Chick15's Member Page

My Chickens
I have 10 chickens. They are about 7 months old, and they are laying currently around 7 eggs per day.
We first ordered our chicks in early March (?) 2011. We ordered 15 chicks, 5 Rhode Island Reds, 5 Speckled Sussex, and 5 Silver Laced Wyandottes from eFowl.com. That is why my username is Chick 15. We had only originally wanted 6 hens, we figured we would order eight, and then some would be males. We looked at a couple of sites, and my dad picked eFowl. Well, eFowl has a minimum order of 15 (5 of each breed). My dad went ahead and bought them anyway. (my mom kinda flipped when she found out)
For me, the wait for the chicks was an eternity. Every day I would go on my computer and look up pictures of chicks. It was science fair in school, so I would often look up "Rhode Island Red Chicks" in the google search bar and gaze at the little balls of fluff (no wonder we didnt win science fair...). I did so much research, I was the crazy-chicken-girl of the family. The Chicks arrived on Easter Break, the Post Office called at 6:00 and so my dad and I left to go and pick them up.
We ended up getting 16 chicks, eFowl threw in an extra RIR. I was so thankful they did not arrive on a school day, as I spent the rest of my day sitting in front of the brooder watching the chicks. It was all I talked about for weeks. I found backyardchickens.com a few days after we got the chickens. I immediately created an account (calling myself chick 15 because I accidentally forgot about the extra...) and all I did was chicken related. I was either on BYC or down with the chicks.
Next thing I knew we were moving the chicks outside into their homemade coop. They looked so tiny. Soon after we built the run, and they had their first trip outside. After a few months their run, once filled with lush green grass, was mud. We fenced off a bigger area, which we would let them out into whenever we were in the yard or in the pool. We then began to leave them in the fenced in area for brief periods if we went inside, it gradually became longer, until it was, if we were home, they were out. Not so soon after we would let them roam the whole yard if we were out, then if we were home. (I forgot to mention that we had 5 boys, 4 RIR, and a Speckled Sussex Roo and we got rid of them, so we only had 11....)
We had never had a fatality, no animal attacks (our dog is really lazy, and was too lazy to bother them....) In August we went to England, soon after we got back we got our first egg, then our second, third, forth, fifth etc. until we were getting 11 eggs per day. Then, one day, my mom went out to give the girls some treats, only to see a hawk sitting in the middle of our yard, eating Beauty, one of our Speckled Sussex. I had been in my room doing a project, and my brother shouted up the stairs "AYLA! ONE OF THE CHICKENS IS DEAD!!" I didn't believe him at first, I thought he was kidding. I went outside and I saw my mom standing over a small dark brown lump. I ran down, and began to cry. I sat down and began to stroke her feathers. All I wanted to do was pick her up and hold her close, she was still warm. I desperately wanted to keep the warmth inside her. I wanted to cuddle her and tell her I loved her and most of all I wanted to bring her back. I wanted to have her with me again. I wanted her to be mine again. My mom gathered the other chickens into the coop, while I sat next to Beauty and let my tears fall out. I couldn't bear to see her, the majority of her head and neck was chewed up. Her feathers were lying everywhere. I flipped her over, this half of her face was virtually untouched. Her eye was closed. This made me cry even harder.
Anyway, so that was the end of them out free in the yard. They really haven't been out of the run much anymore, I couldn't bear to have another one killed. I am so protective of my birds, and my friends think having chickens is really cool. (My Science fair partner still teases me for looking at pictures of chicks)
Yupp... so thats my story... and if you didnt read it, I dont blame ya, it is loooonnnnggg.... haha