Odd Ducks...

Well, no ducks, really. Yet. But definitely Odd Poultry.

This is Leelu. She's a Narragansett Turkey, about 2 months old.


She hatched with 4 other viable turkey chicks, but she's the only one who survived a raccoon assault shortly after they were born. Leelu has been doing just fine and is a tough little turk. She's basically on her own now as her mom has wandered off into the tall grass, presumably to sit on a new nest. More on that in a future post. Narragansett turkeys are fun but they are the biggest troublemakers on the farm.


This Dark Cornish Chicken was a victim of the same raccoon. He was attacked when the birds were still sleeping on ground and we think the raccoon reached through a tiny gap between the coop and the ground and grabbed his leg.


He was pretty well beat up, but has recovered nicely - though he did loose the leg. He gets out and about with the other chickens, is growing well and even makes it up to the perch at night. We have named him Hawkbait.


Finally, we have Jesus (with the Latino pronunciation). We were out of town last weekend, and when we came back, Jesus was waiting for us outside the chicken pen. He was born, seemingly a week early and took it upon himself to wander away from his brooding mama - still incubating his brothers and sisters - and explore his world.


At first, Bill attributed his birth to immaculate conception (I'm not really sure how that works in chickens? Maybe I could buy-in to immaculate hatching though), but has recently changed his theory.... Earlier this spring we had two clutches of chicks hatch - 13 babies in total. When they were about a week old, one of the wyandottes (like Jesus) disappeared without a trace, leaving us with 12.

Bill has decided a wormhole opened up in the chicken pen and Jesus stumbled into it and was transported a few months into the future - thus showing up in our pen last week.

The baby chicken is certainly a mystery. Chicken eggs incubate for 21 days. Given when the hens started setting, we weren't expecting any chicks until this weekend. Jesus' first clutch-mate was born this morning, actually.


Pretty odd stuff!