This good looking girl is Magdalena, a Delaware hen! I bought her from a feed store as a chick a couple years ago. I found someone willing to trade chicks for goat stud services and bought a batch of Delaware chicks to seal the deal. I had been planning to trade with some of my farm raised chicks but they are all straight run and I knew the owner of the buck preferred pullets.
I ended up keeping two of the Delaware pullets. The names we bestowed upon them were Magdalena and Margarita. They were almost identical. If you looked closely you could see Magdalena didn't have black feathers around the neck, but Margarita did. Magdalena only had a sprinkling of black tail feathers while Margarita had a generous cluster of black feathers.
Predictably, the Delaware breed originated in the state of Delaware. They are a heritage poultry breed and are somewhat endangered. They are a dual purpose breed, they lay fairly well but are also used as fryers.
The breed was developed by breeding Barred Plymouth Rock roosters with New Hampshire hens. This combination occasionally produced offspring with light coloration. After selectively breeding the light colored chickens, the Delaware breed was born.
My Delaware girls were easy going and laid large brown eggs. They never went broody and unlike some of my chickens, they maintained their dignity when molting.
During the past winter I unexpectedly lost two chickens to unknown causes, Margarita and Magdalena. They died about a month apart. They're the first chickens I've lost to natural causes.
I'll just be honest here, the only reason I chose to write about Magdalena and the Delaware breed is because it was the only animal photo on our computer that had already been exported from Lightroom. I passionately avoid Lightroom with all my mental might.
I'm curious if any of you readers have raised the Delaware breed? I chose not to add any chicks to my flock this spring except whatever my broody girls hatch, but if I had been purchasing chicks to add to the flock, Delawares would have been on the list.
