Anyone else do Chickens?

[PaintingPony]

So I've been living on our farm now for about 3 years. We started owning chickens so we could have fresh eggs. I never knew how much fun chickens could be! Our first flock of 6 golden laved wynndottes died off for various reasons and our lone Dominique rooster died valiantly defending his last hen from a fox attack in the middle of the night.... loved that rooster! So we started with a fresh flock of chicks this year.

We ordered from a hatchery instead of buying them from the local farm store. We got partridge rocks, red blue laced wynndottes, a pair of dominiques, blue andalusians. So far we have a rooster for each except my dominique rooster went missing. We found some from a local breeder to replace him. I plan to try to breed them and sell the chicks and keep some along the way to keep our flock numbers up.

Anyone else like chickens??

[Randi Potos]

I don't have chickens at the moment but I used to have two old english game bantam hens. They were just pets but they were so much fun to have around.

[desertrose984]

we have over 20 hens and a few roosters,we sell eggs to help cover feed costs and are getting close to 20 eggs a day,our main rooster is a salmon faverolle and we hatch out our own chicks when we need more,we also have bunches of bunnies and even breed and sell ring neck pheasant chicks and eggs

[PaintingPony]

I am excited to try to hatch out my own eggs someday! Our are currently too young to start laying but I am hoping they will start before Fall... feels like forever waiting on that FIRST egg!!

[Icedangel11]

I have chickens, a bunch of mixed breeds mostly. Isa Browns, Araucuanas, sily mixes, golden laced something or another, olive eggers, easter eggers, a black sex link.. I get blue, green, olive, bronze, brown, and cream eggs. not a single white egg layer in the flock. XD I've got two japanese bantams, an aruacuana, a black orpington, a splash EE, and a meat rooster, the rest are hens.

I've had them about two years.. only managed to hatch two chicks out in that span. If you want to breed I strongly recommend an incubator. Unless you have an extremely broody breed (and even then it doesn't happen often enough..) then you wont get enough chicks to sell. The eggs are great though, never had a better tasting egg than what I get with my free ranging lovelies!

[PaintingPony]

Yes those home grown eggs are the best!! And broody hens are definitely hard to find!! I've not had one yet... but I will definitely take advantage of one if one of mine starts to do it! I don't have an incubator but I want to gte one because it's going to be the only way unless a hen decides to help me. Last year I tried to hatch out a couple of eggs using a heat lamp and religiously monotoring the temp with a thermometer and turning them twice a day by hand - it did *not* work at all... though maybe it was bum eggs to begin with. I might try it again sometime just to see if I can do it....

[Nate]

Love chickens! Especially top hats and the laced varieties. Unfortunately apartment life limits my chickening ability.

[Icedangel11]

@Paintingpony

It's possible the eggs died because the humidity was off. If they are too dry or too wet the eggs can't develope properly. It's a lot more than just heat. Getting it juuust right is near impossible, buut with some blueprints you can set up an incubation system on your own.

[PaintingPony]

I don't think they ever started to develop - my husband accidently bonked a couple and they cracked. They looked like normal eggs when I broke them open. Sine if them were from refridgerated eggs and a few I found outside but it had been cold out. There was one at the end that eventually cracked on it's own and so we opened that one up outside and it was really stinky!!! That one *maybe* started to develope? But I think it was just a bad egg because it smelled like a bad egg... not something that died/rotted...

I tried to use a wet paper towel placed over the eggs to help the humidity at the end and they had been kept in the garage/basement floor so it was also fairly humid but not boggy and I watched the air sacks by candling them with a flashlight. I never saw any changes to the way the eggs looked when I candled them - The bad egg did get solid looking inside at the end.... it was dark out when we broke it open so I couldn't see and it smelled too bad to try to look better so that one is a mystery. It was all an experiment really since I didn't have an incubator and my hens were dieing off over winter and I really wanted to see if it was possible to keep our chicken population going but it didn't work.

[desertrose984]

we ended up with 4 broody hens this year,they were all dark cornish,man do they not like to be booted off the nest when it comes to collecting eggs,would make great mommies,the rest of the flock is a mix of black austerlorp,road island red,and white rock