9 May 2000
Hi!
Tom and I picked up 3 Silver-Grey Dorkings (our favorite breed of chicken)
at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Fair on Sunday. It wasn't that the
festival had poultry, but that one of the country's leading Dorking breeders
lives near there & met us at the fairgrounds with 3 hens. It
was very hot and we didn't dare leave them in the car even with windows
open, so we made a mad dash back to Massachusetts in air-conditioned comfort!
We had brought along a dog crate, rigged with 2 perches for them.
The Dorkings were pretty good travelers, though they all eventually decided
that roosting on the perches was too precarious given the state of the
roads. It was also very hard to keep water in their dish and I was
worried about them dehydrating. And there is not much in the way
of grocery stores on the various turnpikes on our route back. So we stopped
at McDonalds, got them garden salads to peck at and they did fine.
In fact they laid 2 eggs on the trip back up, which we had for supper when
we got back home at 9:30 Sunday night. We had thought we would miss
the last ferry and have to spend the night on the mainland. We settled
the new birds in and after a day with some squabbling as the pecking order
is re-established, they are fitting in well! Poor Tessa, the rooster,
is run ragged trying to keep order. Every squabble means that he
has to come over and investigate and try to break it up.
The three new hens are learning the routines of the coop - they have
figured out how to perch on round perches as opposed to the square perches
they were used to, found the nest boxes (pic attached), decided they like
cucumbers as treats, and understand when it gets dark they are to go inside
with everybody else and choose a roosting place. They still need
to work on fine art of going in one hatch and out the other when they want
to go from one side of the run to the other and don't want to be picked
up yet. The new hens are truer to the Dorking "standard of perfection"
that is used to judge the breed. Their breasts have redder feathers,
legs are lighter colored, 5th toe is almost parallel to the ground rather
than sticking up at an angle, legs are
shorter - though I think the combs on the original batch are better.
These aren't show chickens, just their relatives! Two are about 6
months old and one is a year old, I think. No names yet!
Maryland Sheep and Wool was as much fun as ever. We missed it last year and our impression was that it had added a lot more vendors. We thought there was less roving and fleece to spin, much more dyed yarn (bright variegated colors are in as are shades of mud!), and there was a big crowd on Saturday even though it was hot hot hot. We got gorgeous natural colored mohair (in black) that Tom will use in the 3rd blanket on his current warp. I got lots of dibs and dabs of exotic threads to crochet doll clothes with and some unusual crochet hooks. (The website has the start of a page on crochet hooks if you want to see pics of the hooks.)
When we got back we found that the water garden plants had arrived (much
earlier than I expected) so I've been mucking about with the little ponds,
much to the annoyance of the 2 frogs who plop away when I have to do something
near by. Much more mucking about is needed, but at least the little
fountains are going so the fish shouldn't suffocate! Tom has been
getting a complicated system set up so we can scan in old slides and negatives.
Nope, you are safe, we aren't going to send them all to you - just put
the good ones up on the web site!
kcl
