Anyone who has ever had chickens probably learned quickly that chickens are addictive. Or maybe we are just sick and have a chicken addiction. We started out with 2 hens and a rooster. We now have 12 hens, one rooster, 7 pullets, one banty rooster, 7 welsummer chicks in the brooder in the garage (looks like 5 of them are roosters so will be chicken soup or coq au vin) and 4 new banty chicks.
Here's the story....
October of 2009: Move into house on acreage. Decide to get chickens. Buy 2 hens and a rooster.
November of 2009: Get some hens from a person on freecycle who lives just down the road. Then P goes a little crazy and orders eggs on ebay. We only ended up with 4 or so hens and 5 roosters out of 48 eggs. Lesson learned - hatching eggs in November doesn't work out so well
December of 2009: I receive a dozen welsummer eggs as a christmas present. Hatch out a few hens and one rooster.
March 2010: Purchase chicks from the feed store because we were being practical and wanted more green egg layers. Only ended up with TWO of the five hens laying green eggs. Planned to sell the others but haven't.
Summer 2010: Welsummer hen goes broody. She only manages to hatch out one chick. Neighbors dog breaks into her pen and kills her. Chick survived. Though I think it ended up dying later for some unkown reason when it was almost full grown.
Ok now I'm losing track. We managed to go 6 months or so without any new chickens.
The many roosters were ready for the chopping block in the spring of 2010. So we got grandma to come down and help us with the butchering. P chopped off the heads and grandma grabbed on and tossed it into the pot of boiling water. Grabbed it out with her bare hands and started pulling off the feathers, giving us tips on how to go about it. Next she grabbed a knife and started in on the chicken. Showed us how to best cut into it and avoid the intestinal tract. And did you know you have to reach WAY up inside to get the lungs out? I would NEVER have found them if she hadn't told me where to look. Turns out butchering a chicken isn't all that hard. And amazingly, the kids were excited to be eating our chicken. Not at all sad that the chicks they'd played with were now dinner.
So back to the addiction....like I said, we managed to go about 6 months without any new chickens. But then spring of 2011 came. First thing that made us fall off the wagon was going to the feed store. It's easy enough to resist the standard chicks. Americaunas, barred rocks, buff orpingtons, we have them. But we made the mistake of going to Monroe Farm and Feed. I know there are a lot of people who boycott hatchery chicks. And I totally understand why. But honestly, you have to start somewhere, and it isn't always easy to find someone locally who is breeding the chicks you want. So we walk in and they have at least 30 different breeds of chicks - this is the place to go for poultry of any kind! They have chicks, ducklings, turkeys, guineas, pheasants, etc. Some they do hatch themselves, but most are hatchery chicks. But the variety is not equaled anywhere in the county. Trying to be practical, we get two Jersey Giants (the one that we have is SUPER nice), one Delaware, one Brown Leghorn, one Australorp, two Black Copper Marans. The non-practical purchase were two Silver Seabright banty's.
Second time off the wagon....We kept the one Welsummer rooster that hatched in Dec 2009. He was now full grown. And mean. He chased the kids around the yard, treed at least one of them, drew blood from me. After fighting him with the metal lid of the trash can that contains the chicken food, I'd had it. A few direct hits from that lid barely slowed him down. Then he started fighting with our good rooster. The bastard managed to take out the good rooster's eye and now we have a one-eyed cock. So we quarantined him. Hmmm....now that he was quarantined, I could put a couple Welsummer hens in with him and breed them to get MORE Welsummer hens. Because 12 hens is not enough. So in they went. Had to wait 10 days before collecting eggs for the incubator because the one-eyed cock obviously had his way with the ladies. Have to make the hens monogamous for a while or you end up with mutts. So 21 days after the first eggs go in the incubator, we end up with MORE chicks. This time it looks like 2 hens and 5 roosters. If any of them turn out nice they will get to stay and replace the mean rooster who went to a new home. Otherwise, DINNER!
So our March 2011 chicks are now big enough to go in with the big hens. and the welsummer chicks are getting close to the right size.
Off the wagon a third time....Now, you may remember that we got a puppy. Our chicken coop is very secure. She cannot get to them even though she really wants to. However we let the chickens out to free range sometimes. This is where things go wrong. I wasn't home at the time but apparently someone let her out and she took out the Silver Seabright banty hen. This was P's favorite. And I admit, she was awfully cute. So to console P, I took a trip back to Monroe Farm and Feed. They were all out of Silver Seabrights. I could have come home with ONE new banty chick. But there was no way to know the sex. So I had to get two. And since I couldn't decide which kind to get, I got two each of two different breeds. Well, the Golden Seabrights are doing great. No bigger than a ping pong ball. The Mille Fleur d'Uccles (cute little spotted things with feathers on their feet) didn't fare so well. One died on the 2nd day after purchase and the other on the 3rd. So I called the feed store and asked if they'd been having any problems with them. And sure enough, they'd had sick and dying ones. They said they would replace them. So I sent P out to get a couple replacements. He chose two white silkie bantys. And added two turkey poults. Officially, the chicken addiction has become a poultry addiction since he crossed the line and got turkeys. Can't wait for Thanksgiving!!!!
~T
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