Fabulous Showgirls

Yes, this is still an urban homesteading blog, and yes, sometimes it's about fabulous showgirls.

As you might have noticed in previous articles, I have an affinity for the Showgirl bantam breed of chickens. A conglomeration of part Turken and Silkie genes bestows a look that makes them seem at home in a Lady Ga-Ga video.

They are also equally at home in a backyard, mine in particular. I love my Showgirls:  Idgie, Gudris and Dauphin. They are curiously fabulous.

So is my taste in friends lately. This farm girl has found herself a kindred spirit, both as a new addition to the BBC and a personal comrade. Kristi is like a big ball of fabulous energy, and a lot of it. Together we have hatched some grand ideas (sorry for the terrible pun) and now stand at the precipice of taking flight with a beautifully feathered new adventure (somebody stop me!).

I try to hide my dorkish tendency to gush when I attempt to describe, with enough fervency, just how I feel about Showgirls. I don't think I did a good job with Kristi, as I began to describe their attributes as a small, docile, cold-hearty bird that also lays a high amount of eggs. Equally as cool is their Las Vegas-ready looks.  I heard Sigfried and Roy considered the birds as a main attraction in their show before they fatefully decided on the whole white tiger thing.

The very of nature of a Showgirl hen is to be the perfect urban chicken. They do well in smaller spaces and their bantam small size allow for more than one hen. What's not bantam is the quantity of eggs: high in Omega-3's with usually blazing orange yolks. They usually produce about 5-6 eggs a week.


Thus, with these facts perched squarely in my brain (he, he), Kristi and I have begun incubating a new flock of bantam Showgirls. While it will be many months before our new gaggle (damn, that's geese, right?) are able to provide us with eggs, we don't plan on eating them. We plan on hatching them and someday making these fabulous birds available to the local public.

36 show quality eggs.

In part, this decision has to do with the inordinate amount of trouble I had acquiring my Showgirls. I had to call in a favor to a Showgirl breeder, and go broody on a three month waiting list in order to be able to finally get some straight run birds.
Both Kristi and me are all about urban homesteading, self-sustainability and being fabulous. Not necessarily in that order. But we are both committed to finding better ways to live in this quickly changing world that sometimes offers little stability.
I put forth that keeping chickens is one of the most agrarian cost effective ways to start on the path to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Going Local has now become important for different reasons that are important for the Urban Farm and Backyard Chicken's movement. (More on that to come in future posts.)

I simply believe that Nature contains both the ability to be utilitarian, agrarian, and utterly fabulous all at the same time. Or so the fabulous birds in my backyard coop tell me.

So, when they're ready, who wants a Showgirl?