Gretelandthechickens
In the Brooder
- Sep 4, 2018
- 12
- 16
- 39
Hello all! This may be a bit unusual so i'll do my best to post photos and give as much context as I can! (Sorry in advance for the long read)
The town I live in has a bunch of free roam chickens, and I mean they're everywhere... in neighborhoods, movie theater parking lots, drive thru's, grocery store parking lots, you name it and they're probably there. From what I hear they're protected by the town officially, most people don't seem to mind them and some (myself included) go around and scatter feed for them, leave out little water bowls, just generally look after them. Some people have even gone through the effort of painting little murals of them around town.
No one quite knows how they showed up but they've existed my whole 18 years of living here, there's a bunch of different stories and "lore" on how they ended up here but from what my old AG teacher told me, there used to be a little farm auction near our old movie theater and over time people dropped off their unwanted Hens and Roo's and they just multiplied over time.
Now that you understand the...well uniqueness of the situation i'll get to the point, they're largely in my neighborhood and over the years I've seen lots of hens have little chicks only to see them die day after day and it broke my heart, sometimes a hen would have up to 14 chicks and come back the next day with only 3! I would try to set up little safe areas for them but nothing seemed to work so eventually I just started taking in the chicks.
The hens normally didn't care whatsoever when I take them and they usually leave them after about 4 weeks anyways so it wasn't a problem, I normally leave them with one chick to look after which is easiest for them to do and by doing so that chick more often then not lives, and the ones I raise also live!
So I currently am looking after 5 chicks right now and for some reason I've gotten especially attached to this batch so I want to know more about them! Since they're so mixed its extremely hard to tell what breed(s) they might be, they're also much much smaller then normal chickens, my black sex link towered over the full grown hens and Roos, and even when I had two bantam silkies they were bigger.
I've attached some photos of the chicks I currently have, and since I've been asked this before I will clarify that all of them except for Dapper Dan were 100% laid and hatched by the same hen. I'll attach some other photos of the chickens around my front yard currently just so you can get a feel for what they all look like/size reference, the hen who hatched them isn't currently around but she's the same size as the hens in the photos except shes completely black. ( Also since it doesn't show in the photo's much, the chicks have some feathers on their feet but not too much)
I have a rough streak of raising only Roo's for the past 3 years so if even one of these is a hen i'll be over the moon, i'm especially attached to chickpea as well so i'm hoping for the best, i'm sure it may be too soon to tell gender yet but I figured i'd see what you all have to say!
So to clarify overall, any guesses on breed or gender are much appreciated, and if anyone knows any Chicken DNA testing sites can you inform me? (I have no idea if they exist but if they do I'm ordering one right away! lol )
The town I live in has a bunch of free roam chickens, and I mean they're everywhere... in neighborhoods, movie theater parking lots, drive thru's, grocery store parking lots, you name it and they're probably there. From what I hear they're protected by the town officially, most people don't seem to mind them and some (myself included) go around and scatter feed for them, leave out little water bowls, just generally look after them. Some people have even gone through the effort of painting little murals of them around town.
No one quite knows how they showed up but they've existed my whole 18 years of living here, there's a bunch of different stories and "lore" on how they ended up here but from what my old AG teacher told me, there used to be a little farm auction near our old movie theater and over time people dropped off their unwanted Hens and Roo's and they just multiplied over time.
Now that you understand the...well uniqueness of the situation i'll get to the point, they're largely in my neighborhood and over the years I've seen lots of hens have little chicks only to see them die day after day and it broke my heart, sometimes a hen would have up to 14 chicks and come back the next day with only 3! I would try to set up little safe areas for them but nothing seemed to work so eventually I just started taking in the chicks.
The hens normally didn't care whatsoever when I take them and they usually leave them after about 4 weeks anyways so it wasn't a problem, I normally leave them with one chick to look after which is easiest for them to do and by doing so that chick more often then not lives, and the ones I raise also live!
So I currently am looking after 5 chicks right now and for some reason I've gotten especially attached to this batch so I want to know more about them! Since they're so mixed its extremely hard to tell what breed(s) they might be, they're also much much smaller then normal chickens, my black sex link towered over the full grown hens and Roos, and even when I had two bantam silkies they were bigger.
I've attached some photos of the chicks I currently have, and since I've been asked this before I will clarify that all of them except for Dapper Dan were 100% laid and hatched by the same hen. I'll attach some other photos of the chickens around my front yard currently just so you can get a feel for what they all look like/size reference, the hen who hatched them isn't currently around but she's the same size as the hens in the photos except shes completely black. ( Also since it doesn't show in the photo's much, the chicks have some feathers on their feet but not too much)
I have a rough streak of raising only Roo's for the past 3 years so if even one of these is a hen i'll be over the moon, i'm especially attached to chickpea as well so i'm hoping for the best, i'm sure it may be too soon to tell gender yet but I figured i'd see what you all have to say!
So to clarify overall, any guesses on breed or gender are much appreciated, and if anyone knows any Chicken DNA testing sites can you inform me? (I have no idea if they exist but if they do I'm ordering one right away! lol )
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