a friend for venus!

finding venus alive immediately answered my question - will we keep raising chickens?  we have to!  we have venus, there is no decision to be made.  venus needs company.

the best pal for venus would be another hen, so i set out to track down a good hen for us in houston.  ironically, we moved out of the city limits but i drove to a feed store inside the loop of busy houston to buy a chicken. 

welcome spring!

spring is a new beginning.  a promise of things to come.  so a good name for this girl.

spring, the easter egger

spring is an easter egger, like singer.  easter eggers are not a true breed, they are hybrid chickens, so they can look quite different from each other.  i think "hybrid" is a euphemism for "mutt", but i don't mind.  and i love those blue / green eggs.  spring is about 3 months old, so she is not of egg laying age just yet.

what i can say about spring is that she was not hand raised, like my chickens were, so she is Not crazy about me.  she bit me!  i've not been bitten by a chicken before.  i've been pecked.  but spring latched onto my finger and would not let go!  don't worry, she'll warm up to me.

i know (i read) that 30 day quarantine is recommended when new chickens are introduced, but venus just could not be all alone for 30 days.  i chose to put them together right away and i'm crossing fingers that all is okay.

venus immediately perked up when i brought spring home yesterday.  she hopped down to check her out and within minutes was bossing her a bit and strutting around the coop making happy, chirpy sounds.  wonderful.  any doubts i had about bringing a new hen home vanished. 

spring took to venus right away too.  when i walked into the coop today she tried to hide under venus like a baby chick under a mother hen!  so funny.  venus stepped aside and gave her a confident peck on her fuzzy little head and spring beat it pretty quick.

of course, maybe it wasn't me.  spring might have been scared of this guy trying to climb inside her hen house:

the two chickens slept side by side last night and i felt so much better knowing venus was not alone in the empty hen house.

and this morning, venus laid an egg.