Meet the Goldhen Girls!
The Goldhen Girls of Sparrow House are my sweetest little angel babies. There have been many generations since the dawning of The Pandemic, but Cricket Jean and I raised the latest gaggle of tiny dinosaurs from chicks Last Spring and I love them all to pieces. The G-girls produce a whopping 14 eggs a day - what we like to call The Sparrow House Dozen ™. We keep a monthly Egg Tally to keep track of their production, and share farm fresh eggs with all our guests at Sparrow House. I’ll share how we care for them on socials and in future posts on The Murmuring.
Caption: The Sparrow House Dozen ™
Most crucially, I have 5 unnamed chickens and we need your help suggesting appropriate names. I have a superstition about naming them too early, as you never know who will actually make it to their first birthday. We have 2 sister hens of each breed; one half of each pair of sisters has a Name, the other is left Unnamed. It's super important we get them all named before their 1st birthday in May when we throw the First Annual Chicken Ball - the G-Girls’ Garden Party Birthday - so take a gander at the ones we’ve named below, their breed, personality and the color of their eggs for inspiration.
The Named:
Dorothy the Lavender Orpington - Leader of the pack. Kind of a mean. Lays rosy pink eggs.
Sofia the Speckled Sussex - Super friendly! Loves to be the first to say hi to me first during morning feeding time.
Blanche the Ameraucana - Baby doll. Exceptionally beautiful. Lays handsome, sky blue eggs.
Rose the French Dark Chocolate Maran - Sweetheart. Mysterious. Lays chocolate brown eggs.
Weird Beard the Olive Egger - Fine. When Werner Herzog monologued about chickens in Burden of Dreams, it may as well have been about her. Lays mossy, olive green eggs like Dr. Seuss was always talking about.
Cluck Norris the Buff Orpington - Fiery. Unnecessarily violent and peck-y. Will jump and bodyslam me or untie my shoes any chance she gets. Light brown eggs.
Jolene the Buff Orpington - Exactly like her sister, only broodier. Light brown eggs.
Pearl the Salmon Faverolle - The bottom of the barrel. Abused mercilessly by literally everyone in the coop. Currently missing all her neck feathers, poor babe, and looks just like a Compsognathus. Lays the faintest, pinky-cream eggs.
Andie the White Crested Black Polish - Marches to the beat of her own drum. Off by herself always, especially inside the old, abandoned mini coop inside the run. Curious about people. A daydreamer. Screams at everyone at the top of her perch. Lays smooth, oblong, reptilian-looking white eggs. Possibly an alien?*
The Unnamed:
Speckled Sussex - Positively evil. Light brown eggs.
French Dark Chocolate Maran - Precious Angel Baby. Remarkably fluffy. Kind. Dark, chocolate eggs.
Salmon Faverolle - Less of a pushover than her sister, Pearl. But also picked on by all the others for no good reason. Missing half of one toe. Pinky-cream eggs.
Lavender Orpington - Kind of the worst. Light brown eggs.
White Crested Blue Polish - An odd duck like her sister, but very good at masking and hanging out with the rest of the girls. Never picked on. Same kind of weird, white eggs with the shiny, thin shells. The rest of the G-girls keep their distance from the two Cresteds.
*During the pandemic, AKA the time of “The Goldhen Girls: 1st Generation”, we had a strange happening one day where a chicken identical in size and shape to my flock just randomly appeared out of nowhere in the forsythia bushes. She didn’t belong to our neighbor and we couldn’t tell if she fell off the back of a truck or followed us home from the Chicken Farm or what. She eerily resembled two of our Plymouth Rock Hens almost identically. We ignored her for a few days but when she wouldn’t leave the bush, we caved and let her inside the Chicken Haus to live with The G-Girls. Weirdly, they accepted her into the Pecking Order right away without any of the usual hazing and abuse. We called this weirdo Stranger Danger and always suspected she was one of those shapeshifting alien creatures from The Thing. Anyway. Andie kind of reminds me of Stranger Danger. There’s always one.