Born: Born 16th September 2007

Gender: Female

Breed: Hybrid - Tiger (our cockerel) is Velvet’s father and he is a hybrid Partridge Cochin, Chocky is the mother and she is a Rhode Island Red Hybrid. Which makes Velvet some from of Heinz 57 varieties!

Appearance: Black feathers with silvery/grey legs. As a new chick, s/he looked so fluffy and felt like velvet - naming him/her wasn't difficult!

Personality: We’re still getting used to the individual personalities of our newer chicks. Velvet was the first of them to hatch and seems to display more confidence than the other chicks.

Favourite Food: Velvet had only been eating chick crumbs. As she and the other chicks are getting older, the crumbs are now being mixed in with the older chicken’s feed to allow a period of transition. Since being allowed to free range, Velvet loves eating the grass but is especially good at catching flies.

Habits: Although still quite anxious when caught, Velvet seems to enjoy perching on your arm, nosing around at everything going on – you need to keep your head at some distance though as she has, on more than one occasion, mistaken a smiling set of teeth for bread. It isn't pleasant having your teeth pecked!

Naughtiest Moments: When the chicks were very young and kept indoors in the brooder, we used to get them out and let them have a run around in our conservatory. As sure as day follows night, you could guarantee that Velvet would always leave us a little “present” – just to remind us that s/he had been there!

When we first introduced the chicks to our older birds, Velvet certainly overcame her anxiety in a race for the bread on offer. Undeterred by her much smaller stature, there was no holding her back - until a timely placed attack from Chocky reminded Velvet of his/ her lowly place in the pecking order.

Update:

Here is a picture of Velvet at 12 weeks old, no longer a fluffy little chick but still a very handsome chicken.

Check out our chicken discussion forum to see how all three of our baby chicks turned out.

Update:

On 4th February 2008 Velvet, who is now a point-of-lay pullet, produced her first egg. You can see it on the left in the picture below with an adult hen's egg on the right. You can see that it is significantly smaller than the adults egg and is also lighter in colour, this is often the case when a hen just starts laying.

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