Meet Tara

While I can tell our four chicks apart, I imagine they just look like dark colored balls of fluff to everyone else. As their momma I feel a need to remedy that situation. How can people not recognize my little chicklets? So in this post I will describe Tara in some more detail and I will do so with her other feathered friends soon.

Tara. A mostly black fluff young chick with white spots under her eyes, a white tail end, and white fluff and feathers at the bottom of her wings.

Tara will one day grow up to be a bantam Barred Plymouth Rock hen. Basically, she will be a smaller chicken (1/3-1/2 the size of a standard chicken) with pretty black and white almost striped pattern on her feathers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock_%28chicken%29

Tara is our explorer. She is the trail blazer of the four chicklets. She was the first to use the larger water dish, the first to eat the food, the first to try to fly (which was a completely failure and resulted in falling flat on her chest and beak), and the first to successfully use a perch. When we initially brought Tara home she was recognizable as the black and white fluffy chick with the white spots under her eyes. She now also has a beautiful set of white feather at the lowest part of her wings. She is growing quickly, with feathers replacing fluff at an astonishing rate.

Tara standing on her perch. The few white feathers on her wings are visible here.  The other three chicks are in the background eating and Merrill is stretching one of her legs as she leans down for a snack.