I get it. I completely get it.
Before this summer, I'd always been flummoxed by the popularity of the speckled sussex, at least as far as looks go. They always look so busy, with no rhyme or reason to the speckling going on in their feathers - it hurts my eyes.
I don't know what wild hair I got in my head this past spring. I've always liked variety in my chickens, and that's the only explanation I've got for picking up a speckled sussex chick. I immediately named her Pidge in anticipation of her growing up to look like pigeons pooped all over her.
This was Pidge then (please forgive the presence of non-chicken feet):
And this is Pidge now:
It took having one to understand, but I do, I get it now. In person, I don't see a randomly patterned, busy looking bird with color haphazardly vomited onto her. I see the gorgeous reddish brown daintily tipped with snowy white and the beautiful greenish flash of the black in the sun. I love the intensity of her colors. I love how much her feathers change, and knowing that, like me, she'll grow whiter as she ages. I even love her stupid looking white tail feather that looks like it was taken off some other bird and pasted onto her butt. And that's to say nothing of her personality, as bold and striking as her feathers. I thought she'd wind up being one of my least favorite hens, but almost from the get-go she's cemented herself as a favorite.
So here it goes, as much as I hate saying this: I was horribly, inexcusably wrong, and all you crazy speckled sussex fans were never actually crazy. You knew a good thing when you had it, and I should have listened to y'all.
Before this summer, I'd always been flummoxed by the popularity of the speckled sussex, at least as far as looks go. They always look so busy, with no rhyme or reason to the speckling going on in their feathers - it hurts my eyes.
I don't know what wild hair I got in my head this past spring. I've always liked variety in my chickens, and that's the only explanation I've got for picking up a speckled sussex chick. I immediately named her Pidge in anticipation of her growing up to look like pigeons pooped all over her.
This was Pidge then (please forgive the presence of non-chicken feet):
And this is Pidge now:
It took having one to understand, but I do, I get it now. In person, I don't see a randomly patterned, busy looking bird with color haphazardly vomited onto her. I see the gorgeous reddish brown daintily tipped with snowy white and the beautiful greenish flash of the black in the sun. I love the intensity of her colors. I love how much her feathers change, and knowing that, like me, she'll grow whiter as she ages. I even love her stupid looking white tail feather that looks like it was taken off some other bird and pasted onto her butt. And that's to say nothing of her personality, as bold and striking as her feathers. I thought she'd wind up being one of my least favorite hens, but almost from the get-go she's cemented herself as a favorite.
So here it goes, as much as I hate saying this: I was horribly, inexcusably wrong, and all you crazy speckled sussex fans were never actually crazy. You knew a good thing when you had it, and I should have listened to y'all.
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she also got sick of mothering and let my Black Australorp take over after like 2 weeks of her following them around LOL
they had an aunt from day one then a new mother hahaha
