The Pierogie Chickens vol 1

I think it's high time I introduced The Pierogie Chickens to you! We've had them for about 9 months and the learning curve was surprisingly easy - seriously, the internet will tell you everything. We got these ladies as a complete flock as year olds and about a month before Ruby was born. I've let Penny name each one of the girls and over the course of 9 months we've got 4 out of 5 named.

Baby
The easiest to spot and the first to be named. I guess Penny thought she was a baby because she's the only yellow one, and thus the name has stuck. She's the Queen of the Roost, but unfortunately goes broody every few weeks. A broody chicken doesn't do me any good around here; I don't keep a rooster so she fruitlessly tries to hatch eggs that just aren't going to hatch. It's heartbreaking and silly all at the same time. She's a Buff Orpington.

Bazinga
Yep, my daughter made a BBT reference. And I totally didn't encourage it. We taught her the word about a few months ago, but she rarely says it. One afternoon while playing with the chickens she decided that one of our black hens is now to be called Bazinga. It took almost 5 months to find the difference from her sister, but I found that this girl has a larger, floppy comb. She is a Black Sex-link, which means the female chicks are born black and the male chicks have a white dot on their heads.

Puffy
The other Black Sex-link. Her comb is straight up and she seems to be a little smaller than Bazinga.

Brown Fluffy
She's the smaller of our two Rhode Island Reds and has 4 points on her comb. Unfortunately both of these characteristics are really hard to see at a glance, they usually move too quickly for me to count the individual points on the combs..

??
Well, last week I thought I had finally figured out a difference between our two RIR besides the "count the comb points" / "which one is smaller" game. This one had a black feather in her tail, which made it really easy to figure her out. So I called her "Black Tip," like a black tip reef shark. And then it rained and I realized that perhaps it was just a dirty feather or she lost it. So I'm back to square one. So perhaps a new name will come to me soon.

Related: 3 reasons why keeping backyard chickens is good for my toddler