Wing and Wool Farm

Chonky 🐓🐓🐓

Bresse are known for making great meat chickens, and this guy is a perfect example as to why. I have a few roosters that I might call slender…but not him. He is a chunk! And the hens are the same way.

I’m still working on getting him separated with his ladies…but having the time to actually DO it always ends up being an issue when there are so many things that need to be done.

I’m really going to try to do it in time for a fall hatch, because this rooster and his hens have the BEST personalities, so I’m really hoping to hatch a younger generation.

P.S….because I hatched out one male and the rest females, I’ve never eaten a Bresse chicken. Have you? Is it delicious?

When you put on the long lens…but your chickens are friendly and stand at your feet 😅

Oh well…enjoy these closeups 😂

These crested-beauties are now 15 weeks old 💕

Legbar chickens, while not a bantam, are a fairly lightweight breed, without much bulk.

Even though they’re just a few more weeks away from starting to lay, they still look so much smaller than my other adults. 🥹

But, the cockerels are crowing and the hens’ combs are reddening. It’s hard to believe, but soon they’ll be all grown up.

🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚

We’re running out of containers to stash eggs in around here 😅

I’ll be honest…I even found an egg in my purse at the store the other day…🫣

How handsome is this guy?! 😍

Did you know that roosters actually require higher protein levels and less calcium in their diets than laying hens do? In fact, too much calcium can be problematic to a rooster’s health. So to keep all of my roosters living their best lives, I feed Flock Raiser by and supplement the hens with a side dish of oyster shells for calcium.

Do you have any roosters in your flock? What are their names and breeds? Tell me all about your handsome boys down in the comments! 🐓

I did a thing…

I decided to move a few Opal Legbar hens into the Black Copper Marans chicken coop, and I’m really excited about this cross!

They’ll be my first (purposely-bred) Olive eggers. Up until now, my greens have come from barnyard mix crosses, with a whole mix of genetics in their backgrounds.

This should be fun!!

Do you keep any olive eggers? Do you know which breeds they came from?

Brown Chinese Geese…

These guys have been a popular topic around here lately…thanks to a recent reel where I talk about using them to keep my chickens safe.

Some people had concerns about aggressiveness (towards both people and smaller fowl), but I can honestly say that my birds have never shown an ounce of aggression towards any people or any of my other birds.

In fact, they’re often the peacekeepers (even during breeding season!) They tend to fend off overly aggressive drakes and roosters from ducks and hens that are being harassed and overbred.

BUT—keep in mind that I’m specifically talking about my Brown Chinese geese. They are one of the smallest and most manageable breeds, and have pretty gentle personalities.

Your experience of keeping geese as guardians may vary, if you select another breed—even the white Chinese are slightly larger and supposedly more aggressive.

The brown variety had a bunch of traits that I thought would make a good fit for my flock and my goals, and they’ve worked out very well for me.

Perhaps it would help if we had some testimonials in the comments…which breeds of geese have you kept and what was your experience with them/why did you like or dislike them?

It might help others to hear about some other options, since I can really only speak to the Brown Chinese.

Welsummers have my ❤️

They’re probably my all-time favorite chicken breed. What’s yours?

There are some things you can look cute while eating…but, sourdough discard isn’t one of them 😬

I wanted to make some homemade pizzas for Ben this week, so bought a bag of flour, which we usually don’t have in the house, and let our natural environmental yeast do the work.

It only took four days to get a nice, bubbly starter, and the chickens were happy to take care of the daily discard. Win-win!

Snapped a few quick chicken pictures in between the rain showers… ☔️

The first and second photos are my Silverudd’s Blue rooster and one of his hens. Third is my Dominique-cross roo, and fourth is his dad.

Comment below and finish the sentence:

In my incubator I currently have…

(My answer is Isabella Leghorns and Black Copper Marans!) 😬

Ducks…people seem to either love them or hate them when it comes to their little quirks.

I think one of the cutest things about ducks is how they move together as a group, unlike chickens that tend to scatter.

Ducks stick close, constantly chattering to one another, as if to continually update the others on their exact location.

Unfortunately, this can be a bit of a downside—making them an easy target for some predators.

But, on a positive note, it makes ducks very easy to herd, should you ever need to move them. I mean…have you ever tried to herd chickens?🥴

Can you think of any other benefits that ducks have over chickens?

My Dominique rooster🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤

Their little pond currently has more algae on it than I’ve ever seen, and the waterfowl are running around looking like swamp creatures, covered in green 😂

If you have a pond, what are your tactics for keeping the algae at bay (that are bird-friendly)?

Do you have animals? Do you also take vacations? How do you manage?

Asking for a friend…that hasn’t gone on a vacation in maaaaany years and is feeling like they could use one 😅

I love a good rainbow sheen on a black feather—how about you? 🖤🖤🖤

I separated these two girls from the rest of the geese so they could live with and act as guardians for the chickens in the mobile coop. And breeding season doesn’t end just because the ganders are out of sight.

