Hello from Nashua NH! :)

Hello, all!

I'm a 27-year old artist-type guy from Nashua, NH, and recently as of this past April introduced to chickens from my fiance, who raised them as a kid. I said to myself... "But they're just dinner from the grocery store?" not knowing how darn cute they were. LOL, so we went to a chicken swap in April and I wound up bringing home my first week-olders along with a trip to Petco for the heat lamp and other supplies I'd need, and a little Rhode Island Red poof and a little Barred Plymouth Rock poof, who wound up dying :< She was sleeping a lot, then shook violently and died. It was pretty traumatizing, but to my knowledge I didn't do anything that could have caused it.

Undeterred, I received a new chick for Red (the RIR), and they became buddies. This girl was, I was told, an Australian Black, who we named Jet, fresh in from the tractor supply store's chick seller. She was an inch tall, and liked to sleep a lot until I realized this wasn't normal; she had rickets. I nursed her to full recovery; in the meantime we bought a Speckled Sussex we named Tiramisu from an awesome chicken lady in Barrington NH, as well as an Easter Egger we named Chai who looked like a silver Americauna until she molted her baby floof off. I went back to the next chicken swap just to see the cute overload a few weeks later, and wound up with Stormy the blue Cochin and Amberbock, a sex-linked amber chicken who is currently still white. So now we've got six chicks. They're doing really well- we built them a 72' square foot coop in an awesome 9 hours of fun when they were big enough to be moved from my old ferret/exotic pet cage (which worked great for them when they were chicks).

I have permission from the city of Nashua to take the chickens to the non-pesticide-treated parks (they're spoiled indoor chickens!) and also have been informed after thorough research there is NO laws prohibiting anyone from having chickens. This rocks. They're great at hunting bugs as well. I also treated them effectively for mild coccidiosis as when I brought Stormy home, I had handled chicks from a seller who unethically was trying to sell them with -severe- coccidiosis (didn't see any poop and went "Gee, wonder why their coop is so clean?" - they kept changing the litter!), and it had transmitted to the poor Cochin and then to the others. Everyone's all better now and due to lay come September

Anywho, that's how I got my girls and how I went from "Chicken = food at grocery store" to "Chicken Obsessed"

Hello! (*waves*)

Hi to you from South Florida! My fiance's from Ocala! Small world, huh?

That chicken sculpture is awesome!! ^^

ROFL, I'm getting entirely obsessed. We got a chicken magnet for their chicken egg-drop schedule (when they lay eggs- to see who lays how many, etc). I SWORE only two, but it sort of grew. >.>

But yeah, I definitely like the notion of taking them to the parks is good- I live in a large apartment, and they need to be outdoors. Thankfully between the two of us we've got the free time every day to pull this off. We're moving into a house pretty soon, which is awesome too, so it means we'll be able to spoil them further AND have cute in the house as soon as we get in. We're also planning on taking them on fishing trips- giving them a temporary wire enclosure for them to keep the ticks and bugs away while we catch some. LOL... should be interesting!!

Hahaha, I definitely want to get my hands on a Silkie someday. I almost did thrice, then changed my mind at the last second.

I'm a HUGE sucker for the blue gene, oh man. BIG case of the blues over here   I'd like to breed my blue Cochin someday as well. (I've got pipedreams of being a chicken breeder... LOL)