In my world the chicken came before the egg. I know there are those of you out there that would disagree but look at it from my viewpoint. I had to order the chicken first, then they laid the egg. Now I am also pretty sure the place i got them had the egg then had the chicken. Oh well. I order all my chicks from http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com. I have order two batches and both have arrived and turned out great. If I am not hatching my own that is. Or attempting to.
So last fall I think it was I decided I wanted chickens. Mind you I had no idea at the time what i was doing and most of the time I still don’t, not just with chickens but that’s a whole other therapy session. I would say about the only thing i did right when I started with the chickens was build the coop and the fenced area first, then got the chickens. The vote is still out on the last year seeings how i lost about 52 chicken to coyotes and foxes.
So anyways i digress, built a small coup, fenced in about 1000 square foot area to protect the chickens (lot of good that did) and proceeded to look on craigs list for some poultry. In the first batch I think i got around 17 chicken. They came up missing within a week. Very frustrating since i couldn’t find any holes. So made various changes and looked for some more. Next batch I got were a bit older and think i got around 25. Disappearing chicken weren’t near as bad this time but I would still loose one here and there over the next few months. Way to many roosters though. SO proceeded to freezer some of them. Boy that was an experience. I will have to put that experience in another post later. I had like 11 roosters and 8 hens by the time they stopped disappearing. My poor hens were down to bare skin on their back. But they struggled on giving me about a dozen eggs a week maybe a little more. During this time also maybe around January I decided i needed more hens so I hopped on line and started researching raising chicks. HAHA Tiffany was none to thrilled when I starting building a brooding system in the living room.
Tiff “What’s that?”
Dave “Chicken brooder”
Tiff “What for?”
Dave “Baby Chicks”
Tiff “Wheres it going?”
Dave “Right here”
Tiff “…………!”
Needless to say not happy. But in the end they were only in the house for a couple weeks till i could safely put them outside and keep them warm enough. 17 baby in three storage bins for two weeks. Was interesting. Once they started smelling they were out. Even i wanted them out. At eight weeks I moved them from the cinderblock brooder into the main chicken coupe. Eight are left from that batch, some missing by predators lost 2 to sickness and 2 to pecking order.
So we now have 12 hens one rooster and one chick we hatched from an egg.
8 Buff Orpingtons just under 6 months old
2 Old English
1 Marans Hen
1 Marans Rooster
1 Silkie
1 Itty Bitty Bantam
1 Chick not sure what it is yet 4 weeks old
Everyone stopped laying due to heat and stress from the recent fox, which I captured. I started with 28 meat chicken now only have 4 after the fox attacked. Very destructive animal. But thats another post as well.
So we got our first egg today from the Orps. Been hoping they would start laying soon since the other stopped laying and started molting because of the heat.