CHICKEN MATH STRIKES AGAIN

Puddin Fluff said:

Update to previous post. Four weeks after hatch: Broody hen hatched one of four. Incubator hatched twenty: Lost two in the first week, one to failure to thrive, one to wry neck. Currenty tally: Original 11 sex-links, 12 Salmon Favorelles (6 girls/6boys), 4 Mottled Houdans, 2 Araucanas, and one lonely White Silkie. Total: 30

To be continued, as there is only space for about 20 in the hen house.

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I am a social worker/bereavement counselor for a hospice. We see the phrase "failure to thrive" as a diagnosis for some of our clients. Are you in the health field since you used that phrase?
I started out with 2-6 month old chickens, Red the Rooster (RIR) and Goldie (Brown Leghorn). Bought 15 from a hatchery (kept 6 and gave away the rest). Then 16 the next year and put them in a different area/yard. Now have another batch of 22 4-week old chicks. Plus, I decided to let my buff go broody and Wed. she hatched out 2 (out of 6 eggs). First time letting a hen hatch eggs. Needless to say, they are precious! Watching them interact with mama is priceless! Now a friend has week old Easter Eggers she is going to give me. So I hope THAT's IT for a while! I think that makes 46.

Betsy57 said:

I am a social worker/bereavement counselor for a hospice. We see the phrase "failure to thrive" as a diagnosis for some of our clients. Are you in the health field since you used that phrase?

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Interesting. I learned the term "failure to thrive" from a veterinarian at least 30 years ago, when I was hand-raising abandoned puppies and kittens. Then I encountered it again in chicken books and here on BYC, back in 2009 when I started with my first 8 chicks.

(I am a lapsed EMT and the term simply made sense to me, but I dunno if it was due to medical training.)

Betsy57 said:

I am a social worker/bereavement counselor for a hospice. We see the phrase "failure to thrive" as a diagnosis for some of our clients. Are you in the health field since you used that phrase?
I started out with 2-6 month old chickens, Red the Rooster (RIR) and Goldie (Brown Leghorn). Bought 15 from a hatchery (kept 6 and gave away the rest). Then 16 the next year and put them in a different area/yard. Now have another batch of 22 4-week old chicks. Plus, I decided to let my buff go broody and Wed. she hatched out 2 (out of 6 eggs). First time letting a hen hatch eggs. Needless to say, they are precious! Watching them interact with mama is priceless! Now a friend has week old Easter Eggers she is going to give me. So I hope THAT's IT for a while!

I think that makes 46.

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then you need 4 more to make an even 50

Okay. YOU did it to me! Now I have 51 chickens! I tried to put these new "adoptees" (one week old) in with mama and her 4 day old chicks but she wasn't too sure about them and was pecking at them. Afraid to leave them with mama. And the other ones are 3 1/2 weeks old and too big and active for these little guys. So, they're in their own area for now. Geez. What have I gotten myself into?! It will be a challenge to get all these chicks/chickens back into one group! I hope the babies mama hatched and the ones I got from a friend today aren't all roosters!

Why does reading about everyone else's addiction make me feel better?

My story:

We were looking for a house to buy. My son would say "can we have chickens here?" If so he would like it, if not then he wouldnt. He wanted chickens really bad as well as my DH. 2 years later low and behold we bought a house that not only could we have chickens it came with a little chicken coop, 5 chickens and 2 ducks. Instant thrill! That was in October. Then we decided to start our own hatching adventure....OH MY! We thought we would surprise our kids with an incubator and hatching eggs. In the meantime, grandma thought it would be cool to pick up chickens and suprise us! 10 babies Surprise! We then hatched our first silkies as well as our home grown barred rocks. 11 more babies. We had to give our first 5 away to make room for the new chicks. WELL.....we had to take their last eggs and hatch them right? Then we visited friends that had polish chicks and had to have some of those kind of eggs! Sitting with 21 chickens, 18 home grown eggs and why not hatch some ducks? Oh yeah and we just love silkies so we felt we needed to try to hatch 20 more eggs. The lady with the silkies cut us a heck of a deal....she had too many eggs would we want 20 more for just shipping fee price? Oh and did I mention I am in love with Copper Marans? Oh yeah you guessed it.....12 chocolate eggs in the mail! What does this all mean? 3 incubators and over 100 eggs to hatch.

