andi_freeze
In the Brooder
- Mar 1, 2024
- 15
- 42
- 49
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?
I've had chickens for 2.5 years now - in august of 2021 I got my first chicks from a local breeder, and raised them inside through the winter, then the following spring we got a few more girls from a local farm to balance out the flock
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
We have 7 chickens total right now - recently my favorite rooster died
but I've also got more chicks coming next week!
(3) What breeds do you have?
We've got a mix of breeds:
Botany Bay ("Bot") - the remaining rooster, he is a very ugly silkie with some cochin in him
Space Battleship Yamato ("Argo") - tiny red bantam cochin hen
Enterprise - black silkie hen
Discovery ("Disco") - dark Olive Egger hen, has that oil slick coloring with some copper in her hackles
Galactica ("Gal") - white leghorn hen
Negotiator - buff laced wyandotte hen
Babylon 5 ("Babylon") - blue laced red wyandotte hen
My recently deceased roo was Nebuchadnezzar ("Nebbie"), a black bantam frizzle cochin - he was a complete lap bird, and inexplicably the lead rooster despite being smaller then all of the other chickens besides maybe Argo
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?
They are so much fun to watch, I love seeing how much personality they've got. I also really like hearing them throughout the day - though Bot is an abysmal crow-er, he doesn't make a peep until at least 10 am and sounds deeply underwhelming. I work from home, and have a tendency to get very absorbed in what I'm doing, I love that the chickens out in the yard are active enough that they'll distract my from my hyper-focus without being too intrusive.
Having the chickens has also helped a lot with food management in my household. Generally speaking, we're all terrible about eating - before getting the chickens it was always a gamble to buy fresh food because even odds it would just go to waste... which led to us not buying any food, which meant we would eat terribly, and feel even worse about buying food... with the chickens there, even if we buy food and don't eat it, once it starts getting 'meh' we just give it to the flock - now we all feel way less guilt about the food going bad, which makes it easier to keep food in the house, which makes it easier to eat... And on top of that we have an abundance of eggs all the time!
(5) What are some of your other hobbies?
I am a serial amateur crafter - recently I have gotten really into epoxy resin pouring. I've been making lots of those little shaker key chains, shapes with a hollow section filled with glitter and oil or water and such
I also play roller derby.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
Other then the chickens we have 2 dogs and 1 cat. Eowyn is an Australian Cattle Dog/Pit Bull/Sharpei mix, she is a funny mid sized dingo looking dog -- she has made it her job to guard the chicken coop, and to monitor the behavior of our other dog: Faramir, a miniature Australian Shepherd, who I strongly suspect comes from a mini-aussie line that was bred with terriers because his single largest joy in life is murdering rodents -- one time I came home to find he had kindly left me the back left haunch of a rabbit.... on my bed, the rest of the rabbit no where to be found.
When we first got the big girls (Disco, Gal, Babylon, and Negotiator) we kept them in the catio to quarantine them for a bit - at one point the dogs ran into the catio after me and cornered Gal (which was actually pretty impressive, the dogs are not trained for herding or anything and they worked together really well!) -- I generally try to not to angry-yell, but I went off on them, I was so worried we were going to have a bloody crime scene to clean up... The poor dogs have never looked so ashamed - and they haven't chased a single chicken since hahaha
My cat Rumi is just left of feral - he's super skittish and shy, but loves 1 on 1 attention - but there can only be 1 person in the room or he runs off.
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
I've been lurking here for years (since significantly before I got my first chicks!) but I am about to start a little breeding project (that might be a strong term haha) so I figured it would be fun to create an account so I could publicly document some of how that goes!
I've had chickens for 2.5 years now - in august of 2021 I got my first chicks from a local breeder, and raised them inside through the winter, then the following spring we got a few more girls from a local farm to balance out the flock
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
We have 7 chickens total right now - recently my favorite rooster died
but I've also got more chicks coming next week!(3) What breeds do you have?
We've got a mix of breeds:
Botany Bay ("Bot") - the remaining rooster, he is a very ugly silkie with some cochin in him
Space Battleship Yamato ("Argo") - tiny red bantam cochin hen
Enterprise - black silkie hen
Discovery ("Disco") - dark Olive Egger hen, has that oil slick coloring with some copper in her hackles
Galactica ("Gal") - white leghorn hen
Negotiator - buff laced wyandotte hen
Babylon 5 ("Babylon") - blue laced red wyandotte hen
My recently deceased roo was Nebuchadnezzar ("Nebbie"), a black bantam frizzle cochin - he was a complete lap bird, and inexplicably the lead rooster despite being smaller then all of the other chickens besides maybe Argo
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?
They are so much fun to watch, I love seeing how much personality they've got. I also really like hearing them throughout the day - though Bot is an abysmal crow-er, he doesn't make a peep until at least 10 am and sounds deeply underwhelming. I work from home, and have a tendency to get very absorbed in what I'm doing, I love that the chickens out in the yard are active enough that they'll distract my from my hyper-focus without being too intrusive.
Having the chickens has also helped a lot with food management in my household. Generally speaking, we're all terrible about eating - before getting the chickens it was always a gamble to buy fresh food because even odds it would just go to waste... which led to us not buying any food, which meant we would eat terribly, and feel even worse about buying food... with the chickens there, even if we buy food and don't eat it, once it starts getting 'meh' we just give it to the flock - now we all feel way less guilt about the food going bad, which makes it easier to keep food in the house, which makes it easier to eat... And on top of that we have an abundance of eggs all the time!
(5) What are some of your other hobbies?
I am a serial amateur crafter - recently I have gotten really into epoxy resin pouring. I've been making lots of those little shaker key chains, shapes with a hollow section filled with glitter and oil or water and such
I also play roller derby.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
Other then the chickens we have 2 dogs and 1 cat. Eowyn is an Australian Cattle Dog/Pit Bull/Sharpei mix, she is a funny mid sized dingo looking dog -- she has made it her job to guard the chicken coop, and to monitor the behavior of our other dog: Faramir, a miniature Australian Shepherd, who I strongly suspect comes from a mini-aussie line that was bred with terriers because his single largest joy in life is murdering rodents -- one time I came home to find he had kindly left me the back left haunch of a rabbit.... on my bed, the rest of the rabbit no where to be found.
When we first got the big girls (Disco, Gal, Babylon, and Negotiator) we kept them in the catio to quarantine them for a bit - at one point the dogs ran into the catio after me and cornered Gal (which was actually pretty impressive, the dogs are not trained for herding or anything and they worked together really well!) -- I generally try to not to angry-yell, but I went off on them, I was so worried we were going to have a bloody crime scene to clean up... The poor dogs have never looked so ashamed - and they haven't chased a single chicken since hahaha
My cat Rumi is just left of feral - he's super skittish and shy, but loves 1 on 1 attention - but there can only be 1 person in the room or he runs off.
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
I've been lurking here for years (since significantly before I got my first chicks!) but I am about to start a little breeding project (that might be a strong term haha) so I figured it would be fun to create an account so I could publicly document some of how that goes!
Welcome!!!
Glad you joined.
