The Luck of the Draw!

It is now nearly eight weeks on and my four little balls of fluff have become adolescent 'peeps'. Like any mother I have been anxiously watching how my babies develop. Being new to this game I wasn't sure how I would tell the sex of the little ones. So, I submitted these photos of them to 'Backyard Poultry', a very popular website of chicken enthusiasts to see what the experts thought. My first photos were rejected on the basis that I didn't show good 'comb' shots. This was somewhat disappointing as I had spent a good half hour trying to compose nice profiles of my chookies as I lay next to the coop. I had to enlist Inger to help me catch each chicken and then take a nice macro shot of each comb which could then be submitted. I am not going to subject you to the detailed comb shots as they are altogether too technical for a blog of this sort.

After some deliberation the experts have come to a verdict on my 'girls'. It seems that three of them may not be girls at all. The three grey chickens may in fact be cockerels which will be a bit tricky. The local council does not allow people to keep roosters in suburbia as their crowing is too noisy. So, they will probably have to be re-homed when they get a bit bigger. The other interesting point which came out of photographing the chickens is that they may be araucanas, a breed which lays blue eggs.