Blue Orpington Chickens

I've been wanting to get chickens for a long time now.  I've had my breed of choice picked out, literally for years.  But things just never came together for me to feel ready to get some.  Until last week.

 Even though I wasn't planning to get chickens right away, I do sometimes still look up information about them online.  I wanted to get Buff Orpingtons because:

1.  They're a good dual purpose breed that you can use for both meat and eggs.
2.  They are docile, heavy, and not flighty.
3.  They are quiet, and when they do make noise their voices are low and pleasant, not shrill and screechy like some breeds.
4.  Unlike a lot of modern breeds, they will set their own eggs, so the moms can raise their own chicks for me without the need for an incubator.

The only minor drawback I saw with them was that although they were a pretty color, they were all the same solid golden color, so they all looked alike.  I like to use pretty farm animal photos on my farm's website, and the Orpingtons were just not as showy as some other breeds.  Yes, I knew the breed also came in solid white and solid black as well as the buff, but all of those looked like each other too, so that didn't exactly solve the problem.  Sure, it's a very, very minor drawback, but it did cross my mind.

So anyway, two weeks ago I happened to be browsing online for information about Orpingtons and suddenly I discovered that I'm apparently not the only one who had this thought.  People are now breeding Orpingtons in all sorts of different amazing colors.  Check out all the varieties on this page.  And this one.

Unfortunately, many of the fancy colors are extremely rare, and some exist only in Europe.  Also, many of them are being bred for show qualities rather than utility.  But I discovered that the Blue variety was one of the original Orpington colors (with the buff, black, and white), so that is at least one of the heritage varieties.

I mentioned some of this info on my farm's Facebook page.  And just one week later, one of my farmer friends who read that comment noticed some blue Orpington chickens advertised for sale---in my area---on Craig's List.  She forwarded the ad to me and, since Ken and I just happened to be driving out in that direction anyway last weekend, we stopped by to look at the chickens.

The lady only had a few young adults available for sale, but the ones she had were gorgeous.  There were a couple of blues, and a couple colored in a beautiful blue/buff mix, which answered my question of what happens if you cross breed the different colors to each other.

To make a long story short, we fell in love.  We told the lady we had to go home and build a chicken pen, but we'd be back the following weekend to buy the chickens.  And that's exactly what we did!

We got the chickens yesterday afternoon:  a blue hen, a blue rooster, and two blue/buff hens.  They're about 4 months old right now, so they won't start laying eggs for another couple of months.  We'll eventually want a larger flock, but we wanted to start small for now.

I've been looking up chicken color genetics online and, while it is a very complex subject that I am far from grasping fully, I THINK that I have determined that our multicolored hens are the genetic pattern called "Blue Patterned Buff Columbian" (the "columbian" being the part that gives them the black heads and black speckles on their necks).

I realize that there are probably lots of Orpington breeders somewhere who have worked long and hard breeding strains of buffs, blues, and other colors that come out a pure, clean, solid color.  But personally, I LOVE the weird color variation on my two-tone hens.

I have no interest in taking my chickens to shows.  I just want a healthy, hardy bird that has good qualities for a small homestead-type farm.  Over time, as I get more chickens and get my flock established, I'll be breeding and selecting for utility traits like build, hardiness, growth rate, and egg production. 

But as a matter of personal enjoyment, I'll also try to encourage a variety of interesting colors!