Our Chickens

Last May hubbies friend at work asked him if we wanted some chickens. Well, hubby didn't, but he came home and asked me. I wasn't sure as I had never been around chickens, knew nothing about them, and don't really even like animals. BUT, about 3 years ago our oldest son Jace, wanted to get chickens to raise and have eggs etc. Remembering this we agreed to take the chickens. So we spent some time and built a pen by a little shed thing we have. So we got these chickens about the middle of May. Here they are. I call them the "Big Hens".

My "Big Hens" are.... the king of the flock (he thinks anyway) is King Easter. (Justin named him.) He is a Rhode Island Red about a year old.

Also there is Queen Easter.

Justin named her also. I call her Queenie or usually Esther. She is a Rhode Island Red also. Then there is Henny Penny a Barred Rock Hen with a hurt foot. It was hurt when we got her and she lays good and seems to do OK so we leave her alone. There are two other Barred Rock Hens and the rest are Sex-Links. Not being able to tell them apart they haven't been named. Total of 16 hens and the rooster. They have been so fun. They lay between 10 and 16 eggs each day. Before it got hot they would mostly lay 14. Now with the 100+ weather they usually lay around 12. It is sure miserable for them in the heat.

 

 

 

These were so fun I figured we'd better get some more hens to replace these when they molt or get too old, so we bought 6 Rhode Island Reds and 6 Black Sex-Link hens. These are called the "Little Hens".

They have had various names and sometimes the kids name them one thing and I call them something else. Some of them we can't tell apart either. Kids call them parrots as they like to jump on our backs or legs if we squat down. They are getting to be quite the ladies now. Will start laying in another month or so, about the middle of September. They are sure cute when they are babies.

So we were set for layers and decided to try some of the Cornish x that grow and can be butchered in 2 months. Thus we got the "Pigs". This is what we called them. The do eat and grow so fast it is amazing. We now found out you can't leave food in with them all the time cause they grow too fast and start dying. We bought all D&B had that day, 49 of them. The RIR chick is one of the little hens.

My son, Jace, and hubby, Johnny, doing the dastardly deed.

They were real cute when little and reach a homely stage and didn't have time to totally grow out of it before we butchered them. We lost a few and then towards the end of the two months they really started to die so we butchered the rest. We ended up with 41 in the freezer. We lost 8.

Well, I was really getting into this by now. Hubby was offered some pheasant eggs from his cousins neighbor and decided to take them. So he went and bought an incubator and put 59 eggs in it to hatch. I didn't figure they would hatch. After reading all the library books on chickens I could find, hatching them seemed a little complicated. Well, we turned them by hand 3 times a day. We had 37 hatch. Boy, what an experience. I had never seen a chicken hatch and the kids were very excited also. We gave 15 away and had to hurry to get all the Cornish butchered to have a pen for the rest of them. Hubby was getting a little tired of building pens by now.

Now we found out that part of them are chukkar.

I was having so much fun and there so many varieties of chickens, I decided we wanted to try some other kinds to see what we really liked. So we ended up with another box of babies in the house.

We got another Rhode Island Red (pullet), a Gold Laced Wyandotte (cockerel), a Silver Laced Wyandotte (cockerel), a colored Americana, (I think anyway, a cockerel), a white Americana? (cockerel), a colored bantam Americana? (cockerel?), 2 Sebrights (pullets), a white Silkie (pullet), and 1 brown chick that I don't know what is (pullet).

This is the Sebright (Tiny or Amber) and Americana (now called Shake & Bake) and the RIR (Cinnamon) and one of the Australorps.

This is the Americana and the Silkie and all of them in the pen.

 

 

 

Jerran, my son, with an Americana and the brown one we think is a Partridge Rock.

 

 

 

 

This is the Americana.

 

 

This is the Golden Laced Wyandotte (Dotty) and part of the flock.

Then I decided if we wanted anymore we had better get them soon so they would go in the same pen as the other ones and grow up together. This time we got

Orpington and Silkie

 

 

 

 

My Buff Orpington pair and an Americana rooster and My pretty Leghorn hen.

Australorp and orpington again. And one of the two Partridge Rock roosters.

Cute little Sebright.

Another shot of the flock. This is the onery Americana rooster we call Shake & Bake and threaten to eat all the time. He is mean to the other roosters, but seems to have settled down once we got them away from the hens.

Here are the Gold and Silver Laced Wyandottes and the little Sebright again.

We also bought 2 ducks. A Pekin (not sure which sex) and a Rouen (hen).

Here are some of the first pens we put up fast to get somewhere to put all these birds. I know, they are a bit tacky, but as long as I can have my birds I can live with it.

We are building our luxury "Winter Quarters" hen house. It is costing a lot more than planned and taking a lot more time than I expected. It is probably bigger than I expected to get also.