BuffaloGuy
Hatching
- Oct 16, 2020
- 1
- 14
- 3
Hello, My name is Ron Miskin, and I am a chickenholic... Admitting you don't fully understand chicken math is the first step? I am a moderately new chicken daddy... going on almost one pandemic's worth of raising birds.
I started, like I see many of ya'll here did, with a couple of tiny "puillet" chicks from TSC. (That was my first mistake.) I got six, mixed breeds, I had no clue... they were fuzzy and cute, and my wife and I had just bought a starter ranch, and were planning on becoming farmers. I am not actually a farmer, although, and not joking here... I play one on tv. My day job is making socks, gloves, hats, scarves, and about 670 other things, from American bison fiber. My wife and I have a company called oddly enough.. The Buffalo Wool Company. and my family has raised bison for about 30 years. It really was my father's ranch, and although I grew up around them, and helped a bit there, I really wasn't agriculturally inclined. BUT,becaust of the nature of my business. We are always out on some ranch or another, from Alaska to Wyoming.. looking like cowboys and gazing across the prairie.... So, chickens.. I really knew nothing at all about chickens, I bought a book. read some if it. Fed the little girls... cleaned cages, watched them grow, read some more, then realized, it would take months before they started laying. So, I started stalking a guy on Craigslist offering laying hens for $6 a piece... min 25 ... not realizing he was bringing back battery hens that had gone into moult.. well, after bugging the crap out of him for a couple of weeks, he showed up with five crates of the scraggliest, weak looking hens I have ever seen.. and you know how much fun it is to introduce little chicks to a batch of battered battery hens, who look like they were just in a gang fight.... Well, it's now six months later, The Battery Broads, are doing amazingly well, they have filled out, look healthy, and are laying like mad... I did trade a few of them for some blackberry bushes, mostly because, it is just my wife and myself, and 18-20 eggs a day is a bit much. The girls (my first TSC chicks) are down to three.. one became a chew toy for our rescue shephard Maverick (who has since learned that the chooks are MINE) one got snatched by a hawk, and Red, The Unexpected, came out as Roo, at about 4 months... he is a seriously beautiful dude.. Finally found his crow, and ain't afraid to use it. I do pick him up once in a while, just to let him know who is boss. We have just hatched our first grand chickens... I have no clue how to see the "bullseye" but Red has been working hard, and 7 out of 12 became chicks. I think I might have a chicken problem though, as I was at Orshlens, our local feed chain store, and I got really excited when I saw they had Light Brahma chicks, and I might have snuck 3 into the cage with the day old chicks. I hope the wife doesn't notice. I might have a problem. Well, thats our chicken story so far. Thank you for having me in the group. I am excited to actually start learning something.
I started, like I see many of ya'll here did, with a couple of tiny "puillet" chicks from TSC. (That was my first mistake.) I got six, mixed breeds, I had no clue... they were fuzzy and cute, and my wife and I had just bought a starter ranch, and were planning on becoming farmers. I am not actually a farmer, although, and not joking here... I play one on tv. My day job is making socks, gloves, hats, scarves, and about 670 other things, from American bison fiber. My wife and I have a company called oddly enough.. The Buffalo Wool Company. and my family has raised bison for about 30 years. It really was my father's ranch, and although I grew up around them, and helped a bit there, I really wasn't agriculturally inclined. BUT,becaust of the nature of my business. We are always out on some ranch or another, from Alaska to Wyoming.. looking like cowboys and gazing across the prairie.... So, chickens.. I really knew nothing at all about chickens, I bought a book. read some if it. Fed the little girls... cleaned cages, watched them grow, read some more, then realized, it would take months before they started laying. So, I started stalking a guy on Craigslist offering laying hens for $6 a piece... min 25 ... not realizing he was bringing back battery hens that had gone into moult.. well, after bugging the crap out of him for a couple of weeks, he showed up with five crates of the scraggliest, weak looking hens I have ever seen.. and you know how much fun it is to introduce little chicks to a batch of battered battery hens, who look like they were just in a gang fight.... Well, it's now six months later, The Battery Broads, are doing amazingly well, they have filled out, look healthy, and are laying like mad... I did trade a few of them for some blackberry bushes, mostly because, it is just my wife and myself, and 18-20 eggs a day is a bit much. The girls (my first TSC chicks) are down to three.. one became a chew toy for our rescue shephard Maverick (who has since learned that the chooks are MINE) one got snatched by a hawk, and Red, The Unexpected, came out as Roo, at about 4 months... he is a seriously beautiful dude.. Finally found his crow, and ain't afraid to use it. I do pick him up once in a while, just to let him know who is boss. We have just hatched our first grand chickens... I have no clue how to see the "bullseye" but Red has been working hard, and 7 out of 12 became chicks. I think I might have a chicken problem though, as I was at Orshlens, our local feed chain store, and I got really excited when I saw they had Light Brahma chicks, and I might have snuck 3 into the cage with the day old chicks. I hope the wife doesn't notice. I might have a problem. Well, thats our chicken story so far. Thank you for having me in the group. I am excited to actually start learning something.
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