New Flock Additions 2015

We started off our chicken experience with three chickens in 2011, got three more in 2012, three were eaten by a raccoon family early this winter, and now we are getting SEVEN MORE in May! That will bring us to a flock of 1 four year old Barred Plymouth Rock, 2 three year old SLWs, and now:

1 Rhode Island Red
1 Barred Plymouth Rock
1 Australorp
1 GLW
2 Speckled Sussex
1 Buff Chantecler

We have been blessed these past two experiences to have 100% pullet sexing accuracy (we went with chickensforbackyards.com). This time we ordered through mypetchicken.com. We are crossing our fingers that the May 28th delivery will leave us with positive results as well!

Have you gone through Mypetchicken.com? What was the sexing accuracy for your order? LET ME KNOW

I will keep you all update on the adventure

Well, we were at Tractor Supply two weeks ago, and ended up picking up these two cuties:


They will be joining the older chickens when they are a little older (We only have three chickens currently), and then they will all be living together later this summer. Their names are Daffy and Dill (Khaki Campbell ducklings, gender unknown).

They're adorable! Have you had ducks and chickens together before? I've been curious. I hear their eggs are wonderful.
Wow, next time I get chicks I should try them...our TSC here sold us six pullets and 4 of them are cockerels!

Aw! They are adorable. We used to have a couple of ducks that hung out with our chickens. Built them a little swimming pool separate from the chickens, and let them go on in there every day for a while. Have fun!

WindyHillFarm said:

Aw! They are adorable. We used to have a couple of ducks that hung out with our chickens. Built them a little swimming pool separate from the chickens, and let them go on in there every day for a while. Have fun!

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We are also planning on building a swimming pool separate from the main run Wouldn't want the run to become one giant puddle! We have had our chickens in the same are for a couple of years now, so we are planning a whole new run for these new additions and the current chickens to move to.

thecrumbler said:

They're adorable! Have you had ducks and chickens together before? I've been curious. I hear their eggs are wonderful.
Wow, next time I get chicks I should try them...our TSC here sold us six pullets and 4 of them are cockerels!

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We have never had ducks and chickens together before, but we have heard good things! One of our family members hates duck eggs (says they gross him out), but I am quite fond of them. That sucks about the 4 cockerels! So far all of the chicks we have gotten from Chickensforbackyards have been correctly sexed as pullets (6/6 Knock on wood!!) Hopefully Mypetchicken holds up to these standards. We came to the conclusion that one rooster would not be so bad, but we are in this for the eggs so....


I will make sure to add pictures of the Coop/Run move/renovation and site prep! This should be one heck of an adventure!

I got my 8 chicks from a girl who accidentally ordered twice as many chicks as she wanted from My Pet Chicken. She got all girls. I bought 8 from her and they are all girls, so for the 8 I got, 100% accuracy and she did not mention thinking any of hers were roosters either.

thecrumbler said:

They're adorable! Have you had ducks and chickens together before? I've been curious. I hear their eggs are wonderful.
Wow, next time I get chicks I should try them...our TSC here sold us six pullets and 4 of them are cockerels!

Click to expand...

Duck eggs are GREAT! DH loves them. We raised our ducks and chickens alongside each other so they all got along really well.

I thought I would just post some pictures of the new run location. It has been all staked out and the landscape company will be coming to level it out, as the location slopes towards the house. We are considering putting gravel in the lowest spot, and covering the rest of the run in sand. We have heard that sand is good for chicken runs, but do you have any personal experiences?




This is from the corner of the run looking our to the grassy yard area that the chickens (and now two ducks) will be able to roam.
This is to the right of the run where the kiddie pool will go. The base here will be gravel.

This is from the back corner of the run.

View from where the kiddie pool will be located. There will a 3ft green poly resin chicken fence that will cut straight through the woods to the road to keep the chickens in our half of the woods when they are ranging. The fence will start at the post all the way to the right continue in that direction.
These are the woods that they will be able to forage in.

Turned around from the last picture.


More views of the ranging and garden areas:



Here is a picture of their current run:



And the three girls we currently have:


And an update on the ducks:

The sand has been added and the retaining wall built! The chicks are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday




And Daffy and Dill are going strong!