She has more chickens than she has had birthdays, but six-year-old Phoebe Kelly, from Seymour, says eight is not enough.
The pint-sized chook whisperer, who turns seven next week, loves to pick up and cuddle her hens but said they were hard to catch, particularly her Australorp, Cinderella and Araucana, Nana (pronounced like the last four letters of banana, not one of your parent’s mothers), who was named after her Na! Na! Na! dolls.
Phoebe has named all of her chickens besides her black Silkie. Her mum, Rebecca, a ‘Queen Bey’ fan, named the fluffy little bock-bocking vocalist Beyoncé.
Beyoncé is one of four Silkies Phoebe owns, making up half of the brood.
The others are Pearl, her favourite of all the chooks, Sunny Sunshine, her second favourite, and Snow White.
“I like cute names,” Phoebe said.
“They are fluffy pom-pom heads.”
A pair of ISA Browns named Kelly and Goldie round out the flock’s eight.
Though the chickens are her pets, they serve another purpose for Phoebe: they bolster her savings account when she sells the eggs they lay.
“I sell them for $5 a dozen to Nanny, Taz and Uncle Scott,” she said.
“I’m saving up to buy a big Pokémon card.”
Unfortunately, the nest egg doesn’t swell too swiftly in the winter, when Phoebe would be lucky to collect a single goog between the eight layers.
She’s looking forward to her money-makers returning to producing one each every day come spring.
There is no rooster in the flock. However, there is a surrogate mother among them, Pearl, who nested on a fertilised egg that a neighbour had brought over for the Kelly family to incubate and rear once hatched.
That chick was Sunny Sunshine, who used to sit underneath her foster mum to sleep when she first emerged from her shell. She still likes to be cuddled and the family puts that down to her being accustomed to human handling from early chookhood.
Phoebe said the chickens ate grain and household food scraps and spent their days “pooing lots and having dust baths”.
Kelly has a further thrill-seeking pastime though. She made a break from the coop into the house last week, causing chaos.
“I had to chase her and catch her,” Phoebe said with a laugh.
“She’s a cheeky chook.”
Rescue cat Daisy, the farm’s newest pet, isn’t sure what to make of the chickens (or her newfound nemesis, the dog) yet, but sits and watches them curiously from afar, trying to work them out.
Friendly mixed-breed dog Gypsy, the farm’s oldest pet, respects the chooks more than the birds she chases and leaves them in peace to roam freely around the property.
None of the chickens have been shown yet, but the family is considering putting Pearl on display at Seymour’s next farming expo.
When Phoebe was asked if she would add more chickens to her little flightless flock, mum Rebecca interjected with uncertainty.
Phoebe’s answer was more definite.
“Yes,” she said.
“I want to get more, Mum.
“I want a hundred chickens.”