Mounting behavior between two females (or two males), especially in the absence of the opposite s*x is pretty normal in waterfowl, in my experience. Just because you see one bird on the back of another doesn’t mean you have a goose and a gander or a duck and a drake.

I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed this behavior with my chickens, though. Although, I’ve never had a flock without both hens and roosters, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I love seeing the genetics of my Dominique rooster pop up in my barnyard mix birds, like with this hen. 🖤🤍🖤🤍

Although I certainly love my many heritage breed chickens, and understand that preserving their genetic diversity is extremely important, I also hatch a number of barnyard mix birds each year, too.

Hybrid vigor is when certain desirable traits of the parents are enhanced in the cross and result in a hybrid offspring that is superior to their parents in things like size, rate of growth, fertility, etc. And I do always love my hybrids…they are usually large birds with great personalities.

Do you keep heritage breeds, hybrids, or both?

Happy Earth Day! 🌱🌳 🌍

Good morning! 🐓❤️⛅️

What do you think about a crowing rooster…a welcome sound each morning? 💕 Or do you wish they were a bit quieter? 🙉🐓

Personally, I’m a fan!

You kind of have to wonder what was going through people’s mind when they dreamed up this chicken breed…

Crests sure are beautiful, but I’ve talked before about how, in many breeds like these Polish, they’re achieved by breeding for a swiss cheese skull and a herniated brain, underneath all of that floof.

I still really love the breed, but if you’re considering them, just be aware that their delicate craniums can leave them vulnerable to neurological problems. Not to mention that their obscured vision makes them easy prey. Tying the feather up in a ponytail can help with this…plus is a pretty cute look on a chicken 😂

How old were you when you first got chickens? 🐓🐔🐣 (Or, if you’d prefer, how many years have you been keeping chickens?)

Are you opposed to keeping geese for any reason? Will you never be without geese again for certain reasons?

If so, I’d love to hear why for a project that I’m currently working on…💕

Have you entered the GIVEAWAY for these 5 books from ?? 📚💕

You can win all five of these homestead-themed titles! Just head back to my previous post to learn more and enter!

Sometimes you gotta go full dino 🦖…

…Dilophosaurus to be exact, for all of you Jurassic Park nerds out there 🤓🦕💕

Do you have any hens with droopy combs?

Most of my Bresse hens have droopy combs. As the hens grew older and their combs grew larger, most of them flopped over. But unlike other changes to a comb, such as changes in color and texture, a comb that flops doesn’t necessarily indicate disease, dehydration, or malnutrition.

Genetically, some combs are just more prone to drooping, and as long as they’re still brightly colored and smooth, they’re totally healthy and normal, especially in older birds.

A Cayuga duck and drake out enjoying the springtime mud! 🖤

Happy Easter!! 🥚🌷🐰🐣☀️💗

😱 Look what I found!!!! 👀
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Years ago when I quit buying store eggs and started our own flock, I was so excited for all of the pretty shell colors...from browns and pinks to greens and blues. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to raise a breed that lays a boring, old white egg. 😕
My husband has always thought Polish chickens were cute, and this past spring, on a whim, I ordered some chicks, despite the fact that they lay an egg with a rather boring shell. 🐥
They were teeny tiny, but super-cute with their little ping-pong-like tufts of down on their heads. I raised them alongside a group of chicks hatched from my own eggs and two groups of some Tractor Supply impulse-buy birds.
By 16 weeks, my Tractor Supply birds were laying...
4 weeks after that, my hatched birds started laying...
Everyday I would walk into the Polish coop and check their nest box and sigh...no eggs. October came...no eggs. November...still no. December...I barely glanced in the nest box. Then...FINALLY...8 months later...last night, I walked into the coop to check on them and something bright catches my eye. 😯 A glaring bit of white, poking out from the wood chips of the nest box. I’m so accustomed to my colorful eggs at this point, that my mind felt a bit confused for a second. 🤯 A white egg! A glorious, anything but boring, seemingly-forever-anticipated WHITE EGG! 🙌🥚🤩
I will never look at such bright, clean, contrast-providing, beautiful white eggs the same way again! They’re going to provide a nice pop of (no) color to my rainbow cartons. 🥚🌈
Do you raise a breed that lays a magnificent white egg?

It’s moving day for the chicks!! 🙌🐥
They’re over two weeks old, growing lots of feathers, and ready to go into the outdoor brooder so that I can clean and prepare their current brooder (set up in my office) for the next group of eggs set to hatch a week from today.
The occasion called for one last indoor photo shoot before dusting off every surface of my office—the dust and down that has accumulated in just two short weeks is insane!!!😳 Birds are soooo messy!!
The next batch of eggs to go into the incubator before all of the new breeds of chicken eggs that I have coming in the spring, might be some quail eggs.
Who has quail?? 🐦 Any thoughts on them?

Sometimes you just have to play with your food a little before you eat it. 😬
We eat A LOT of eggs in this house...raw, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled with cream cheese and butter, egg salad, Hollandaise sauce...etc! 🤤
What is your favorite way to prepare eggs??