Ameraucana hen named “Zelda” with muffs and beard.

One of our hens is an “Ameraucana” (note spelling). She’s black in color and has beautiful streaks of gold among her black feathers along with a blue-green iridescent cloak around her neck that reflects in the sunlight. The Ameraucana breed was derived from chickens brought from Chile in the 1970’s that bore the gene that produced blue-green eggs. These original chickens had no tail. You can tell the difference between the original Araucana and the Ameraucana by noting the tail, muffs, and beard on the Ameraucana. The Ameraucana has small, round, earlobes, or absent earlobes, and their small pea cobs are red.

When we bought our Amerauacana pullet, the breeder insisted she was an Amerauacana and not an Easter Egger. That got me thinking, “What is wrong with an Easter Egger?” Turns out nothing except they have no standard and therefore cannot be shown in poultry shows. According to My Pet Chicken,“Easter Eggers are not a breed per se, but a variety of chicken that does not conform to any breed standard but lays large to extra large eggs that vary in shade from blue to green to olive to aqua and sometimes even pinkish. Easter Eggers vary widely in color and conformation and are exceptionally friendly and hardy. Since they are usually quite friendly to children and humans in general, they are a great choice for a family flock. Most hatcheries mistakenly label their Easter Eggers as Ameraucanas or Araucanas (or various misspellings thereof). Easter Eggers do not qualify to be shown, since they do not conform to a breed standard.”

We love our blue-green eggs and will continue to keep an Ameraucana or Easter-Egger so we can enjoy these eggs of a unique color.

Box containing Grandpas Feeder” has arrived.

Ever since we built the coop and outdoor run 10 years ago, we’ve had trouble with rats and wild birds eating the chicken food. While the feeder is in the covered area of the run, it has been accessible to critters who can burrow and fly into the area. To keep wild birds from eating the food during the day, we used hardware wire to cover the standard chicken wire. That worked for the wild birds. But the rats and mice that make little tunnels into the coop continued to steal chicken feed during the night.

To mitigate the loss of feed, we put the feeder into a covered trash can in the evening and take it out in the morning. While the husband is willing to go out at night to do this, I am not. When he was recently gone on a trip for a few nights, I saw how inconvenient this chore was. I splurged and ordered one of  “GRANDPAS FEEDERS“.

The galvanized “Grandpas feeder” metal feeder has a metal plate on which the hens must stand to open the lid. The hens have to learn how to get at their food. The layer pellets are enclosed until they step on the metal plate

properly. Now, let it be known that these three hens are quite bright and I have no doubt they will learn within a week or two, how to work this feeding machine.

Putting together Grandpas Feeder is easy. It takes about 30 minutes.

• Week One: the feeder is kept open.
• Week Two: the feeder is kept partially open.
• Week Three: the feeder is closed and hens must stand on a metal plate to open it and to avail themselves to the pellets.

Take a look at the new “Grandpas Feeder” on the “Live Webcam” and see how the hens are doing. This experiment will be interesting and I hope it reduces the loss of food to the tiny nocturnal creatures that visit at night.

UPDATE 8-2020

Our new pullets have had no problem adjusting to the Grandpa’s Feeder. It makes a loud noise when they step off the platform but this does not seem to bother them. We put a piece of weatherstripping on the flap that shuts down so that we would not have to listen to the sound all day. 

It’s early February and the hens are laying nearly every day. Green egg is  from an Ameraucana, large tan egg is from a Barred Rock, and medium egg is from a Buff Orpington.

Every afternoon I look forward to seeing what the three hens have laid for us. It is early February and they have finished their molting (moulting).They look clean and fresh and their personalities have changed from cranky to sweet.

Our weather has been warm this winter with sunny days in the 70’s. My apologies to those of you in the country that are still experiencing blizzards. In case you haven’t heard, we’re entering the worst drought in California’s history. If it doesn’t rain soon, we’ll surely have water rationing.

We usually don’t let the hens out to scratch for bugs and destroy the dirt garden paths until late afternoon. This way we can be certain they lay in their nest boxes, instead of in hidden nests among the shrubs. They are now each laying about 5 eggs a week. Thank you, Zelda, Roxanne, and Marigold for these beautiful eggs.

Henrietta eating watermelon with her new roommate, Goldie.

When you get new hens, you don’t know if they will get along together. You hope there won’t be a problem hen in the flock. You have to give it some time while they become acquainted and the pecking order is established. When we bought two hens from one backyard flock and two hens from another, we thought we’d made good choices. We considered breeds and age. All the hens were under a year old and all fairly good sized and known for egg production.

One speckled Sussex was quite striking. She had real spirit. When she scratched in the dirt, dust flew, and when food was brought to the flock, she was the first one to grab it. What became intolerable was her constant picking on Zelda, the Easter egger and Marigold, the buff Orpington. She wouldn’t allow them to eat or drink. Their combs were covered with scabs as Marigold was taking bites out of them whenever they wandered too close.

One morning my friend across town called to tell me a fox had killed one of her two hens. She had had people for dinner and had been distracted when cleaning up. When she’d gone out at twilight to lock her hens up for the night, the hen was dead. She said she usually locked the two girls up in the late afternoon when the fox was in hiding. “Do you have a hen I could put with my lonely solitary one?” As a matter of fact, I did.

I am hoping that Henrietta, with a huge new run with lots of room to peck and scratch, will be a good companion for a young sex-link. And, so far it has been ideal. They’re good friends and there is no other hen (to be “odd man out”) for Henrietta to pick on. I’m hoping I’ve found Henrietta’s ideal home. I’ve learned that if there is a problem hen, sometime it is better to rehome her if you can. A different environment and different companions might be just the thing for a problem hen.