hello from bama

Greetings.
Just joined BYC but have been using the site religiously for various reasons for about a year now, ever since we got our first birds in March of last year. Little did i know how daunting raising happy chickens was going to be.

Bought them from random sellers at flea market sites around the area and now i wish i had collected chickens a better way. Have had quite a bit of issues with my birds. Started out buying 4 hens and a roo (got surprised as one of our first tiny birds we were told was a hen grew into a roo! lol) Ended up getting rid of that lil roo and buying 2 more hens. (again got fooled and one of those was a roo, we didn't know until they started crowing one day lol) Since we only wanted 1 roo, we ended up getting rid of that one too and buying 2 more chicks, (again 1 grew into a roo )

LOL ok. So after getting rid of that roo we ended up with 4 hens and the first roo. A buff orphington mix( i'm thinking) named Ethel (white egger). She is a very mean, dominate hen so a good name i declared lol. A red hen( no clue wat breed) we named Red ( wat else, she even lays red eggs), a white Amerucana hybrid (Snow) who lays green eggs, and an Arucana (Brownie Sunshine) who lays light blue eggs. The roo , named Big Jack, looked to be a Amerucana/ Brahma hybrid but i'm not sure. He sure was a LARGE roo tho. From foot to extened neck he stood 2 foot tall and beautiful

From those first chickens we decided to incubate some chicks off of them and grow our house. Used a fan driven incubator and out of the first set of 11 eggs i successfully hatched 4 chicks. All survived and ended up with 2 hens and 2 roos. Since i wanted more i set 23 eggs in the incubator and hatched 7 successfully. (Not much luck as the rooster loved to mate but most of the eggs didn't develop in either set, and had 2 die in the egg). Out of those 7 i ended up with 3 hens and 4 roos. Only the Amerucana and the Arucana hens eggs hatched for some reason and one of the dead chicks was from the red hen so idk what that deal is. Our final hen is a Gold laced Brahma, beautiful girl we named Esmeralda.

Our birds seem healthy and happy and thriving even though i have battled sickness in the hens throughout our time with them. And this site has been invaluable in my fight. Our original roo we sold after he did his duty and gave us our babies. But now i have 6 roos i need to rid myself of. I don't see culling or eating them as I raised them by hand from an incubator and just couldn't do it.

My plans are to use my favorite roo to breed with Ethel and Red as we so want some babies from those girls. I have a chain link fenced in back yard and inside that i built their coop and their run. I can't let them free range as we have seen hawks in the back yard watching the birds and hear coyotes at nite.

So far everything is good and we all are pretty happy bunch. But i ill say if i'd had known how much trouble it was getting to this point i would have invested more time researching on my project before jumping in feet first. Trial by fire lol.

Ya'll have a great day.

Hi

Glad you could join the flock! Oh wow it sounds like you have had quite a journey with your flock. As you have said you had sickness in your flock this could point to why you had poor hatch results. Parent bird and flock health can have an affect on the eggs they produce. I'm afraid incubating and hatching has the downside of unwanted boys being produced. If you can't bring yourself to culling the boys you could keep them separate in a batchelor group. If they have no ladies to fight over they could live quite harmoniously together.

Good luck for the future and enjoy BYC

Hi and welcome to BYC. Great to have you onboard. You seem to have been through the mill somewhat, but the experience you have gained will stand you in good stead. With a trial by fire - it can only be embers from now on!

Ct

One way to avoid the "rooster curse," is to acquire red or black sex link pullets. Their gender is evident at birth due to their color feathering. Or to buy point of lay pullets or laying hens do get you a good start with FEMALES. Everyone with chickens knows about the rooster curse and stealth roosters, who pretend they are female until you fall in love with them. Then they 'come out' and hope you will keep them.

Do you know what illness you have battled with your hens? They could be carriers of it and pass it along to their chicks - or it could be the reason for your poor hatches. Where they every specifically treated and cured of it?

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

Wow, what a story. Seems you have gained quite a bit of experience over the last year. I too am in N. Alabama and have only 3 months at chicken keeping.

Hello again,
Well I do have the boys in their own coop and they are doing ok together besides trying to be "affectionate" to one another. I am not sure what the exact sickness was but I did notice the first hens had worms so I have dewormed them. Then they had the bloody, black looking poo which from reading on the forums, looked to have been cocci and I have treated them for that. I have one hen who has a nasty bottom and keeps having poop harden on her backside. She got really sick before I realized there was a "blockage" which might have been keeping her from pooping properly. I cleaned her up (this happened over the last part of the summer) isolated her and medicated her with some antibiotic, Oxytetracycline, and she recovered very well. But now she has gotten back in the same condition. She is the only hen that has this problem.
Other than her, the rest of the flock is doing well. Thanks for the welcome to BYC.

Ya'll have a good day.

Welcome to you, Athens 2016. We're pretty much neighbors!

Hello!

Welcome to BYC and the coop! There's a lot of great peeps here! Feel free to ask lots of questions. But most of all, make yourself at home. I'm so glad you decided to joined the BYC family. I look forward to seeing you around BYC.

Welcome! I think a lot of us jumped into this trial by fire chicken life. As many books as I read before getting them, once I got them I realized I knew very little! My chickens and BYC have taught me so much.