The Australorp

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 imaginary eggs for ages. This year, she went broody twice! We had to break her broodiness as she lost a lot of weight and was getting mite infestations. It takes her a few weeks to start laying after being broody. So far, she doesn't lay for about a third of the year, she is either broody or moulting and not laying eggs. It really does depend on the personality of the bird. Next time she is broody, we're going to set some fertile eggs under her and see how good a mum she can be.

Australorp egg left, Plymouth rock egg on top

TEMPERAMENT

Because of her size, she likes to eat A LOT! She is always the first hen over when you bring food out. When we first got her, she was extremely timid and smaller hens would bully her. Nowadays, her appetite makes her pushier and she uses her bulk to move other hens out of the way to get to food. I have not seen her be aggressive to other chickens. 

Towards humans, she still remains quite timid, it took us a long time before she would eat out of our hands, but she hates to be touched. Which makes catching her quite a noisy and tiresome experience. She's not a great flyer or jumper, she will rather run to get out of the way. She has this odd maneuver where she will run straight at you and then swerve out of the way. She does this especially when you are trying to herd her to a certain location, she will run in the opposite direction that you want her to go!

Moulting Effie

Effie also moults every Autumn. She probably moults the most out of all our chickens, the backyard basically looks like a pillow pillow fight occurred when she starts moulting. She looks a lot smaller with the loss of feathers, but it takes her about 1-2 months to grow them back to their normal black with green sheen. Of course, this means no eggs (hmpf!). 

As for foraging, she's not the best digger in the garden, but she will eat every single vegetable in your veggie patch and to add insult to injury, dig a hole in it too. You will often find her hanging around the back door, waiting for you to bring out treats.

In the (very) hot Adelaide climate that we get in summer, Effie seems to cope quite well. The other hens would be panting and lifting their wings off their body on about 30 degree days, whereas Effie doesn't show these signs of heat stress.

Yes, she's a big girl

 Our Australorp is now known to be noisy, maybe after she has laid an egg, she may sing the egg song. Her bigger lungs does mean that this song has a loud "buk buk buk HONK!" sound. She makes excited noises when she sees food though! Bear in mind, the more a chicken eats, the bigger the poo! And generally, bigger chickens = bigger poo! OMG, some of the poos that she does are bigger than my dog's, and he's a corgi size dog. And they poo throughout the day and night. >.<

LIFESPAN

They live up to 10 years,  but ours is only 2 years old. In comparison to the ISA brown, she doesn't look tired or worn out at this age. Australorps are known to continue laying consistently throughout their life, probably because they take "rest" periods during the year (moulting, broody etc) and don't churn out eggs like the ISA browns.  Overall, for large eggs throughout a longer lifespan and can handle the Australian heat, Australorps are a good choice. Just be mindful that they will eat more than a standard hen.