Day 34

[First off, if you're on Pandora, you can view this blog with it's intended soundtrack--my QuickMix.]

So I was not going to do flight shots today, but if you shoot little chickens in the middle of the afternoon, it's kinda hard to keep them in the studio.
Especially if your favorite one steps in a really nasty, nasty poop . . . and then after you wash off it's little foot in the sink, it gets back in the cage, after flying out of the studio, and then gets the same nasty, gooey, stinky poop all over itself. In that case some chickens only get two shots for the day, and flight it is . . .



This composited sequence of Noodle Soup kinda makes up for the extra blurry shots of the other girls . . .



. . . Salad Sandwich on her way out . . .


. . . and Pot Pie who spent the most time posing before realizing she could get the eff outta there.



A couple folks have requested 8x10's of the girls . . . but what age? fuzzy baby, awkward tween . . . ? I've actually been meaning to make some t-shirts/mouse pads/stickers--general online merchandise. But besides doing this every day, I'm still one guy making rent and already behind on a couple of there photo projects . . . so I'll just say 'soon' to prints of the girls.

Coop pictures? I have been taking progress photos of the build with my phone, but only uploaded to FaceBook for now. I'm planning a big move-in special edition 3cAd, so for now, no sneak preview.
We'll have to see whether that marks the end of this project--a coop d'état, if you will.



www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 33

I see y'all coming and checking out the chicks, but you never leave comments--WTF?!
But seriously, the girls would love to hear from you.

The photographer side of me thinks I should get serious about these flight shots, so they're not all blurry 'n stuff . . . the guy-who-has-to-do-this-every-day side of me thinks "good enough". We'll see . . .



Noodle Soup



Salad Sandwich



Pot Pie


And for an even more extreme flightless bird version of 3cAd use this link.
Thanks Bill.




www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 32

So I've realized this whole chickens-on-white thing doesn't really give any reference to scale, so here are the girls with a standard size coffee mug (from my bike messenger days).
My friend and clothing designer Emily Katz made some paper hats for the girls this morning--in honor of the Kentucky Derby--but they weren't having anything to do with it.
A little disappointing, since I really want to put one of those falcon hoods on Noodie and take my picture with her all Royal Tenenbaums style . . . we'll see about that.



A cup of Noodle Soup.



Salad Sandwich.



Pot Pie.


Noodle and Salad are a good 90% feathered at this point, with Pie being more like 65%ish.
Salad and Pie stepped out on to my arm today together--I don't think Pie would have done it without Salad, but it was progress nonetheless.

Here's a question for any experienced chicken folks out there--is Noodle Soup going to keep that coloring into adulthood, or is that just some young chicken patterning?

I almost forgot, I took the Advanced Chicken Keeping class last night at the Urban Farm Store (I wish there was an intermediate class) and learned why it's so hard to tell whether your chicken is actually a rooster--male chickens don't have, um, wieners. It's all vent to vent action to make the babies! Bizarre.


www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 31

Who's nasty?
Chickens are nasty. But we'll keep the poop talk to a minimum.
Today is weigh-in day. Our last weigh-in was on Day 23, with weights of 8 oz., 6 0z., and 4 oz., respectively. They're all definitely growing.



Here we Have Noodle Soup as a 12 oz. serving.



Salad Sandwich as a 9 0z. serving.
And what a dainty little poop . . . if the other 95% of it wasn't on the back of the scale.




Pot Pie as an 8.5 oz. serving.
This was the big surprise. Sallie is almost equal in height to Noodle soup but not nearly as "husky", so that wasn't surprising, but Pie being pretty much the same weight as Sallie!?!
Salad Sandwich is a Buff Orpington--a more 'insulated' breed--so I guess she's a lot more feather than non-feather stuff. As long as the eggs are good . . .


PS--if you checked yesterday's blog earlier in the day, I add a couple more pictures, so you may want to scroll down.




www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 30

Thirty whole days . . .


. . . it's hard to imagine these girls as those girls . . .


They're like the anime verision of chicks--ridiculously cute, but not even like a chicken.




Now they're their own selves.

Hello ladies!


Nothing to see here.



They don't mind the studio at all when they're together . . .



. . . in fact here's the first flight ever INTO the studio. And, yes, that's Pot Pie.



Death from Above!!!


bye!



www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 29

So we've begun our fifth week . . . and it's about twenty minutes to midnight, so I'll just hurry this up.



Noodle Soup looking very feathery, reminding me that the coop needs to get finished.



Salad Sandwich did a good job of staying still today. I had to rouse the girls tonight for their photo sessions, as I was out all day. I felt a little bad about it, so I kept it brief.
After the shoot I had some quality time with them--Noodle and Salad will just sit on my hand forever. I even had Salad sitting in my lap. I held Noodle Soup first and I really think Salad Sandwich was a bit jealous. "Handling the chickens" started out as a means of ensuring they'd be docile when we needed to grab them for any reason later on, but they're starting to become more like pets as they grow into chickenhood.

Then there's one who's not so docile . . .



Look at those crazy feathers starting to come out of Pot Pie's head. She's the only one who's still downy up there, but when her feathers come in, they come in thick. She has a bit of a feathery happy trail coming in as well . . .
To be fair, once she freaks and squaks for bit, she tolerates being held and will kinda nod off--so far that's about as friendly as she gets.



www.JoshuaJayElliott.com

Day 28

Just got back from surfing, but I've gotta get these pics done before the girls' bedtime . . . not that they sleep much any more.


Noodle is flying for height, not just distance these days. She'll make a nice, high arc on the way to home bench from studio bench.



Salad took about one second to fly out of the studio, but on the second try she stayed around a bit . . . and even left a present.



She is moving into first place for sweetest chicken. Sometimes they look a bit mean in the shots, but they're birds--not a whole lot of facial range.



Pie . . . still not settling into being held. And a short, straight flyer. She better make a lot of eggs . . . though she does strike a good pose here.




www.JoshuaJayElliott.com