Oh yes!
, ChickenGirl!
CHICKEN MATH STRIKES AGAIN
- Thread starter chickenmanII
- Start date
I know of this chicken math all too well. I started out on August 31st getting 11 hens and 1 tophat rooster that were already about 1 1/2 years old. They had a nice large coop and a really large run. Then I just had to have more and I wanted chicks.....so on September 15 2011 my chicks arrived 26 pullets. I raised them and said you know these girls are going to need a bigger home. And my tophat roo was being picked on by my older gals. So we transformed a one car garage into the coop for all the girls to live in. Well my dog is getting older and stopped going out in the fenced 2 acre area SOOOO I decided we should just take my doggy out the front on a leash and attach the chickens run to the fenced part. That's what we did. Our doggy lost his yard...not that he really cares cause he is a couch potato and the chickens rule the yard!!! Soooo Fran and Floyd my tophats live in a seperated wing of the coop with a seperated run and I decided you know Floyd really needs a few more girls......WELLLLL on February of this year I ordered 25 mixed bantams (straight run) and full size tophat girls only to open the box to 36 chicks aaaahhhhhhh. So there ya have it. I lost one of my older gals and a few chicks didn't make it either but in less than a year I have 71 chickens taking over my five acres. This is insane!!!! 
Okay so it's not just me. After 2 years convincing my wife we needed chickens we set our sights on 6. Went to the feed store to price food and all the goodies that the birds need before we got them. Guy at the feed store wanted to get rid of his birds that had just started laying, some kind of spousal disagreement thing. So we took home 9 birds. 3 roos and 6 hens. all different breeds. 1 roo was just meaner than all get out so we had chicken and noodles that week. Then I received a catalog from Murray Mcmurray. The discussion started again about how I needed 6 more chicks for more egg production. My ten new chickens will be here the first week in may. Then I found an incubator at a yard sale and it was brand new! Well I have to make sure the darn thing works right? 6 eggs from our best layer went in there be ready to hatch 4-22-12. I'll be adding 15 feet to the run next weekend. Sure am glad we decided on 6 chicks or I'd be in big trouble.
Definitely not just you! Eric & I were talking mid November and agreed. No more than 6 chickens! We'd only by 6 chicks since all seem to survive when I'm caring for them! I agreed!
January came and I ordered chicks & ducklings from Ideal. 12 chicks and 8 ducklings! Then I had an opportunity to adopt 30 mature girls, so I agreed! Eric said "what happened to 6". I said, well some of the old gals will go into stew. Some will be given to another gal wanting part of that flock. So its ok. As for then and the chicks. The hens are laying, the chicks won't for a long while. No problem! Then I got a chance to get 15 grown ducks. Yep, they are coming home too! Now this is on top of my 9 king pigeons that are coming! LMAO.
So starting next week I have 8 pigeons arrive (to a coop that is being built at this time); then on Saturday, my grown ducks arrive. Then the following week my old hens arrive. Then the following week the baby chicks and ducklings arrive.
Trust me there are only 6! I'm even going to put out a sign on the side of their pen.
"Chicken math= 6. Never mind how many you count it still comes up to SIX"
Ah it ends when we quit breathing.
Eric (my partner) says that poultry is worse than drugs.
Last edited:
texas
what about Texas?
I love these stories!
In 2010, we had a kid living with us for 6 months while he finished high school. One day he came home with his girlfriend and a chick. He'd bought it for her but her parents wouldn't let her keep it at home. My husband and I had actually been thinking about getting a few chickens for the eggs, but it was vague "someday that would be cool" kind of thing. We discussed and did a little research and decided we might as well do it now. Told the kids they had to get another chick because you can't have just one; they were thrilled. The first was a RIR and the second a barred Plymouth Rock. When they were big enough, we set up a temporary shelter and pen in the back yard and set about figuring out how and where to make a coop and permanent yard; we live in town. My niece was done with her old wooden playhouse so we bought it and converted it into a coop and set up a little chicken yard.
We discussed the situation and decided if we're going to have a couple of chickens, we might as well have six chickens and make it worth our while. Back to Orscheln; home with two BOs, a Production Red and a black Australorp.
Before the permanent coop and yard were finished, the boy had graduated and moved out of state but the chickens stayed. Our Weimaraner got hold of the Plymouth Rock. Five chickens.
DH's co-worker has a couple of kids in 4-H. They're done raising chickens and he has three black Australorps, about half grown, he'll give us if we want them. No city ordinance in existence banning chickens or setting limits, so sure, we'll take them. Eight chickens.
A month or two later, two of the new birds died of Mysterious Chicken Death within two weeks of each other. They just got very weak and died later that day. Six chickens.
Adorable, friendliest chick ever RIR turned out to be a roo. Then he turned out to be a vicious roo and we found him another home. Didn't ask too many questions, but there were an awful lot of roos where we left him ...
Five chickens.
We were at our nephew's football game when we got a call from the neighbors that one of our buff chickens was in their backyard and they'd stuck it in the coop for us. From their description, it sounded much smaller than any of our now-fully-grown chickens. When we got home, we didn't find any additional chickens in our coop. The next morning, DH found a little BO chick hidden in the wood pile. We had no idea where it may have come from and wondered if someone had dumped a chick. Odd, but possible, I guess. The baby needs a companion so off we went and came back with an unknown breed out of the straight run bin because that's all that was left this time of year. That chick turned out to be a SLW pullet. My niece "fostered" the chicks until they were almost big enough to integrate with the grown flock. Seven chickens.
