- Jun 14, 2014
- 22
- 19
- 94
Albanian highland chickensHello everyone.
First of all it's a pleasure to be in this forum with all us chicken lovers. Below I'm gonna introduce you to Albanian highland chickens.
Second of all, I'm going to apologize if there's any mistake in what I'm about to write, because as you can assume English is not my first language.
Quick introduction : Albanian highland is located in the north of Albania, near the Montenegro border. Albania is in the Balkan.
I've been raising chickens for 15 years. I remember quite well how I started. I was 12 years old in the summer of 2004 and one of our hens was broody. We had 6 hens and 1 rooster. My grandmother (rest in peace) didn't agree to let the broody hen hatch because it was a really hot summer and was afraid that the chicks won't survive. I went secretly to one of our neighbors, bought 11 eggs with my money and told grandma "let me take care of the chicks that our hen will hatch". She smiled and agreed. 3 weeks laters six new lives were added to our coop. And since that day I've been raising chickens in my backyard. 4 years later I sold my chickens because we moved to a new house and all the elders I knew told me that according a "legend" in the new house I should have new chickens. Since 2008 I have the same line of chickens.
I used the term line because here we don't have a breed. Each city or region has at least 3 or 4 different lines of chickens with birds that have almost the same body features, same egg laying abilities and different colors. The colors of each bird are so different that if you use the eggs of the same hen for hatching max 2 individuals will resemble the mother.
My line of birds is very hardy, they do really well in hot and cold climates. (they even sleep in the trees when the temperatures are below 0 degrees Celsius and there's snow all over the place). They lay approximately 180-200 eggs/year. The majority of hens will stop laying during November and December, starting again in the mid January. The young hens will stars laying before new years eve. Every chicken goes broody at least 2 times a year. Some are very good mothers, some not so good. The roosters are very territorial and very protective of their ladies. You cannot keep 2 roosters in the same coop. The dominant one can ever blind or kill the other. If we have more than 30 hens we keep 3 or more roosters. Because in this way the dominant roosters will not pick only one rooster.
Almost everyone here keeps free ranged chicken.
I'm going to post pics of my flock. Anyone who has question is more than welcome to ask. I'll gladly answer. -B
Welcome to BYC if you are just beginning to post here. Lovely flock!
