Teenage Chickens

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The chickens are growing up fast! They’re eight weeks old today.  They will spend long periods of time some distance from their momma, although they still tend to hang out with her when the other hens are around, and she’s still feeding them and gathering them up into the coop at night.

 

We’ve quite definitely got three pullets (young hens) and two cockerels (young roosters) – this time around, the differences were clear quite young, and have become more pronounced as they grow.

 

One of the pullets.   This one has a little more of the copper on her back than she really should have, but I think she’s going to grow up to be a lovely hen.

 

One of the cockerels.  This one is more than a little on the gangly-and-awkward side; hopefully he will eventually grow into the length of his legs, and stop being such a momma’s boy. We call him Urkel.

 

Another family grouping, with a photo-bomb from Ginger.

 

I *love* Ginger’s expression.  She always has this look in her eye.  Ginger takes no crap from anybody.

Hatching Day

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Chris got me a new camera for our anniversary; a Canon T2i.  I’ve been playing around with the new camera, looking at some hatchling silkworms.

This one’s in the process of hatching.  They bite through the egg shell, bit by bit, and then crawl out.

 

The lenses on the new camera are working for me quite well; it takes a lot of light and some serious care in the focusing, but I’m getting pretty much what I want.  The thing I want to work on next, is a tiny bit more depth of field…  I’m already shooting with lots of additional light, but I still get a less-than-paper-thin depth of field on these super close shots.  Actually, the straw-like substrate that the worm is walking on, is the fiber in a brown paper sack.

After enough of them hatch out, I brush them off the paper into a little tray, and sprinkle finely chopped mulberry leaf over them.

For comparison, here’s a link to some shots I took a few years back, using the old camera and the add-on tube lens.  The new camera is SO much sharper!  You can really see the difference in the detail level between the shot above, with the T2i, and the one below from the PowerShot (a point-and-shoot):