We have added 6 chickens to our family in an attempt to raise home grown eggs. I'm pretty excited about it. When hubby and I decided for sure that we would do it we bring baby chicks into our lives I did a lot of research. Even though it's "just a chicken" I wanted to make sure that ours were well cared for, properly housed, and that we got chickens that would meet our needs. Did you know there are tons of different breeds of chickens and each one is different in personality, purpose, and egg laying potential? Because we live in rural residential area I wanted to make sure to get a breed that would be quiet, friendly and easy to handle, and great egg producers. (This was before I realized that you got a dozen eggs a month free with the WIC program lol).I settled on Black Australorps as my breed of choice. They are reported to lay an egg almost every day and are one of the highest producing breeds of chickens. They also have shiny black feathers and are attractive to look out. I also on the recommendation of another green momma checked out Buff Orpingtons, which are kind of related to the australorps and share some of the same characteristics. We went to the feed store asked them to order the australorps. When we went in a week later to just to check and see if they had received any chicks (mother in law was getting impatient for hubby to buy HER some chickens) we were happy to find that they had not only out lorps but also the orpingtons that I had considered. We loaded up 18 little chicks that consisted of Rhode Island Reds, the lorps and orps, and a one silver laced wyndotte. I had seen the wyndottes on the Internet and found they very very pretty and they also fit most of the characteristics of what we were looking for so I couldn't resist getting at least one.
We brought the chicks home and separated out our six that we were keeping and took the rest to the mother in law. We raised them in our master bathroom with a heat lamp to keep them warm until they were big enough to move outside (and the weather was warm enough). Hubby built a coop and they are living quite happily in our backyard. They get to free range in the afternoon and when the sun starts going down they all go back to their coop to roost, which is really kind of cool. We are hoping to get fresh eggs in the summer time. All of our chicks will lay brown eggs though in the future I guess we could add an easter egger who could lay colored eggs and something to lay white eggs maybe? It depends. Even though we got all pullets (females) it's not the easiest thing in the world to sex a 1 day old chick. So there is only a 90% grantee that they are indeed all female. We have one who we suspect is a rooster, in which case he'll have to go. Time will tell, he may turn out to be a hen yet but for now I think it's a roo.
I will update this page with current chicken happening and photos as the chicks get older. This is going to be FUN! :)
