Vibrant Velvet

Backyard Poultry

Beautiful Barred Rock

Over my nearly four years of raising chickens, I've had a total of six Barred Rock hens (well, plus Puzzle the Barred Rock rooster). I got three the first year and three the second. Of those, four of them were lost to various ailments (you know, unexplained chicken diseases). That left my flock with one Barred Rock from my first chick batch, and one from the second. Velvet was from the second, almost three years old. It was a very spunky chicken that was always high in the pecking order, and high on our attention list. In fact, Velvet was sort of my sister's pet chicken (and/or my way of endearing my chickens to her considering their habits of eating all her ducks' food and shoveling straw out of her duck house).

Velvet

I always loved Velvet's crooked comb and beautiful zebra feathers. The hen was easy to cuddle since it had such plush feathers and, well, a good bit of fat under them. I think Velvet enjoyed being carried around in our arms and getting that extra - er - occasional helping of scratch. It took egg-laying very seriously, and any human hands that got to close would immediately receive a hard peck. Velvet's next favorite activity was dust bathing, and it sure took a lot of scratching to get all those feathers clean!

Evening Perch on a Fencepost

This past summer Velvet started going broody, sitting stubbornly in the nest box day and night--and biting anyone who reached in to get it out. We had to separate the determined hen in a fence so it couldn't get to the nest box. It could take 3-5 days before Velvet forgot about being a mother, and then we'd go about a month before we found it lingering in the nest box again. This probably happened four or five times before winter set in! I think Velvet would have made a good mother though. It certainly was a blessing to raise for almost three years and will be missed.