CHICKEN MATH STRIKES AGAIN

  OMG I hope this doesn't happen to me.

Though I confess I drool over guinea eggs & peacock eggs on eBay.  And I wanted 4 chickens... sitting on 9 ready to hatch eggs currently in lockdown.  I also stop at TSC whenever I'm by that way to play with the chicks til mine are hatched.  I can only imagine what my future holds.

Getting chickens was my husbands idea he said to get 12 I said too many we compromised with 6.  The hatchery sent 5, well i didn't want my $5.00 I wanted my chicken....you can't get one chick shipped so they sent me 3 more with free shipping I had to pay for the two extra. One turned out to be a rooster so I bought 4 more. Now he wanted them but from day one I have been taking care of them and loving every second.  My dogs attacked two and ended up killing them, One got impacted crop and died....I ordered 3 three more from hatchery and also found a lady selling silkie's and bought a silkie and barred rock silkie cross so yup that makes 12 then one got taken by a hawk so I had 11 then I decided to try hatching I got 14 eggs and only one hatched...a rooster. So I tried again with about 30 eggs 14 hatched.  I sold some and kept 4.  Now I ordered 5 more in decemeber to be delivered in April and I just put 21 eggs in the incubator and am awaiting 18 more so we will see what my total is when all is said and done.  Chicken math gets you every time!!!

Ok so update this I ended up buying more and more hatching eggs.  I purchased over 110 eggs in total I have 12 in lockdown right now, 5 under a broody she hatched 1 and I have 70 eggs currently incubating.  This is getting out of control....

I started with 2... I now have 19 (7 were born yesterday) plus 14 duck eggs in the incubator, gotta get more chicken eggs in soon... And i think i've had probably close to 50 babies born within the last year that I sold off... Oh and i'm going down by TSC tomorrow, so I must stop in and see if they've got any silkies.... Although for their prices, I might just get a bunch of egg laying breeds and then plan on reselling later... :D AND i live in the middle of town. I have a serious problem...

Chicken math gets most of us...

We originally start wanting about 8 - 10.  I built a coop large enough to house 20 birds and the run large enough for about 30 birds.  We ended up getting 15 the first year. 

About Jan of the second my daughters started begging for more chicks.  I told them there was only room for about 5 more birds in the coop.  They said that was not enough.  After they thought about it a couple of days they came back to me and asked if we could move their playhouse next to the run and convert it into a second coop.  They did not use it much anyway.  It was a huge project to move but I did it.  Now we had room for 20 more birds in the new coop!.  We got 25 chicks late time (two years ago) after planning to get 20. That put us at 35 birds, which was a few too many for the run.  That was enough for awhile.  In the last year or so we have given away a couple and lost some. 

We are down to only 27 now.  Some will be 3 years old and the others 2 years old in the next few weeks.  We have noticed a reduction in egg production since last year, especially this last winter when we dropped down to 1 egg per day for awhile.  We decided in December that it is time to get some new chicks this spring to start replacing some of the older birds.  There were a couple of improvements I wanted to make to my run this winter.  While working on the changes I realized with the work I was doing it would be pretty easy to add on another 8' x 16'.  I just finished that up a couple of weeks ago.  Now I have lots of available room.  

Our current plan for this year is to get rid of about 7 older birds (yes this willl really happen.)   The rest of the picture is not totally clear yet.  We plan to get about  20 chicks between Apr 6 and Apr 13.  Of course I have to allow for the possibility of 2 or 3 roosters (which I won't keep).  And you know how it is at the feed store, it is often difficult to decide between a couple of birds which one to bring home and so you have to get the both.  And then when you are done buying chicks for the year you hear of a nearby feed store that just got in a breed that you really wanted but could not find and they have chicks available... 

I started with two silkies with a self imposed limit of 4 birds.  The silkies were soon replaced, for laying reasons, with a buff orpington and a RIR.  I now have 10 hens and a roo and am getting my incubator ready for some isbar eggs.  My wife says I have a chicken addiction.  

  ROFLOL  "a chicken addiction."  ROFLOL!!!
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by SanAntoneChicken 

I started with two silkies with a self imposed limit of 4 birds.  The silkies were soon replaced, for laying reasons, with a buff orpington and a RIR.  I now have 10 hens and a roo and am getting my incubator ready for some isbar eggs.  My wife says I have a chicken addiction.  

I started with two easter eggers, two silkies, a RIR and a Cuckoo Marans. I set my "limit" to 10, so I was still allowing for 4 more (I wanted at least two more egg layers and two more Silkies). I got those four (two Blue Andalusians and two Silkies) THEN "had" to have two Silver Laced Wyandotte babies, THEN two Buff Orpington babies.... 

All done, right??? WRONG!!!!!! I have 8 (YES... 8) Modern Game Bantams on special order from Callahans here in Austin (two Lemon Blue, two Blue, two Silver Blue and two Lavender). This is it. I really can't have anymore birds in my back yard. If I had more space, sure. And actually, 12 of them are bantams... soooo it's not "so" bad, is it? LOL!!!

LOL!!!! chicken math is a very naughty naughty thing

chicken math (or should i say turkey math)has struck, we planned on keeping 4 chickens, we kept 6 and now we have 30 turkeys/chicks we just got