My name is Lisa and I have an addiction.......

fowllover said:

Why does reading about everyone else's addiction make me feel better?

My story:

We were looking for a house to buy. My son would say "can we have chickens here?" If so he would like it, if not then he wouldnt. He wanted chickens really bad as well as my DH. 2 years later low and behold we bought a house that not only could we have chickens it came with a little chicken coop, 5 chickens and 2 ducks. Instant thrill! That was in October. Then we decided to start our own hatching adventure....OH MY!

We thought we would surprise our kids with an incubator and hatching eggs. In the meantime, grandma thought it would be cool to pick up chickens and suprise us! 10 babies Surprise! We then hatched our first silkies as well as our home grown barred rocks. 11 more babies. We had to give our first 5 away to make room for the new chicks. WELL.....we had to take their last eggs and hatch them right? Then we visited friends that had polish chicks and had to have some of those kind of eggs! Sitting with 21 chickens, 18 home grown eggs and why not hatch some ducks? Oh yeah and we just love silkies so we felt we needed to try to hatch 20 more eggs. The lady with the silkies cut us a heck of a deal....she had too many eggs would we want 20 more for just shipping fee price? Oh and did I mention I am in love with Copper Marans? Oh yeah you guessed it.....12 chocolate eggs in the mail! What does this all mean? 3 incubators and over 100 eggs to hatch.

My name is Lisa and I have an addiction.......

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A most excellent example of chicken math at work! Congratulations. No one here will judge you for your addiction.

Simple Chicken Math. We started with 2 White Leghorn pullets, and one White Leghorn cockrel. I wanted brown eggs so we bought a Rhode Island Red hen. Then we decided to get 4 more hens that my husband thought were Rhodies but I think they are Red Stars. A few weeks ago Ruby, my dear Rhodie died. DH said we could get another to replace her. Last weekend we got a Buff & Lemon Cuckoo Orp, and a Black Copper Marans. So started with 3, plus one, plus four, minus one, plus 3. Ten chickens in all but I think we will have a few more addition steps shortly!

Well, I am still new but, I think it's worse than chicken math but, become animal math!

I live in what we call in Australia "public housing" but, since we had approval to make a community garden several of the residents asked me to approach housing & ask if we could have chickens. We got the OK & our council allows us to have 6 with out a permit.

I first got 2 crossbreed hens & 2, 7 week old. I was fostering a greyhound at the time & being how I am I got the chicken before we had a proper coop or run needless to say in the end one of the 7 week old ones (think it was going to be a rooster) died with one clamp of the greyhound's jaw. Many weeks later I decide that since our girls weren't really laying that maybe one of them was broody (didn't really know the signs at the time) so I went to a place & got 1/2 doz eggs & an Isa brown. That brought us up to 4 hens & 6 eggs. None of the girls would sit the eggs so I paid someone to incubate them. We had 4 hatch out of that which, if they are all girls & all survive we will have 8. Lord help me. Still only getting 1 egg a day unless I leave an egg out there for 24-48 hrs then that makes the others get one going. The dummy eggs I have must not be right for them.

In the interim of all this I adopted 2 bunnies, already have a fish tank, the neighbours have dogs, cats & budgies. The sad part is I can't see an ad or go near a pet shop without wanting to get a miniature pig, some turtles, a lizard or two & more rabbits. It's some sort of strange addiction! I'm blaming it on the first chickens

yorklady said:

Simple Chicken Math. We started with 2 White Leghorn pullets, and one White Leghorn cockrel. I wanted brown eggs so we bought a Rhode Island Red hen. Then we decided to get 4 more hens that my husband thought were Rhodies but I think they are Red Stars. A few weeks ago Ruby, my dear Rhodie died. DH said we could get another to replace her. Last weekend we got a Buff & Lemon Cuckoo Orp, and a Black Copper Marans. So started with 3, plus one, plus four, minus one, plus 3. Ten chickens in all but I think we will have a few more addition steps shortly!

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A Lemon Cockoo Orp? Never heard of that breed. A yellow Cockoo Moran Orphington mix? Have a pic? Interesting!