So I finally got my chickens.  I found them on Craig’s list.  Some egg farmer on Bainbridge Island was reducing his flock.  They’re 9 weeks old, so they’re still cute and tiny and they cheep, but they’re not chicks any more so don’t need a lot of work.  I wanted a mix, so I got one buff Orpington,

one barred Plymouth Rock,

and a Golden Buff of some variety (Hisex brown I think).

The Golden Buff is supposed to be the champion egg-layer of the bunch, and was advertised as having “top genetics” which, being the good geneticist that I am, meant I had to get one.  I got the barred Rock because I think they’re such a pretty breed.  And I got the buff Orpington because I asked the farmer who would be friendly.

Back when I was first agitating for chickens, I kept bugging Mark to name his hypothetical chicken.  I knew I had him when he finally came up with “Lester” after a few weeks of badgering.  Lester was our mortgage broker’s name.  The farmer kept telling us about the superior feed conversion of the Golden Buff, which seems like something a mortgage broker would care about, so she’s Lester.  We named the barred Rock Hester, which seems suitably old fashioned.  The buff Orpington pecked me, making her mean, and I’ve been watching a lot of Glee lately, so her name is Sue Sylvester.  (Actually, it was her sister who pecked me, so we traded her out for a different specimen, but the name stuck just the same.)

So far Lester is the friendliest.  She’s very soft and lets me pet her without too much drama.  Sue will also submit to being picked up.  Hester squawks bloody murder and runs away from me when I try to grab her, so I need to work on her a little more.  She’s the bravest one, though: came out of the coop first, found the food first, ventured into the nesting boxes first.

The Chup is scared of them, even though their combined weight is probably 1/5 of his.  Haha.  He won’t even go near the coop.