I've been hearing reference to this "chicken math" thingy. Didn't fully understand it until recently.
Wanted 3 to 4 EE hens so I could have lovely blue and green eggs to give to friends as a novelty. We incubated a dozen eggs. Four hatched. Of those we kept three, my niece kept the fourth. All of ours turned out to be roos. So we incubated another eight eggs. Two hatched, again, both roos So we now had FIVE roosters. I decided to wait to spring and buy some pullets. Sent four of the roos back to my Aunt's. Kept one because he's a crossbeak and my daughter's darling. To ease my dismay till spring and I can buy EE pullets from the feed store, I bought some 3 to 4 month old chicks. A Buff Orpington, Black Orpington, White Leghorn, Gold Sebright, and Silver Sebright. Bringing my grand total to Six, which is double what I originally wanted to begin with. Then a month ago 'da Hubby discovered that not only are there chickens that lay glorious dark chocolate brown eggs, you can actually ORDER these elusive creatures ONLINE. AND they'll SHIP them right to you. So we order Cackle Hatchery's minimum of fifteen pullets, 5 each of Easter Eggers, Welsummers (those dark brown speckled eggs are going to be soooo lovely in the spring), and Speckled Sussex. Intending to keep one of each and give the rest to my Aunt as she's got room to spare. So the chicks come in the mail yesterday. All alive and peeping hungrily. Daughter one claims a mahogany EE chick. Daughter two's best friend claims blue EE chick right off the bat. And I'm there thinking "What the HELL happened to One of Each?" So Daughter two claims the smallest Speckled Sussex chick and I pick a random Welsummer chick because we ARE going to have those darn dark brown eggs in the spring come Hell or highwater. XD And we've instantly gone from six which was double my original intentions to TEN when we were supposed to be going to nine.
And now I've got my eye on an adorable little Mille Fleur D'uccle. Hubby's going hunting in Ohio in a few weeks. He won't even notice the addition to the coop till he gets back...^_^
It would be cheaper just to get a nice tiller!
