Hello! I'm living in Missouri (Defiance, to be exact which is south west of St. Louis)-originally from Southern Indiana.
I didn't want to read through the entire 237 pages of this post, so I'll start at the end.
As far as the storms, New Melle is about 5 minutes from where we live! So it was definitely scary last night, though we had no damage whatsover. Very thankful for that.
I am a new chicken mama, just got our first seven on 4/15 (3 BRs, 2 RIR, 2 EE), and lost one BR the following morning to what I think was pasty butt.
Very sad. We went out the same day and got another BR to replace little Missy (even though I didn't name her until after death, I didn't want to bury her without a name). Today I convinced the man-friend that we needed to get some more chick feed, even though we didn't, and we ended up with another little girl, probably a black sex-link, to replace one of the BRs who is probably a roo-though we're keeping him, just needed to replace that pullet spot, right? I'm sure I'll end up with a few more due to chicken math, but I'm trying to keep it tame.
So there's my story! Looking forward to hopefully talking to some more peeps in the area!