Meet Piki

Last week my co-worker came up to me and asked if I wanted a pullet. The story was her granddaughter wanted a baby chick really bad so she bought her this baby chick at Callahan's (our awesome general store). The grandchildren name it Piki and loved it for several weeks. Piki then outgrew her fluffy cuteness and turned into a chicken and started to scare the children. That is when the granddaughter asked her grandmother when they would eat Piki. EEK!

So I picked up Piki just before we had a cold blast. There was little time to get acquainted because the cold front was literally blowing in at that moment. I used an old rabbit cage to hold her until I could figure things out. However there was time to drop by the coop and really quickly introduce Piki. The girls gathered around her and I was prepared to block any pecking. Instead they all moved to a corner of the coop and began to talk about Piki. It was totally obvious. Piki had spent the last formative weeks in the hands of a four and ten year old. She didn't seem to know she was a chicken. That was that and all of two minutes and off Piki went to her new home in a rabbit cage in my studio. 

Now Piki is either a brown Leghorn or a Welsummer. Either way she/he will be rather large, much larger than my Silkies. In a few weeks she'll be big enough to defend herself. At the moment she is no larger than the Silkies and Astrud who is a smaller Lakenvelder. Just wait guys!

In the meantime Piki likes to follow me around and stands between my legs. She/he loves to be carried and melts my heart with her/his little chick noises. I hope Piki is a female and I look forward to her spectacular eggs. They will be extraordinary because they will either be uber large or a dark chocolate color.

One thing I have realized is that in the future my flock will turn brown. I couldn't always see Piki right away because she blended in with the privacy fence, mulch, dead leaves and fallen branches in the yard. I thought of the hawks and how maybe, just maybe, light brown to dark brown hens might be a tiny bit safer.

I was very impressed with Piki's manners. She sat in a box through the entire car ride and would stare up at me from time to time cocking her graceful neck and acting very much like the Audrey Hepburn of chickens. If Piki is not female, well...then he is a very elegant rooster. Roosters should be more Bryan Ferry and less Mick Jagger.

The cold has past and we have had warmer afternoons so I bring out Piki to be seen by the flock. Only Elvis is interested in asserting herself and tries to peck wildly at Piki. I hate the brutality of the pecking order. I am always so disappointed with the girl who starts it. Poor Piki, she just wears her humility so obviously, there just isn't a need to peck, she wants to be last.