The Jury is In

When you order baby chicks from McMurray Hatchery, they offer to throw an extra one in for free. They don't tell you on any of the paperwork what breed or sex the extra chick is, so it's up to you to look at your 26 babies for the odd man (or woman) out.

In our first batch, we only knew that we had six things that originally looked like buff orpingtons, but as the orpingtons developed light rust-colored feathers, one of the number came up with pure white feathers. And on top of that, she wasn't even chicken-shaped! Because she had the distinctive ear feathers of the araucanas, I figured that's what she was, and our suspicions have been bourne out by her first egg.


It came on Thursday, and was a very light, creamy greenish color that our camera was, despite many attempts, unable to fully capture. The Pirate and I had occasion to go to the hardware store and spent some time in the paint department picking paint chips just so that we would be able to find a color that actually looks like our eggs. What we came up with is Ralph Lauren's color VM117, which is called "Celery," although it looks nothing like celery, being instead a very pale, creamy green. Perhaps it looks like cream of asparagus soup, but I'm sure that that would never fly as the name of a paint color.

So it turns out that our little chicken is not only an araucana, but a designer araucana, no less! Well, to paraphrase the old tuna commercials, I don't want chickens with good taste. I just want chickens that taste good.