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?   

Dauphin and Idgie become mothers.

Dauphin and Imogen are a rare variety of bantam called Showgirls. The Showgirl variety has its roots in the Silkie, a bantam breed originating in Japan. Silkies are known for their innate mothering skills.
The other lesser part of the breed is a Turken, which originates in Transylvania.
To me this seems like a marriage between a delicate Asian princess and a hearty Romanian peasant woman.

The idea of a hybrid such as this peaks your interest but, in the end sounds too freaky to try...or in this case, fly.

Much to everyone's surprise... they can range the gamut from dragon looking beasts to a chicken fairy princess.

But when it works out, it works out well.

Dauphin is the prettier of the two. Her big wet eyes and soft furry fluff are as dark as her skin.
Imogen, "Idgie" for short, looked like a pink skinned q-tip when she hatched. You'd think with her powder white fluff she would avoid the dirtier parts of the yard. No such luck. She's a farm girl's chicken through and through. She likes to be wherever you are.

Born in the same hatch last year, they were sisters first, chickens second. It was no surprise when they went broody together, both in the same coop area. When two new chicks were introduced to the coop via a gift from my darling husband we hoped they would each adopt one.

I was very surprised when only Dauphin took an interest. Idgie just sat, and pecked at the chicks as they walked by. She wasn't ready.

Even when Idgie was kicked out of her nest by a flock mate, she refused to leave the coop. In contrast, Dauphin left the warming pen each day with her new chicks to go out and explore the world.

Idgie is a stubborn chicken and she refused to be bullied even by Big Lola who resorted to sitting on top of her for days on end. But would poor, sullen Idgie ever find her purpose?

The answer came when my BBC partner and good friend Kristi gifted me with a few baby Blue Orpingtons. I was ecstatic! With no roosters on our urban farm, this might be the closest Idgie would come to being a mother this season.

It's for good reason that I only allow the Silkies to be around new chicks. My chickens have been hand raised and fed all their lives, but my Silkie girls are especially smart and the most docile. After a week long period under the heat lamp, I introduced the chicks to Idgie...

I don't pretend that humans always have the capacity to instantly and without warning take on a brood of babies, no questions asked. At least humans get a 9-month gestational warmup. Idgie needed no time, just her instinct. She has free roam of all the yard including my gardens, with six little fledglings toddling along after her...imprinting her instantly, shading under her wings. Both Dauphin and Idgie keep their tiny chicks close and give out multiple lessons on how to dig for bugs, scratch through the wet leaves, and pick aphids off the honeysuckle.

There is one other noticeable difference I've seen in the new moms. Neither chicken runs from the scampering three pound chihuahua anymore. They both pull up their skirts of fluff and charge like bears. It's something to be seen.

I wish I could illicit some Zen message from that, or some clumsy metaphor for motherhood. I guess I'd prefer to suppose that nature doesn't need my narration.

It exists beautifully all on it's own.