So, late summer I found my gorgeous Jubilee Orpington rooster, King Fluffybum, hanging upside down from the fence by his spur. His leg was dislocated/broken/non-functional so I gave him the merciful end and cried a lot. Though I had some of his sons in the bachelor pad, none were old enough to do the job yet, so no chicks were to be hatched.

In December, Fluffybum Jr. was finally up to the job, but of course the hens weren’t laying. Then around Christmas I had a disaster. Wind/ice/snow + neighbor’s tree + gravity + fence + broken electric fence strand that went unnoticed + predator = only one hen left. One.

I shared my woes on our Chicken Facebook page and FOUR people stepped forward with grown hens from chicks from my own flocks that they made available to me. I was — still am — so touched by this. My flock will continue!

It will take about 17 days for the rooster’s contribution — and oh boy, is he ever contributing enthusiastically — to make it through the system and into a lain egg, so we are a ways out from the possibility of chicks, but there is now hope where there was no hope.

So if you are hoping for Jubilee Orpingtons this year, the thing to do is:

1. guess at a hatch date 3-6+ weeks hence and make an appointment to pick-up — this gets you in the queue and requests are filled in the order in which appointments are made AND/OR

2. sign up on the website waitlist — but this only works if a hatch is not pre-sold and some make it to inventory, which never actually happens.  

And to those of you who shared back the hens, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Jubilee Orpington were my first official Flower Feather Farm flock.

Updated 1.30.2023 to share pics of the first hatchlings from the restored flock.