Meet the Halloween Chicks!

[fl-chicken-tender]

We got 15 chicks from Meyer Hatchery that were born on Halloween. They all have horror-themed names

I wanted a fun way to show my flock to friends and family, so I made a slideshow presentation (can you tell I used to be an educator?)

Hope y'all enjoy!

 

[the_peanut_coop]

We got 15 chicks from Meyer Hatchery that were born on Halloween. They all have horror-themed names

I wanted a fun way to show my flock to friends and family, so I made a slideshow presentation (can you tell I used to be an educator?)

Hope y'all enjoy!

I love the names, particularly beetlejuice and casper Thanks so much for sharing, theyŕe so cute.

 

[fl-chicken-tender]

Here's the slides as pictures, not sure what happened to my file
My apologies, still getting the hang of this.

Spoiler

 

[FrappcinoObsession]

Here's the slides as pictures, not sure what happened to my file
My apologies, still getting the hang of this.

Spoiler

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How do they look like now as adult do you have any pictures?

 

[the_peanut_coop]

How do they look like now as adult do you have any pictures?

Ooh, yes, I'd love an update!

 

[FrappcinoObsession]

Ooh, yes, I'd love an update!

Please do one especially on pennywise she look gorgeous

 

[fl-chicken-tender]

How do they look like now as adult do you have any pictures?

I have SO many pictures!
My folks wanted to see the comparison between babies and adults, so I made another slideshow. Hope y'all enjoy!

Spoiler

 

[the_peanut_coop]

I have SO many pictures!
My folks wanted to see the comparison between babies and adults, so I made another slideshow. Hope y'all enjoy!

Spoiler

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Wow, they are so pretty! you did a good job on the slide show. I love the easter eggers

 

[FrappcinoObsession]

I have SO many pictures!
My folks wanted to see the comparison between babies and adults, so I made another slideshow. Hope y'all enjoy!

Spoiler

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Pennywise is my favirote chicken she so pretty

 

[fl-chicken-tender]

One year later update:

It's been a long time since I've been active on here! I had a lot of living and learning to do the first year on our homestead. This is going to be a long post, so bear with me.

We had plenty of backyard for our chickens (about half an acre with a 6-foot fence), but it turns out our coop was too small to support the number of birds we had. We put together a coop / run combo from the Chicken Coop Company. It was advertised for 10+ chickens, and some folks said they could accommodate 15-20 birds. We should've known better, but live and learn.

Once the birds were fully grown, some of the hens began sleeping out in the chicken run because the coop was over-crowded. During the day the birds free-ranged in our yard and only went in the coop to lay eggs, but I didn't like that some of them were sleeping outside. I closed the door to the run every night and we'd splurged on the automatic coop door, but I worried about them. Building or purchasing a second coop was out of our budget.

On top of that, having two roosters (or roosters at all) didn't work out for us. We live out in the boonies and we wanted one rooster to scare off predators. But, one of the sexed chicks turned out to be a roo, and the two of them began fighting.

It was a tough decision to decide which rooster to keep. Casper was a beautiful Light Brahma and he'd been my favorite chick, but he was huge compared to the hens and too rough with them.

Our other rooster was a Black Australorp, and shortly after we rehomed Casper, he became aggressive towards people. He started attacking us every day. He was also pulling out feathers on our hens and generally being a menace. I didn't have the heart to butcher him, so to Craigslist he went too. This was a little bit easier as he was being a total jerk. By the end, I had separated him from the hens to give them a break.

During this saga, we started getting eggs, and we realized quickly that we had way more eggs than we could possibly eat. Most of our neighbors and our local family members had their own chickens, so we couldn't even give them away.

Local food pantries wouldn't take washed chicken eggs either, for food safety reasons that I totally understand.

My goal when I got chickens was to start selling eggs, but my partner and I both work demanding jobs, and that never came to fruition. It felt awful to throw out eggs when they were approaching $8 a carton at the store.

So, we rehomed half our hens too, so that we could manage the eggs they were producing, and to combat the over-crowding in the coop. This wasn't an easy decision -- I'd raised these girls from three days old and I'd grown attached.

The good part about living in a relatively rural area was that it was easy to rehome our birds. I had multiple people reaching out within 24 hours of posting on Craigslist. Casper went with a lovely couple who wanted to start breeding their backyard chickens, and the other rooster and 7 hens went to another nice family. I was happy that most of the birds we sold got to stay together.

Of course, my partner and I agonized over which hens to keep. We ended up with 2 Black Australorps, 2 Easter Eggers, 2 Black-Laced Wyandottes, and the Blue Orpington. Seven birds is way more manageable for us than 15. We can eat or give away almost all of the eggs we get now.

I think our smaller flock is much happier. We're much happier not having the rooster attacking us and the hens, and no more crowing all day and night. My MIL asked me today if I missed having a rooster, and the answer was a resounding NO.

So, we made a lot of mistakes with our first flock. We over-committed, and we didn't give our birds the coop space they deserved at first. I wish we had started much smaller and expanded from there.

The coop has held up really nicely. It's super easy to clean, my only complaint is that the plastic tray for the floor has begun falling apart at the edges. We can't slide the floor out anymore, but it only takes a couple minutes to shovel out, and we can do a thicker layer of bedding since we're not taking the floor tray out to clean.

We attached the coop and run from Chicken Coop Company to a big metal run from Tractor Supply, using zip-ties and a bunch of hardware cloth. We put tarps on the chicken run (again, zip-ties) to give the girls somewhere to go when it rains. I think it's a great set-up, but 10 birds is probably our maximum.

We recently lost one of our Black Australorps to some sort of illness, and that was hard. She started having mobility issues and was sitting down to rest every few steps. It was her time -- we didn't want her to suffer, or risk whatever was wrong with her spreading, so we made the tough call to humanely put her down. I spend a lot of time outside hanging out with them, and it seems like the rest of our girls are happy and healthy.