My husband was talking to our daughter Amy on the phone, and I heard him say, "Our chickens are Arauacana chickens; you've probably never heard of them," to which she replied, "Oh, yes! I know exactly what they are. They're the kind Martha Stewart has. She uses their eggs in her recipes!"
After hearing that, I looked up Martha Stewart's chickens on the internet. She was doing a show about them, holding and petting them, as was her guest, exclaiming over their beauty and their pretty colored eggs!
Today as we were out feeding them, I looked at our pullets with new appreciation. They really are beautiful! The ruff of feathers about the neck is like a collar that slips up and down with ease with each head movement. The feathers of the ruff seem tipped with black arrow heads that shimmer against the golden feathers of their bodies. Others have the design repeated with black upon brown, or any combination of colors, including pinky-grey and shades of muted gold and brown.
They are nothing like the little cheeping balls of fluff we kept in a basket at home until they could escape with their tentative leaps and spreading wings. One of the 16 chicks was different, and the packing list identified it as "exotic." It was black and white speckled and has grown into a magnificent bird!
One day Howard stopped in his tracks at the farm and told me to listen. He said he heard a rooster crow. Of course, I thought, we have a huge red rooster, but he swore it wasn't the one he heard. A few minutes later, I heard a raspy crowing from inside the barn, rather like a teenager whose voice was changing. Sure enough, it was the black and white chicken, surprising us by being a rooster! We found out he is a Homberg, a German breed. Now he struts around like royalty, his fan-like tail stiff and erect, a slender prince in the chicken yard.
The guest on the Martha Stewart show, also a chicken fancier, expressed how observing her chickens is good therapy. "They are funny, intelligent, and interesting," she said. My husband couldn't agree more! He could stand for hours contemplating them. I saw a little vignette played out in the barn yard myself yesterday.
We had let the chickens out from their nighttime enclosure, and they were darting here and there, eagerly foraging and happily scratching in the dried thatch of grass and soft earth. Suddenly a chicken dashed in spurts, zig-zagging in a wild hurry with something dangling from her beak. A long worm, like a fishing worm! I could see the worm getting shorter and shorter with each pass she made with a coop-mate in hot pursuit. Finally, it disappeared, lunch for the happy hen.
The television guest said raising and watching chickens is good for the soul. Well, I know they were the Sunday dinner centerpiece on many tables of yesteryear when the preacher was a guest, giving them the name "glory bird." I don't want that to happen to any of our flock, but I can't wait to see the blue and green eggs they will lay, maybe just in time for Easter!
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