Our New Young Basque Hens

We are growing out a new Basque flock that we are excited about. 

This is Tart.  She is already very curious and friendly.



This is Cherry Pie.  She is a bit pushy and I bet a daughter of Gloria.  I hope she makes a great layer, like her momma.






































We look forward to seeing what kind of chicks they will produce in the Spring.  The flock will be 3 hens strong and have a new young rooster.  The whole flock will have bright yellow legs, something we are wanting to improve. 

The Basque standard states that yellow legs are the standard, not the grey legs that many of our current birds are sporting, including Doc, our mature rooster. Once we get the right leg color, we will work on other traits.

 I've really enjoyed our older flock, but they are about to go to a new home.  Some friends of ours have agreed to take the whole flock and let it free range on their 3 acres of beautiful, green and tree dotted land.  I bet the flock will be very happy there.  They will all move out in about a month. 

Our new flock should be laying in the Spring.  The new rooster is a pretty boy hatched from a Butter Cup and Popcorn which is a pair out of our young flock that we rehomed at 10 weeks old to a near by farm.  The two little hens we plan on keeping come from our hens and Doc.  We also plan on keeping Cotton, our first Basque Hen we hatched straight from Green Fire Farms.  So the flock will have a good, diverse gene pool.

This is Jed, the new Rooster.

Here he is trying to remove a thorn from his foot.  Poor guy.  Don't worry, he got it out.  You can see how yellow his feet are.

So far he is a nice mannered guy.  I think he will be mild mannered like Doc, but only time will tell.  He let me pick him up with no problems today.

This is Bree, she is already sold to a new home, but you can see her grey legs in comparison to Tart's below.  I was really tempted to keep her because her color is so nice.
 



Although not the standard, I really like Tart's speckled feathers.

This is Cotton, our oldest hen and beautiful in color.  Her feet appear really grey in this photo compared to the young pullets but she did have more yellow color when she was younger.  Some sources say that as a hen lays lots of eggs, the color will drain from her feet and beak.  The photo is also a bit washed out.  We would probably keep her anyway just because she is completely unrelated to our other birds.  We hope that as we breed her to the new Rooster, we will get offspring with her pretty color, and his pretty legs.