My husband and I live on a farm in Central Iowa. We love gardening and recently built a green house. I love raising babies, but because the horse market is so depressed I stopped breeding. I decided chickens might be a fun enterprise so we ordered 35 chicks from FlashPointFarms in March 2010.
We trimmed down the extra roosters and kept three:
Apollo, Lightning and Thor
Such a variety of pullets! We ended up with 17.
With so many breeds to get us started I still could not decide which I liked best so we got more and raised a few mixed breeds with a determined broody!
2012
It's been a while since I updated, but here is my current Rooster Roster:
White Ameraucana
Lavender AM Roo and EE and Ameraucana ladies
Black AM Garden Roo with his Cochin Family
Black Jersey Giant "Goliath" He's currently the boss of the coop.
Rhode Island Red - "Red"
My remaining original EE rooster, Thor - he throws gorgeous babies!
Here's one of his daughters on the left out of a Welsummer hen. The girl on the right is pure AM:
Here is one of my new EE roosters out of a pure Ameraucana hen and an Iowa Blue rooster.
His sisters are phenomenal free rangers and lay a beautiful rich blue egg. Here's a blue one next to her Iowa Blue sire "Boss".
These girls look a lot like their pure AM mothers, but in profile their tails are very different. They go anywhere and everywhere and I once watched one of them flip upside down to meet a diving hawk and kick it into a heap.
Here's my other EE rooster, Rocky. He is by of Apollo or Thor out of a barred Rock hen.
He was a fun surprise so I decided to hang on to him.
A group of us in Iowa got together and ordered a large batch of Iowa Blues. I got 15 to start a project flock. To be continued...
We trimmed down the extra roosters and kept three:
Apollo, Lightning and Thor
Such a variety of pullets! We ended up with 17.
With so many breeds to get us started I still could not decide which I liked best so we got more and raised a few mixed breeds with a determined broody!
2012
It's been a while since I updated, but here is my current Rooster Roster:
White Ameraucana
Lavender AM Roo and EE and Ameraucana ladies
Black AM Garden Roo with his Cochin Family
Black Jersey Giant "Goliath" He's currently the boss of the coop.
Rhode Island Red - "Red"
My remaining original EE rooster, Thor - he throws gorgeous babies!
Here's one of his daughters on the left out of a Welsummer hen. The girl on the right is pure AM:
Here is one of my new EE roosters out of a pure Ameraucana hen and an Iowa Blue rooster.
His sisters are phenomenal free rangers and lay a beautiful rich blue egg. Here's a blue one next to her Iowa Blue sire "Boss".
These girls look a lot like their pure AM mothers, but in profile their tails are very different. They go anywhere and everywhere and I once watched one of them flip upside down to meet a diving hawk and kick it into a heap.
Here's my other EE rooster, Rocky. He is by of Apollo or Thor out of a barred Rock hen.
He was a fun surprise so I decided to hang on to him.
A group of us in Iowa got together and ordered a large batch of Iowa Blues. I got 15 to start a project flock. To be continued...
