This is part one in a rather long series- one I’ve been cooking up in my head for a few months. It’s well known by us chicken owners that all chickens have different personalities. They all have differing levels of intelligence, aggressiveness, hardiness, and sass. So in celebration of that, I decided to write up little profiles for the various breeds we have dealt with.
Our First Lady up for an in depth profile is Hen, our silver laced Wyandotte.
(A little lesson in chicken names, silver laced refers to the coloring(silver) and pattern(laced) of their feathers, and Wyandotte is the breed type.)
She was one of our original 8 chicks, and her flock mate, the other silver laced Wyandotte was Rooster the Rooster. He was beautiful, but a real butthead and super loud, so didn’t last long. But that’s another blog altogether.
Wyandotte chickens are cold hardy chickens, with a rose comb that sees very little, if any frost damage. They lay beautiful pale brownish pink eggs. Hen’s eggs have always had bumpy calcium deposits on the pointed end.
They are dual purpose birds, developed in the 1870’s in America and were originally called American Sebrights. They have uncertain lineage from poor record keeping but Most experts agree that there is Spangled Hamburgs and Dark Brahmas in there predominantly. They are dependable layers, as Hen was still laying up to twice a week into her 4th year. Those distinctive calcium deposits allowed us to keep good track.
Hen was a great chicken. When other chickens started getting over aggressive, she jumped into the fray to break it up. She was one of the two chickens that came tearing out of the coop the night Lucy was grabbed by a raccoon, like she could do anything. We called her MamaHen. This last fall, she was attacked by another chicken and her comb was half ripped off. She handled herself very well and was easy to work with to get her healed up… in the end it healed fine, just a little floppy.
Hen was a phenomenal girl- friendly, bright, beautiful and protective of her flock.
We lost her and nine others in the great bobcat attack of March 2017.
So overall, we heartily recommend the Wyandotte, and especially the beautiful silver laced, for the backyard flock.
This year we added two golden laced girls to our family, Amelia and Delilah. I didn’t talk about them in this profile as they are only 3 month old pullets, and the golden laced is a little different history wise.
Until next time, have a wicked good day!
Gillis Gardens, LLC 