A boy and his chickens...

[Panhandler80]

Our son will be 11 months on a week or so.

April 1 our 21 chicks arrived. This past Sunday they went outside.

Here is the view from his bedroom window. He already loves watching them. Run is about 60 feet long and his window is near coop and shaded point. From window you can only see about a 12 foot stretch of run, so it should prove very entertaining to watch them come and go in their various shapes, colors and sizes.

 

[drumstick diva]

Chicken TV is the best, full color, new antics every day, no cable or of satellite bills

 

[Panhandler80]

Chicken TV is the best, full color, new antics every day, no cable or of satellite bills

First child and first chickens. I've wanted both for a long long time. So long that he'll definitely be our only kid. Built one hell of a run and coop for them. Boy never really took for them in brooder in garage, but.... Once they went outside he began to get a kick out them. For one, boy LOVES outside (thankfully) and I think the birds are a little more animated.

I'm a happy dude.

 

[drumstick diva]

I have a son(34) my only because I had him at 38 by c-section so my energy was long gone. Much easier to keep up with now especially since he lives several states away(for his job)

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I started my flock last year 1 month after my daughter and only child was born. Not my first chickens in life but my first chickens since high school. We too waited late to have a child, late 30s.

For me I wanted the flock more for self-sufficiency. A reliable way to feed my family from the farm. Its become a full hobby for me since then. I started with 12 head of layer pullets and 20 jungle fowl bitties (reduced to 13 after culling). Now I have somewhere around 120 head give or take. My goal is to have hundreds of completely self-sufficent free range birds within a couple of years that I can harvest at will and not put a dent in the population.

Your coop looks amazing. You know how to reach me if you’d like to add a little gamefowl to your flock.

 

[Panhandler80]

I started my flock last year 1 month after my daughter and only child was born. Not my first chickens in life but my first chickens since high school. We too waited late to have a child, late 30s.

For me I wanted the flock more for self-sufficiency. A reliable way to feed my family from the farm. Its become a full hobby for me since then. I started with 12 head of layer pullets and 20 jungle fowl bitties (reduced to 13 after culling). Now I have somewhere around 120 head give or take. My goal is to have hundreds of completely self-sufficent free range birds within a couple of years that I can harvest at will and not put a dent in the population.

Your coop looks amazing. You know how to reach me if you’d like to add a little gamefowl to your flock.

Dude... hundreds of completely self-sufficient free range birds that you could harvest at will sounds amazing! Also sounds very challenging. I imagine I'd just wind up with some very fat coyotes, eagles, hawks, etc.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Dude... hundreds of completely self-sufficient free range birds that you could harvest at will sounds amazing! Also sounds very challenging. I imagine I'd just wind up with some very fat coyotes, eagles, hawks, etc.

Yes, one would think that. But I’ve found a couple of models where its worked in real life. In the early and mid 1900s my family kept hundreds of free range gamefowl on their woods farm in Levy county. They lived wild like turkeys and my grandma would harvest 25-30 a month to feed the family and it never put a dent in the population. The chickens were offered no food or protection apart from whatever varmint hunting my dad and uncle did for their own purposes. They made super flocks around mature brood cocks and had defined territories that each large flock stayed in. The farm was mostly woods.

The second model is the Carolina bantam, which is a bantam a biologist developed in the 1960s by letting them cross with jungle fowl and then be subject to natural selection for several years. He eventually turned loose in Georgia riverbottom hammock where they lived and reproduced as wild birds.

My pet theory these days is that we’ve weakened many strains of domestic livestock, especially chickens, with modern farming techniques that totally remove natural selection from the equation and that many of our animals can use a good dose of wildness bred back into them for predator and disease resistance.

 

[AmesAcres]

This is what it's all about. Sharing the love of raising a flock!