Excited to get started.

Hello everyone,
Clucking Karen here and I'm excited to have joined your flock. My chicken coop is under construction and should be ready in a couple of weeks. Today we went out with the kids armed with our notes on what type of chicken would best suit our new coop and our family. Unfortunately that's not how things went down. The only place in our "City" that sold baby chicks was a Hardware shop. All the chicks were mixed up. I asked for docile, not broody, and good egg layers. They sort of pointed to a few in a cage of about 50 baby chicks. For them the chicks were for "eating" not pets. Oh well, they were all adorable. So I took 7. I'll care for them just the same. How do I identify what kind of chickens I have? And at what age can you tell?

cluckingKaren said:

Hello everyone,
Clucking Karen here and I'm excited to have joined your flock. My chicken coop is under construction and should be ready in a couple of weeks. Today we went out with the kids armed with our notes on what type of chicken would best suit our new coop and our family. Unfortunately that's not how things went down. The only place in our "City" that sold baby chicks was a Hardware shop. All the chicks were mixed up. I asked for docile, not broody, and good egg layers. They sort of pointed to a few in a cage of about 50 baby chicks. For them the chicks were for "eating" not pets. Oh well, they were all adorable. So I took 7. I'll care for them just the same. How do I identify what kind of chickens I have? And at what age can you tell?

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Welcome To BYC! Thank you for joining the flock; there are many of us who are more than willing to take you under our wing. If you post a picture here we might be able to identify the breed of the chick or post a picture of the chick in the What Breed Or Gender Is This? section of BYC. There are few ways to sex chicks depending on how old the chicks are. If you're looking for friendly, not broody, and good egg layers there are a few breeds that I can think of off the top of my head and that I've had experience with. Black Australorps meet your requests and more. Black Australorps can also make good meat birds getting big. Black Australorp is my favorite breed and is what I primarily raise. Reason why is because they are excellent egg layers and tend to lay longer than most breeds, they can make great meat chickens, and both hens and roosters are very friendly. Some breeds great at egg laying are: Black Australorp, Rhode Island Red, White Leghorn, and Black/Golden Sex Link were some really good egg layers off the top of my head that I've raised. There's much information on BYC. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Hi Karen and welcome to BYC! Glad to have you as a flock member. Great advice from Birdrain92 - just shows how welcoming and friendly people are here!

CT

Welcome to BYC. Glad you decided to join our flock. Birdrain92 has given you some good information and advice. Definitely post pics of your chicks (around two months old using profile pics would work best) on our What Breed or Gender is This? section under the Forum at the top of the page and let our experts there take a look at them for you. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. We are here to help in any way we can. Cheers.

Welcome to BYC! I'm glad you joined us!

Welcome to BYC! Glad you joined the flock!

My 5 chicks are now about 8-9 weeks old now. Today I brought home a black australorp and a golden campine. They are about 6 months old. I've read that I need to keep them separated. But for how long? And what can I do to get the birds to trust me and not be afraid? Today when I tried to put food in the run the australorp flew right out of the run. The bird netting don't hold. She almost flew over the fence into the neighbor's yard. Luckily after starring at us for a while it flew back to the coop.

It looks like I have 3 Brahmas but I'm not sure of the other two. Can anyone tell?

cluckingKaren said:

My 5 chicks are now about 8-9 weeks old now. Today I brought home a black australorp and a golden campine. They are about 6 months old. I've read that I need to keep them separated. But for how long? And what can I do to get the birds to trust me and not be afraid? Today when I tried to put food in the run the australorp flew right out of the run. The bird netting don't hold. She almost flew over the fence into the neighbor's yard. Luckily after starring at us for a while it flew back to the coop.

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In my opinion just a couple weeks. Chances are they will still get pecked on. That's how the hierarchy gets established. As for getting them tame you can do 3 things. 1st, wait it out. Eventually they will get used to you and realize you are their source of food. 2nd, you can try and bait them with treats. Remember it's a reward. Only give them the treat if they remain calm. 3rd, catch them. Get them used to you handling them and they will go tame when you put some time into it. I've trained peafowl by getting them use to be caught and handled.

cluckingKaren said:

It looks like I have 3 Brahmas but I'm not sure of the other two. Can anyone tell?

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I don't see any Brahmas. Easiest way to identify a Brahma, especially if it's large fowl they will have feather legs. Brahmas are some of the few feather legged large fowl. I see that white chicken that I'm not entirely sure on what it is. Could be White Plymouth Rock, White Leghorn. I can't really tell. As for the chicken on the perch I can't see a comb nor if it has feather legs. I don't think I've see a breed of chicken like that.