Bay Area BYCers!

[chiqita]

Some people in San Jose sneak roosters, but it depends on your neighbors. You can mix and match chickens as you please, I'd recommend getting breeds that are friendly if you d that however. Orphintons, australorps, easter eggers are all great choices for small backyard flocks. Marans are great too, but I would stay away from hatchery ones. The emperment on those is not great, while my breeder marans get along great with other chickens.
welcome and I hope you find your perfect flock!

 

[threadgeek]

Wow, Huge thread. Unable to read all the way through it so far. AWESOME! Very happy to see so many interested people in the area. I have several noobie questions but don't want to cause spam or repetitive stuff here. Just happy to see so many people involved.
My wife and I have started discussing keeping some laying chickens. We are starting a raised planter vegetable garden in our front yard as our backyard has limited sunlight. I was on the ALBC site and between them and Mypetchicken site was thinking on getting some Australorps. Would it be better to have a variety of chickens or stick with a single breed.
Sadly, we cannot have any roosters in San Jose, so figured breeding was out of the picture?

Welcome!!! Congrats on adding planters to your front yard, it makes me so happy that more people are turning to practical landscaping. Maybe your neighbors would be tolerant of a rooster if you bribe them with eggs?

 

[BluesChicken]

To follow up on an old post of mine...a few weeks ago My Barred Rock (Daisey) disappeared while we were on vacation. Just...gone! So I have been looking for a couple of juvenile BRs. After some false starts I found Dare-2-Dream farm in Lompoc that incredibly will deliver juveniles to the Bay Area. To make a long story short, I arranged for Megan to deliver 2 10-11 week old BR pullets.

They arrived last evening, but instead of 10-11 weeks, these little girls are maybe 7-8 weeks old. They are still going "peep-peep"! However, they are sweet natured and not afraid of humans, and Megan adjusted the price and threw in a dozen beautiful eggs.

The big girls (who are 12-13 weeks old) are giving the noobies dirty looks and I don't think they let them up on the roosts last night. I picked them up and set them on the far end of the roost, but this morning at daylight the babies were back down on the floor. Other than that, however, there doesn't seem to be any obvious feather-pulling going on.

So the net result of all this is that my little flock is now 5 instead of 4; 2 Buff Orps, 1 Americauna, and 2 new Barred Rocks. Chicken math!

 

[chiqita]

I'm glad you found some girls! They are cute little buggers!

 

[wolftracks]

Wow, Huge thread. Unable to read all the way through it so far. AWESOME! Very happy to see so many interested people in the area. I have several noobie questions but don't want to cause spam or repetitive stuff here. Just happy to see so many people involved.
My wife and I have started discussing keeping some laying chickens. We are starting a raised planter vegetable garden in our front yard as our backyard has limited sunlight. I was on the ALBC site and between them and Mypetchicken site was thinking on getting some Australorps. Would it be better to have a variety of chickens or stick with a single breed.
Sadly, we cannot have any roosters in San Jose, so figured breeding was out of the picture?

It depends on what you want. Lots of different colored eggs? Brown? White? Green? Blue? And a huge plug for my lavenders i'm working on. LOL

Different breed will get a long most times. There are some more aggressive breeds, but if raised together as chicks they get along fine. I have way to many breeds and still want more, so I'm no help. LOL And you can always house the rooster somewhere else and let him visit. hehe Thing is if you are going to breed eventually, you really don't want to go with hatchery birds. They aren't breeding quality, but there are a lot of us that breed and have all types of birds, so just being here you have given yourself probably the best connection for breeders than anywhere else. Gotta love BYC!

 

[wolftracks]

Lavender Ameraucanas and some of the Lavender Egg project chicks. I need to get more pics, but these are a few that hatched here this week. Somehow they're all way poofier in person than in these pics.

 

[davesteph]

gosh.....aptos hills amongst the redwoods never gets hot! I'll have to knit little sweaters for my girls next spring!

 

[Wishing4Wings]

gosh.....aptos hills amongst the redwoods never gets hot! I'll have to knit little sweaters for my girls next spring!

Just be sure you show some pics of them all dressed up!

Chickens tolerate cold much better than heat, so they will be very happy there.

 

[chiqita]

I always think I should dress up my showgirls and paint their nails. But they are the hardiest chickens out there. Its the turken blood!

 

[lualshannon]

Lavender Ameraucanas and some of the Lavender Egg project chicks. I need to get more pics, but these are a few that hatched here this week. Somehow they're all way poofier in person than in these pics.

Your babies are just too cute! The color of the eggs on your avatar is lovely. Are the eggs noticeably lavender in person?