dark brown eggs. Barney doesn't lay very often, at best, once every second day and for her size (she is only slightly smaller than the Australorp) her eggs are smaller, arou...

Meet our Leghorn, with her floppy comb, we called her Flopsy (yes, we're not very imaginative with names here). Most people would recognise Leghorns as large white birds with a floppy comb (remember the cartoon Foghorn Leghorn?), well, we got ourselves a rather rare cuckoo or barred coloured Leghorn. Got her for $20 at the Gawler poultry sale, considered to be cheap and she was about 1-2 years old when we bought her. She also had an odd spur nub on her left leg only. This probably brought her price down, but for a backyard hen, it was fine for us.  LAYING Leghorns are well known for laying large white eggs continuously (when they are not moulting or broody) throughout the year. So around the same size as the Australorp and the ISA brown, around 70gm. This is the first year we have had her, she stopped laying around autumn and we figured that this was just because she started moulting (black and white feathers everywhere!) Two months later, she had grown her feathers ba...

Effie our Australorp hen is a BIG girl with an appetite to match! This breed is Australia's version of the Orpington and hence are of a larger size than most hens. Effie has black plumage with a beetle green sheen in the sunlight, black legs and a black beak (although the tip of her beak is white). We picked her up along with a Plymouth Rock all the way from Riverton, up north in the state and it took us about 2 hours to drive there. Yes the things we do for chickens! She cost $40 from the backyard breeder. LAYING Effie lays big eggs, similar size to the Chicky, our ISA Brown, so around 70g and over. She has laid a whopper of over 80g, but that was a double yolker. Her eggs are a pale brown/beige, with a smooth shell. She generally lays 6 out of 7 days. Apparently an Australorp holds the world record for the most amount of eggs laid in a year, 364 eggs out of 365. Well there was not chance that our Effie would go near that record, last year she went broody and sat on i...

We've had our ISA brown for about two years now and I thought it would be nice to share my experiences with her.  ISA browns are a sex-linked hybrid, meaning that they are a cross breed and the gender can be identified at birth/hatching.  She was one of many other hens sold at the pet store and we bought her as a POL, or point of lay, aged at around 15-16 weeks old. When we first got her, she had a small comb and wattle, both of which were quite pale. These would grow bigger and redder as she approached laying age, around 20-22 weeks of age.  LAYING  This hybrid is well known for it's phenomenal egg laying capabilities, and our Chicky didn't dissapoint. For her small stature, she lays huge eggs, most topping the 70g mark. Only once has she laid a fart egg (small egg in between cycles, no yolk, just white). I do find that her egg shells are thinner than the purebreeds. She lays every day and takes a one day rest every month. Lays througout winter and I have n...