First up, the older ladies

With us since they were TINY CHICKS in 2012, we have Nut, Malty, Porter, and Stout.

Please note, these birds are ten years old. This will be important later.

This beautiful bird is Malty. She's a golden wyandotte, and she's bred to withstand cold winters. She seems to actually enjoy the snow, and she always has that surprised look on her face

a surprised looking chicken, standing in the snow

Next we have Stout. She is also a wyandotte, but she is silver instead of gold. She generally just keeps to herself.

a chicken standing outside her coop

And now for Porter. Porter is sister to Stout, and they used to be nearly identical. That's Porter behind Stout.

two nearly identical chickens in a yard

And this is what Porter looks like today. She had something of a health issue two years, ago, and we didn't think she was going to make it. When we called a vet to talk about "options", Porter climbed out of the box she was in (she hadn't left it in two weeks), and got herself into the hallway. Since then she appears to be living mainly on spite.

an elderly, grumpy chicken

And finally, we have Nut. Nut is an Easter Egger, and from among the older birds, Nut is the only with her coloring. As such, she had been mercilessly picked on by the other chickens. Yet she endured, and with the introduction of the Littles, she now has other birds that look like her. She's also ridiculously photogenic.

a very photogenic brown and white chicken

Okay, remember how I said the "ten years old" part was important? Well, here it is. We essentially have two breeds of chickens in our coop. Seven Easter Eggers, and three Wyandottes. The Easter Eggers all lay blue-ish green-ish eggs. The Wyandotte's all lay slightly smaller brown eggs. Here is a photo of egg's from today's haul. Notice that TWO of them are brown and slightly smaller. At least TWO of our ten-year old chickens are STILL laying eggs!

two brown eggs and one blue-ish egg

Here we have a video of these birds when they were just tiny little chicks. I want to point out three differences. One is that Nut is not yet part of our flock. Instead, you will see Hoppy and Big Bird in this video. Big Bird is the yellow one, and is notably taller than the rest. Hoppy is sister to Malty, and is utterly indistinguishable from the other three wyandotte's in this video.