RichFromCaliente
In the Brooder
I have been raised with chickens pecking and crowing around me for my entire life, just over a half a century now. I was a city mouse for a while by moved back to the country when my son was born ten years ago. We started out with silkies and polish with a few ducks (calls and swedish) just for fun, but have moved on to egg layers. I raise mixed breeds for eggs now, I furnish eggs to many neighbors when I have surplus eggs mainly during the summer. I hatched out a couple dozen this year and traded my males to a nice family that likes roosters for the freezer. In return they gave me a couple of young turkeys as a thank you. SO now I have 2 flocks, my old ladies in their 2-3 year olds that are slowing down (8) and my new girls (9) that will be coming into production in a few months. I have set one neighbor up with their own flock from the summer hatch. I was giving them a dozen eggs a week, sometimes more, so they should be self-sufficient come spring and not have to worry about buying eggs any longer. I only charged 2 dollars a dozen to cover some of the feed cost, it was more about helping others than trying to profit. Other egg people in the area are really charging 3 or 4 times for what I was asking.
I started my flock thit time with easter eggers that were crossed with marans, so all my eggs were light green in color. I started with just 3 hens and added a few feed store chicks to the trio, a few black Australorps and a couple Buff Orpington with a couple rhode island reds. Two of my feed store pullets turned out to be roos so I gave them back to the store. They put them in a cage out front and marked them 15 bucks each and didn't offer me a dime refund only a couple dayolds for replacement. Like they were doing me a favor for their mistake. Anyway, I just didn't need a couple more males or two newborn replacement chicks to raise at that point. So, lesson learned, check them wing feathers before I leave the chicken room! Not 100% but I've found with my hatchings it is pretty close.
I love raising my own chickens for more than just eggs. No I don't eat my kids! They are part of the family doing their part putting food on the table and eating bugs and cleaning up scraps and gardening plots. They bring tons of joy to me and my son. I have had gentle roos, and a couple aggressive ones that I've had to cull. I rely on my Roo to keep a look out for hawks and other predators, but can't have them chasing and kicking my kid. So I try to keep a gentle male I sometimes rotated the males when I had more than one adult roo. They were fine when I had the boys separate from the girls, they would not be aggressive with each other or with us when the boys were in their separate coop. The boys were gentle and would hand feed. It was just when they got too protective of the girls when they were "on duty" so I let them rotate through that duty. This seems to keep them calmer and gives the hens a break. It seems they all have their own favorite hen and would repeatedly mate until feathers were worn off, so I'm sure the girls like the rotation schedule as well. I did try going without a rooster but then one of the girls decided she was the Queen Bee and started beating up all the others so I had to put a roo back in there and that behavior stopped. She is the same one that is always inspecting the other ladies work. She stays in the house most of the day while the other girls are laying with her nose poked into the nest area counting eggs I guess.
In addition to the chickens (and now turkeys), I also love to garden and landscape. I am going to Community College to get a degree in Plant Science with Horticulture Emphasis which I will be finishing in December. I live in an isolated mountain community in the middle of nowhere. It is very rural and the community I live in has maybe a dozen homes, there are other communities scattered through the mountains around, but 2010 Census showed the entire zip code was only 1500 people in 515 households. It reminds me of growing up in small town Indiana where everyone waves as they pass you on the roads, if you were on the side of the road every car would stop to see if you needed help. It is a great place to call home, back in Indiana I used to hear that if I stopped to pee in a cornfield on my way home, my parents would find out before I made it home. That used to annoy me, but I find that community support comforting as a grown up and parent now.
I love being a student and dad. I hope I find a job that is close to home and allows me to continue enjoying the educational aspect. Perhaps I will work at a retail store in the garden department so I can still learn and teach about plants, shrubs, and trees. I was a nurse for 25 years but an injury put me out of commission for a couple years and decided I needed a new path that was easier on my back and body. I love working with the earth and growing things so it was a no-brainer to go into plant science for my second career field.
I hope that I can learn a lot and contribute a little to the BYC community. Thanks for having me and I look forward to being a part of this family.
Richard James
I started my flock thit time with easter eggers that were crossed with marans, so all my eggs were light green in color. I started with just 3 hens and added a few feed store chicks to the trio, a few black Australorps and a couple Buff Orpington with a couple rhode island reds. Two of my feed store pullets turned out to be roos so I gave them back to the store. They put them in a cage out front and marked them 15 bucks each and didn't offer me a dime refund only a couple dayolds for replacement. Like they were doing me a favor for their mistake. Anyway, I just didn't need a couple more males or two newborn replacement chicks to raise at that point. So, lesson learned, check them wing feathers before I leave the chicken room! Not 100% but I've found with my hatchings it is pretty close.
I love raising my own chickens for more than just eggs. No I don't eat my kids! They are part of the family doing their part putting food on the table and eating bugs and cleaning up scraps and gardening plots. They bring tons of joy to me and my son. I have had gentle roos, and a couple aggressive ones that I've had to cull. I rely on my Roo to keep a look out for hawks and other predators, but can't have them chasing and kicking my kid. So I try to keep a gentle male I sometimes rotated the males when I had more than one adult roo. They were fine when I had the boys separate from the girls, they would not be aggressive with each other or with us when the boys were in their separate coop. The boys were gentle and would hand feed. It was just when they got too protective of the girls when they were "on duty" so I let them rotate through that duty. This seems to keep them calmer and gives the hens a break. It seems they all have their own favorite hen and would repeatedly mate until feathers were worn off, so I'm sure the girls like the rotation schedule as well. I did try going without a rooster but then one of the girls decided she was the Queen Bee and started beating up all the others so I had to put a roo back in there and that behavior stopped. She is the same one that is always inspecting the other ladies work. She stays in the house most of the day while the other girls are laying with her nose poked into the nest area counting eggs I guess.
In addition to the chickens (and now turkeys), I also love to garden and landscape. I am going to Community College to get a degree in Plant Science with Horticulture Emphasis which I will be finishing in December. I live in an isolated mountain community in the middle of nowhere. It is very rural and the community I live in has maybe a dozen homes, there are other communities scattered through the mountains around, but 2010 Census showed the entire zip code was only 1500 people in 515 households. It reminds me of growing up in small town Indiana where everyone waves as they pass you on the roads, if you were on the side of the road every car would stop to see if you needed help. It is a great place to call home, back in Indiana I used to hear that if I stopped to pee in a cornfield on my way home, my parents would find out before I made it home. That used to annoy me, but I find that community support comforting as a grown up and parent now.
I love being a student and dad. I hope I find a job that is close to home and allows me to continue enjoying the educational aspect. Perhaps I will work at a retail store in the garden department so I can still learn and teach about plants, shrubs, and trees. I was a nurse for 25 years but an injury put me out of commission for a couple years and decided I needed a new path that was easier on my back and body. I love working with the earth and growing things so it was a no-brainer to go into plant science for my second career field.
I hope that I can learn a lot and contribute a little to the BYC community. Thanks for having me and I look forward to being a part of this family.
Richard James
Glad you joined.
Hello from Nova Scotia and welcome to BYC! You’ve joined a great and resourceful community! Enjoy your journey!
