Greetings all from the heat of the Arizona desert!
After months of lurking, I've finally joined. I frequent this site daily now that we have chickens, but this place was also my source of information before hatching our first chickies. Here's our rundown:
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens? Yes, we're new to chickens. We hatched 5 bantam cochins on Feb. 2/3 of this year.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now? Right now we have 9 chickies total. We lost one of our cochins last week to either a large dog or coyote (my son couldn't tell what it was). So with the 4 cochins, we have 2 EE's (i think, the store called them Americaunas), 2 Buff Orpingtons and 1 that we're not sure what she is. She was given to us by our neighbor who didn't have a "secure" yard to keep her. I guess we don't have a secure yard now either, although we improving.
(3) What breeds do you have? See above.
(4) How did you find out about BackYardChickens.com? Website search. My son wanted to hatch and raise chickens, so I set out to do research before trying it out.
(5) What are some of your other hobbies? I love to read, research and garden (non-edibles thank you, the hubby handles the boring vegetables!)
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
We homeschool our kids, so the chickens we sort of a science project to start. We think they are great fun to have around and they are like pets to us. We don't plan on eating them. We primarily got them to help with bug control so we don't have to use pesticides. My sis-in-law is now hatching some black/blue/splash orpingtons for us. They are due to hatch June 10. We are very excited, but are not sure where we are going to put them!
I'm currently looking into vaccinating the new chicks (didn't do that with the first ones) and trying to establish a chicken first aid kit for emergencies.
We lost our poor Sunny last week either due to being "scared to death" (if that's possible) or a broken neck. A dog or coyote got to him, but my son chased it off. When I looked Sunny over, I couldn't find any puncture marks or any damage to him at all except for some feathers which had come off. It was very sad for us since Sunny was our friendliest chicken who would follow us around like a dog. He loved just hanging out with us.
Sorry this is so long! I'm glad to have found this website and I love learning! This place is chock-full of so many smart folks, I can hardly stay away!
After months of lurking, I've finally joined. I frequent this site daily now that we have chickens, but this place was also my source of information before hatching our first chickies. Here's our rundown:
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens? Yes, we're new to chickens. We hatched 5 bantam cochins on Feb. 2/3 of this year.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now? Right now we have 9 chickies total. We lost one of our cochins last week to either a large dog or coyote (my son couldn't tell what it was). So with the 4 cochins, we have 2 EE's (i think, the store called them Americaunas), 2 Buff Orpingtons and 1 that we're not sure what she is. She was given to us by our neighbor who didn't have a "secure" yard to keep her. I guess we don't have a secure yard now either, although we improving.
(3) What breeds do you have? See above.
(4) How did you find out about BackYardChickens.com? Website search. My son wanted to hatch and raise chickens, so I set out to do research before trying it out.
(5) What are some of your other hobbies? I love to read, research and garden (non-edibles thank you, the hubby handles the boring vegetables!)
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
We homeschool our kids, so the chickens we sort of a science project to start. We think they are great fun to have around and they are like pets to us. We don't plan on eating them. We primarily got them to help with bug control so we don't have to use pesticides. My sis-in-law is now hatching some black/blue/splash orpingtons for us. They are due to hatch June 10. We are very excited, but are not sure where we are going to put them!
I'm currently looking into vaccinating the new chicks (didn't do that with the first ones) and trying to establish a chicken first aid kit for emergencies.
We lost our poor Sunny last week either due to being "scared to death" (if that's possible) or a broken neck. A dog or coyote got to him, but my son chased it off. When I looked Sunny over, I couldn't find any puncture marks or any damage to him at all except for some feathers which had come off. It was very sad for us since Sunny was our friendliest chicken who would follow us around like a dog. He loved just hanging out with us.
Sorry this is so long! I'm glad to have found this website and I love learning! This place is chock-full of so many smart folks, I can hardly stay away!