It took us a couple of tries to get the new birds integrated with the older ones. I think DH rushed it a bit and the first couple of tries were unsuccessful. When the two younger birds were bigger, he stuck them on a roost in the coop after the others had already gone in to bed. That worked well and there were no problems after that.
Over the next year, egg production dropped off a bit as various birds went broody at various times. The Production Red turned out to be a roo, but a very nice one. More and more people in town have chickens. Somewhere in town, someone filed three complaints over a year's time about hearing a rooster crow and suddenly there's all kinds of talk about an ordinance. We jumped the gun thinking it would be passed for sure and found a home for our roo. Six chickens.
The ordinance was tabled, but was brought up again just a week or so ago. We should be grandfathered in for some of the proposed regulations and roos will have to be "inaudible." I don't think any of our neighbors (we've talked with most of them) had a problem with hearing a roo crow once in a while. When the windows are closed, you can't hear him anyway. Egg production was way off since last summer. We didn't want our flock to all be the same age, so we knew we'd be adding more chickens in the next year or two. We decided to wait another year because we didn't really want to mess with raising chicks this year. About six weeks ago, we went to Orscheln to buy feed and came back with the last four Ameraucanas they had. DH said some unkind things about me, but didn't stop me from buying them. At least one is a roo, which makes a 30% failure rate for the birds we've taken out of pullet bins there! Ten chickens.
We think we might be done for a couple more years....
In 2010, we had a kid living with us for 6 months while he finished high school. One day he came home with his girlfriend and a chick. He'd bought it for her but her parents wouldn't let her keep it at home. My husband and I had actually been thinking about getting a few chickens for the eggs, but it was vague "someday that would be cool" kind of thing. We discussed and did a little research and decided we might as well do it now. Told the kids they had to get another chick because you can't have just one; they were thrilled. The first was a RIR and the second a barred Plymouth Rock. When they were big enough, we set up a temporary shelter and pen in the back yard and set about figuring out how and where to make a coop and permanent yard; we live in town. My niece was done with her old wooden playhouse so we bought it and converted it into a coop and set up a little chicken yard.
We discussed the situation and decided if we're going to have a couple of chickens, we might as well have six chickens and make it worth our while. Back to Orscheln; home with two BOs, a Production Red and a black Australorp.
Before the permanent coop and yard were finished, the boy had graduated and moved out of state but the chickens stayed. Our Weimaraner got hold of the Plymouth Rock. Five chickens.
DH's co-worker has a couple of kids in 4-H. They're done raising chickens and he has three black Australorps, about half grown, he'll give us if we want them. No city ordinance in existence banning chickens or setting limits, so sure, we'll take them. Eight chickens.
A month or two later, two of the new birds died of Mysterious Chicken Death within two weeks of each other. They just got very weak and died later that day. Six chickens.
Adorable, friendliest chick ever RIR turned out to be a roo. Then he turned out to be a vicious roo and we found him another home. Didn't ask too many questions, but there were an awful lot of roos where we left him ...
Five chickens.
We were at our nephew's football game when we got a call from the neighbors that one of our buff chickens was in their backyard and they'd stuck it in the coop for us. From their description, it sounded much smaller than any of our now-fully-grown chickens. When we got home, we didn't find any additional chickens in our coop. The next morning, DH found a little BO chick hidden in the wood pile. We had no idea where it may have come from and wondered if someone had dumped a chick. Odd, but possible, I guess. The baby needs a companion so off we went and came back with an unknown breed out of the straight run bin because that's all that was left this time of year. That chick turned out to be a SLW pullet. My niece "fostered" the chicks until they were almost big enough to integrate with the grown flock. Seven chickens.
It took us a couple of tries to get the new birds integrated with the older ones. I think DH rushed it a bit and the first couple of tries were unsuccessful. When the two younger birds were bigger, he stuck them on a roost in the coop after the others had already gone in to bed. That worked well and there were no problems after that.
Over the next year, egg production dropped off a bit as various birds went broody at various times. The Production Red turned out to be a roo, but a very nice one. More and more people in town have chickens. Somewhere in town, someone filed three complaints over a year's time about hearing a rooster crow and suddenly there's all kinds of talk about an ordinance. We jumped the gun thinking it would be passed for sure and found a home for our roo. Six chickens.
The ordinance was tabled, but was brought up again just a week or so ago. We should be grandfathered in for some of the proposed regulations and roos will have to be "inaudible." I don't think any of our neighbors (we've talked with most of them) had a problem with hearing a roo crow once in a while. When the windows are closed, you can't hear him anyway. Egg production was way off since last summer. We didn't want our flock to all be the same age, so we knew we'd be adding more chickens in the next year or two. We decided to wait another year because we didn't really want to mess with raising chicks this year. About six weeks ago, we went to Orscheln to buy feed and came back with the last four Ameraucanas they had. DH said some unkind things about me, but didn't stop me from buying them. At least one is a roo, which makes a 30% failure rate for the birds we've taken out of pullet bins there! Ten chickens.
We think we might be done for a couple more years....
Ah chicken math...
I built a coop and run for 3-4 hens and roo about 4 years ago. 34 chickens later, I've added an 8 hole nest box and expanded to free-range, pastured layers. It starts little by little and consumes you before you know what's happened! My brother and I were just talking this morning about getting a lot of broilers to raise. When do you have to admit that you have a problem????
Ben
Redemption Farms
I built a coop and run for 3-4 hens and roo about 4 years ago. 34 chickens later, I've added an 8 hole nest box and expanded to free-range, pastured layers. It starts little by little and consumes you before you know what's happened! My brother and I were just talking this morning about getting a lot of broilers to raise. When do you have to admit that you have a problem????
Ben
Redemption Farms
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