Take a gander at Christina's chickens. Those are some good looking hens. I like their fancy enamel ware water dish..lol. You can tell they're used to the good life. Chickens are more intelligent than people think and they make great pets. There is something very comforting about a group of cackling hens in your yard and the social dynamics of chickens is very entertaining. But, owning chickens is addictive, as Christine and I can attest to. There are many varieties and once you get started being a chicken owner, they're hard to resist. They sure are pretty, aren't they? Christine, have you gotten to the incubator stage of chicken ownership yet? That's where you buy your own incubator and start inviting people over to watch them hatch...and your friends think you need a booby hatch.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Hot chicks!
Take a gander at Christina's chickens. Those are some good looking hens. I like their fancy enamel ware water dish..lol. You can tell they're used to the good life. Chickens are more intelligent than people think and they make great pets. There is something very comforting about a group of cackling hens in your yard and the social dynamics of chickens is very entertaining. But, owning chickens is addictive, as Christine and I can attest to. There are many varieties and once you get started being a chicken owner, they're hard to resist. They sure are pretty, aren't they? Christine, have you gotten to the incubator stage of chicken ownership yet? That's where you buy your own incubator and start inviting people over to watch them hatch...and your friends think you need a booby hatch.
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10 comments:
i like the black/white specked ones!!
Thank-you, Pat and Miss Tia! The black and white ones are Plymouth Barred Rocks and they are great egg layers!
I am so relieved this came through, Pat! I couldn't get it to work last night. My laptop kept telling me the file was too large, so my husband was going to give it a going-over today.
Nope, no incubator yet, though we did have a close call at one point.
This picture is of the original five chickens (after Buck, the rooster left). Since then they got four flock-mates in that group, and ten more this year. My husband calls the new set "the little flockers".
I had two chickens once until my dog got out and ate them. Some day I would love to get more, I love watching them peck around. Glad you shared this.
sandy
Great chickies christina. My fav are the ones with the hairy feet. Have you ever had any of them?
Christina, what are the other chickens besides the Plymouth Barred rocks? We had a conversation at Moon's awhile back about the various chickens one of the gals had...love some of the names! Cuckatoo Marans, Barnevelders, and Amaraucana. Some of them lay blue eggs, seafoam green eggs. I'd love to have chicks, can't where I live.
Ava's Mommy---I started out thinking that I didn't want any birds with feathered feet, but couldn't resist this year, so now we have one black silkie, not sure if it is male or female as they do not sex them at the hatchery, and it's considered almost impossible to tell until they crow or lay an egg. I hope it's a female as my husband has really bonded with "her" and named her Sissy. She definitely has the hairy feet, lol!
As far as the other breeds in the picture, the red ones are Rhode Island Reds, (Terra and Luna as they came home on Earth Day), and the yellow one is a Buff Orpington names Sassy as my husband offended and scared one of the Rhode Islands, and Sassy hunted him down, squatted on her little chickeny legs, and then jumped up and bit him, drawing blood. The Barred Rocks are Marsha-Lena and Skittles.
Other than that we have two Easter Eggers (Ameraucanas) and a Black Australorp and a Welsummer in that flock. In the other flock we have Sissy the Silkie, two Delawares, two Cuckoo Marans, a Silver-Laced Wyandotte, a Gold-Laced Wyandotte, and three Easter Eggers (Amaraucanas) including one that was given to us as a special needs chickie at about two days of age. She had a cross-beak, and they didn't want to cull her, so they just gave her to us (hence the name Free Bird). She has grown out of her crossbeak and is adorable and feisty.
Christina,
Thanks so much for the pics!!! Beautiful chickens...what do you mean Buck left? Where did the rooster go? What do you feed them? Do you add table scraps? Do you use a heat lamp in the winter? What color eggs do they lay and how often do they lay? Do you let them walk about at all? I want chickens so much -- in my next home for sure. These are real beauties.
The feathers are so pretty. I think I would pick up all the feathers they drop and try to find something to make with them.
I hope Sissy is a female. I think there is something sweet about a man bonding with a chicken.
Oh, Nancy B. I'm sorry, that sounded a little odd, didn't it? Before we got chickens, we researched what we could and could not have. The code doesn't say we can't have roosters, but noise could be a code issue so we figured out what our alternatives were, and the day Buck started crowing, and wouldn't stop, was the day he was rehomed to a farm where they have somewhere around fifty chickens, just for the fun of having chickens. He is their only rooster of that breed, and he is big and yellow and beautiful, and he has a little yellow hen there that had already lived on the farm for a year or so. He is happy and thriving.
We feed them commercial feed--the little chickies get medicated chick starter, and the big girls get layer feed. We supplement with oyster shell and grit, and table scraps and treats like black oil sunflower seeds, baby spinach, raisins, scrambled eggs, organic yogurt, etc. They love it all.
They have a coop and a chicken run that are all fenced in for safety. We made it into Fort Knox to decrease the chance of predation, and put fiberglass panels (the corrugated stuff) on as a roof, solid panels on one side of the top, and clear panels on the other side so that they could almost always have sun or shade---whatever their little chickeny hearts desire. We also put in a tube system under the roof, so that we can hook it up to the faucet and mist the chickens in summer if it is too hot. I wouldn't trust our dogs around the birds, unsupervised, and we have hawks, raccoons, skunks and there are coyotes in the canyon, so too many predators for my comfort as far as free-ranging.
In our climate in Oregon, for the most part, they are just fine with shelter only. They really don't need heat in the winter, they give off enough warmth to heat the coop, which is where they often choose to stay if it's really cold out.
As far as the color of the eggs---we have a wide range. We have a blue egg layer, a slightly olive green egg layer, light brown, medium brown, an occasional pink or mauve egg, and a terra cotta egg layer, though she has not laid in several days and I am worried that she either is eggbound or an internal layer. I'll have to have my husband watch her tomorrow while I'm at work and make sure she is okay. Anyway, thanks for your interest in the girls, they really are a passion with me.
Christina,
Thank you so much for the entire low down on your darling chickens!! I made a copy of all this excellent info about food and shelter that you included, so that I can look it up when I move eventually. Sounds like Buck must be happy as a clam with 50 chicks to be the portector of! Wow, such a vriety in the egg colors! I find them fascinating.
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