Well, that was exciting. I need some rescue remedy to lower my heart rate, but it was fun. I've never been to a poultry auction before, and I had to beg the man to take me, but we made it - and stuck around for the bidding. There were some beautiful birds there but the spangletastic ones - the silver and gold laced wyandottes - sold for far more than we were willing to bid.
The auctioneer and his assistant were worth listening to alone, drawing many a laugh as they called out the value of the birds. My favourites were:
'Great for the pot, bit of salt and pepper and he'll cook up good'
'This one'd be good to piss the neighbours off'
'Whatdya reckon about this one for your lawn?'
Some went for far beyond what I could believe - $250 bucks for white legbar rooster? Is there something I'm missing here - ohhhhh - blue eggs? They'd wanna have a girl legbar then! $100 bucks for a pair of Indian runner ducks - didn't realise they were that expensive!
In the end, we went for the marans - I especially liked the copper marans. They're a good quiet bird apparently, though the noises some of the blond ones are making would give lie to that descriptor. Funny things. They've all settled in pretty well. I wish I didn't have to work tomorrow so I could just hang out with my chookie wookies.
Marans lay dark brown eggs - almost chocolate in colour. Apparently, they were the favourite egg of James Bond - he was quite particular about his food, it seems. Since learning of that fact, the man is a little more keen on the fact we have 6 more chickens than the 3 he wanted.
Copper Marans CAN lay eggs THIS brown!!
A few more fun facts about marans:
- The darker the egg, the fewer that are laid - the quicker an egg passes through a chicken, the lighter it will be!
- They're very docile and calm - and great mothers
- They originally came from breeding Indian and Indonesian fighting birds that came back to France and were bred for dark eggs
- They originally came from the Port of Marans in France, but are apparently rare in the US?
Sorry about the one photo - they would NOT stay still and all the rest are blurry. Never fear though - I'll take some more photos in the next week or so. I'm getting all excited as I read about them and told the man I'm buying a copper maran rooster. Apparently this isn't going to happen.
Watch this space.
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