What gender might these little ones be?

[JK93]

That's crazy! I've ordered from them twice over 2 years and gotten beautiful birds..

I wish! I'm glad your birds are healthy, I think certain breeds with them come from better quality stock. If I order online again I'd try cackle or ideal, I can understand that sexing errors happen, but deformed beaks and neuro issues cross the line for me. My 1 orp and d'uccle are the only 2 out of 6 to not have some range of deformity. I heard MPC outsources so I'd love to know if all my birds were from Meyers or what other hatcheries they used so I can avoid them all together in the future.

 

[JK93]

The chest bumping eventually works itself out, I wouldn't worry about that! I had two Ameraucana boys that challenged each other all the time as babies and grew up to be very good friends that relied on each other a lot. It's a lot like siblings...love but disagreements as kids.

I love the chest bumping and sneak attack chest bumping it's pretty funny to watch. They aren't hurting eachother regardless of size diffrence but it's hysterical how after they bump the sf stands really tall over the d'uccle and is like dude let me remind you I am 3x your size!

 

[kurby22]

I love the chest bumping and sneak attack chest bumping it's pretty funny to watch. They aren't hurting eachother regardless of size diffrence but it's hysterical how after they bump the sf stands really tall over the d'uccle and is like dude let me remind you I am 3x your size!

Me too, it's the best!

 

[MamaWolf7]

I will look into them! Thank you so much for your advice and sharing your experience, it is so appreciated! Truthfully I haven't had it in me to cull or send anything to freezer camp yet. I don't know if I will have that in me or if that's something that comes with time. This is my first time ever owning or even being around chickens, (I know no one locally to even discuss chickens with or to reach out for troubleshooting haha) so I'm very soft about them still haha. I had 2 male pekin ducks over the summer as my first introduction to poultry that I raised thinking they would be females and if not we could send them to freezer camp anddddd I ended up rehoming all 30 pounds of those boys because I just didn't have it in me. I swore I would be stronger and tough when I got chickens and do what I needed to do but now I'm right back in the same boat of internally being filled with marshmallow fluff towards them haha. I really hope I get tougher and am able to cull and send my birds to freezer camp in the future though. This experience with deformed and diseased chicks and the lack of vets in my area (they won't even do a fecal if you say the word chicks) has really made me feel like I should put in tons of OT at work and save every penny up to buy land and start up a small scale selective breeding program to really weed out a lot of the bad stuff I got unlucky with, but I need to be tough and able to cull before I even toy with that idea haha.

I grew up as a city girl, but wanted to be more self sufficient. By chance I made an awesome friend who grew up on a farm and just got her own acreage. I drove 5 hours to help her butcher her chickens as a first introduction to it while I was still in university. Her husband had already taken the axe to them. It was a great intro! To this day I still get my husband (also a farm boy) to swing the axe for me. I just do the plucking and gutting after the head is removed. It is much less personable. My advice is:

1. Don't name your chickens (which I do anyway) as it makes them harder to part with

2. Find someone willing to let you help butcher their chickens. Check out this section of BYC to find someone in your area:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forums/where-am-i-where-are-you.26/