I love these stories!
In 2010, we had a kid living with us for 6 months while he finished high school. One day he came home with his girlfriend and a chick. He'd bought it for her but her parents wouldn't let her keep it at home. My husband and I had actually been thinking about getting a few chickens for the eggs, but it was vague "someday that would be cool" kind of thing. We discussed and did a little research and decided we might as well do it now. Told the kids they had to get another chick because you can't have just one; they were thrilled. The first was a RIR and the second a barred Plymouth Rock. When they were big enough, we set up a temporary shelter and pen in the back yard and set about figuring out how and where to make a coop and permanent yard; we live in town. My niece was done with her old wooden playhouse so we bought it and converted it into a coop and set up a little chicken yard.
We discussed the situation and decided if we're going to have a couple of chickens, we might as well have six chickens and make it worth our while. Back to Orscheln; home with two BOs, a Production Red and a black Australorp.
Before the permanent coop and yard were finished, the boy had graduated and moved out of state but the chickens stayed. Our Weimaraner got hold of the Plymouth Rock. Five chickens.
DH's co-worker has a couple of kids in 4-H. They're done raising chickens and he has three black Australorps, about half grown, he'll give us if we want them. No city ordinance in existence banning chickens or setting limits, so sure, we'll take them. Eight chickens.
A month or two later, two of the new birds died of Mysterious Chicken Death within two weeks of each other. They just got very weak and died later that day. Six chickens.
Adorable, friendliest chick ever RIR turned out to be a roo. Then he turned out to be a vicious roo and we found him another home. Didn't ask too many questions, but there were an awful lot of roos where we left him ... 
Five chickens.
We were at our nephew's football game when we got a call from the neighbors that one of our buff chickens was in their backyard and they'd stuck it in the coop for us. From their description, it sounded much smaller than any of our now-fully-grown chickens. When we got home, we didn't find any additional chickens in our coop. The next morning, DH found a little BO chick hidden in the wood pile. We had no idea where it may have come from and wondered if someone had dumped a chick. Odd, but possible, I guess. The baby needs a companion so off we went and came back with an unknown breed out of the straight run bin because that's all that was left this time of year. That chick turned out to be a SLW pullet. My niece "fostered" the chicks until they were almost big enough to integrate with the grown flock. Seven chickens.
It took us a couple of tries to get the new birds integrated with the older ones. I think DH rushed it a bit and the first couple of tries were unsuccessful. When the two younger birds were bigger, he stuck them on a roost in the coop after the others had already gone in to bed. That worked well and there were no problems after that.
Over the next year, egg production dropped off a bit as various birds went broody at various times. The Production Red turned out to be a roo, but a very nice one. More and more people in town have chickens. Somewhere in town, someone filed three complaints over a year's time about hearing a rooster crow and suddenly there's all kinds of talk about an ordinance. We jumped the gun thinking it would be passed for sure and found a home for our roo. Six chickens.
The ordinance was tabled, but was brought up again just a week or so ago. We should be grandfathered in for some of the proposed regulations and roos will have to be "inaudible." I don't think any of our neighbors (we've talked with most of them) had a problem with hearing a roo crow once in a while. When the windows are closed, you can't hear him anyway. Egg production was way off since last summer. We didn't want our flock to all be the same age, so we knew we'd be adding more chickens in the next year or two. We decided to wait another year because we didn't really want to mess with raising chicks this year. About six weeks ago, we went to Orscheln to buy feed and came back with the last four Ameraucanas they had. DH said some unkind things about me, but didn't stop me from buying them. At least one is a roo, which makes a 30% failure rate for the birds we've taken out of pullet bins there! Ten chickens.
We think we might be done for a couple more years....
, ChickenGirl! 
With several comments about finding it hard to obtain good quality Brabanters, has anyone purchased from Sandhill? Where have you found good quality stock? If our town changes it's regs, this is...
I like everything about it except how it looks right now. I know it lays decently. It is a great part of my great waterfowl flock.
First, watching a runner duck run is awesome. They can find their own food. They aren't like pekins in water. Mine haven't started laying but I heard their decent.
Its not as fat and slow as a pekin, but its not frail either. I want a mallard but I don't want a flying bird. The rouen is great for that.
They are my calmest birds and are easiest to catch. They eat less than Pekins. I heard they also lay well, but mine are younger.
