kurui
In the Brooder
- Feb 20, 2015
- 71
- 4
- 41
Hi!
I'm Rosemary- and this is my chicken adventure
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?
I'm totally new to chickens! Due to some unfortunate circumstances I'm currently living with my mum and her husband in rural Spain while I get things back together, and we decided we'd finally get some chickens- we'd wanted some when I was a kid but my dad wasn't interested at all. Twenty years later, my stepdad was a little easier to convince! Now I just need to work on him a little harder so I can have a couple of ducks and a pair of peafowl...
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
We have three laying gallinas (Cordelia, Celestine and Parmazina) that we purchased from a local supplier back in November. We used to have four, but my sweet little girl Henrietta died a couple of weeks ago, apparently just had a stroke. It was very sad. I take comfort knowing she had a very happy if short life- our spanish neighbours call our girls the 'Chicken Queens of Spain' because we treat them a little more like pets than anything else and they think it's hilarious. Juan next door predicted we'd have huge eggs from them once they started laying because they were loved so much, and he was right! We regularly got an egg from three out of four of them when the weather was better, though now the temperature has dipped and we lost Henrietta we're down to two a day from three. We also have three three-week old chicks, as of yet unnamed.
(3) What breeds do you have?
The girls are brown ISAs (we think). We bought them from a local supplier. It's sad, but over here it is extremely common practice for chickens to have their beaks cut? Our hens all had pretty bad beak trims done before we got them- it meant they had a bit of trouble at first when we introduced them to foraging, but they're doing well now. We decided we wouldn't buy any more from the supplier because of the beak cutting, and then found a local self-sufficiency family who raise chickens. That's where we got our three chicks. They're all boys! Ooops. We'll be swapping the two dark barred boys for two of their sisters this weekend. It's a shame, I'm attached to them but three girls and three boys is just not a workable solution...
(4) How did you find out about BackYardChickens.com?
I was googling brooders before attempting to make my own! I think the palace worked out pretty well thanks to the tips I was able to pick up from the forums
The forums were also invaluable when it came to determining that our chicks were actually ALL boys rather than the one boy and two girls we thought we had. (5) What are some of your other hobbies?
I love pottery, crochet and astrophotography, bit of an odd mix I'm sure! I have volunteered with parrot rescues and just adore birds of all kinds. One of my other hobbies is technology- I was working as a video game developer in Canada before- and I have set up multiple spy cameras to keep tabs on our birds and capture pictures of their antics. It's certainly useful for working out which chicken laid the egg you're having for breakfast
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
We have two rescue dogs, Poppy and Minnow, and I have a cockatiel called Boggle who I raised from a couple of days old. I freelance from home as a digital illustrator- I've worked on comic books and videogames as well as a couple of websites, but eventually I would like to run a sanctuary for surrendered parrots, retired birds of prey and, I've decided, chickens!
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Rosemary
