by Wendy EN Thomas from Lessons Learned from the Flock
A while back, I wrote about a chick of ours that had grown at a much faster rate than our other chicks (odd duck in the chicken coop.) I had wondered if indeed she was even a chicken (some people (including myself) thought she might have been a turkey.) This is what caused all the discussion.
Turns out our little (big) Elsa – named after Frozen’s Snow Queen because she is pure white – is nothing more than a slightly larger than normal chicken.
Here is a recent close-up of Elsa.
Notice the cheek feathers consistent to Araucanas. And here she is compared to her sisters.
See, now that they’ve all grown, the difference is negligible (except for the New Hampshire Reds, they’ve always been on the smaller more compact side.) What’s interesting is that Elsa was in the chick tub labeled Araucanas. Here is a sister from the same batch. It’s a pretty dramatic difference in look.
Although Elsa is definitely a chicken, I still don’t know if she is simply a white version of the breed or if, somehow she sneaked in with the others. In either case it’s all good, because even though she’s different, she adds her story to the diversified flock which we call ours and we’ll continue to very happily take care of her.
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Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.
Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com) She writes about her chickens for GRIT, Backyard Poultry, Chicken Community, and Mother Earth News.
2 Comments
I realize I am seeing this over a year after your post… My guess is that your Araucanas are actually “Easter-Eggers” or as I like to call them “Chicken Mutts”. Keep in mind that I have no problem with mutts, all of my dogs and cats have been mixed breeds, and all of the chicks who were born here are mixed because we keep several different breeds. We bought 8 chicks sold as Araucanas and they are all completely different. They all grew up to be the same size, but one of them was as small as the one in your photo compared to her sisters. Probably Elsa was Araucana or Ameraucana mixed with some much larger white chicken breed (Leghorns?). I don’t know that much about it, other than what is being sold in Tractor Supply and other stores are definitely not purebred Araucanas, they are some mixed breed that carries the blue-egg gene..
Elsa looks like our falcon. Her father is an aracauna, and her mother is a buff Orpington. Not sure how falcon came out white, but then we got Ellie from the same parents, and she is white too.