Hi BYC members! My name is Edie, and I've been a chicken owner for just over a week now! I've wanted to raise chickens for years now, and my husband and I finally took the plunge and brought home 8 little girls (hopefully) from our local feed and seed/home and garden center last week. This website has been invaluable so far! We're entering into chicken land with very little knowledge or experience, so every little bit of quality information certainly helps! A bit about us: I live in rural south central Georgia with my husband Randy, and our two young children, Elliot and Sylvie. Randy teaches aircraft maintenance at a local aviation college while I stay at home with our children. We live outside of a small town, and have cows and a couple horses (not ours) for neighbors. We've been in the dreaming/planning stages of becoming more self-sufficient and having a hobby farm since before we married, but it's just now coming into reality. We purchased nearly a 100 acres of land several years ago within the county we are living, are in process of getting permits to build a pond on our land, and plan on building our "forever" home there in the next couple years. The chicks are the very beginning of our livestock endeavors. Fruit and pecan trees, meat chickens, and possibly a small herd of goats are next on the list after moving onto our land. Meanwhile, we can get practice building a coop and raising chickens on our current 2.5 acres! Our little girls are an assortment of Rhode Island Reds, Black Sex-linked, and who knows what else. I'm curious to find out more about what they are as they get bigger, and develop their distinguishing characteristics! Of course they have been named, because with a nearly 4 year old, and a little 27 month old, everything most definitely has to have a name! We have Lemon Drop (yellow), Bubble and Jelly Bean (black sex-linked), Cherry, Strawberry, and Apple (the RIR ladies that I can't tell apart), and Nugget and Meatball (brown splotchy with dark "masks" around their eyes or camouflage chicks as my son calls them). They are in a large guinea pig cage on our screened front porch with heat lamps for warmth. I've been browsing the site for chicken coop ideas, and we figured out a location and measurements yesterday. Construction will begin tomorrow! These girls are nearly double the size they were a week ago (at a few days old), and so ready to run and practice flying! I can't wait to get them in a proper coop with a large run for them to enjoy. I have so much to learn, and I'm so looking forward to it all. I have such fond memories of helping my elderly neighbor gather eggs from his chickens when I was little. While I've always been around farming and rural life, I've never had the experience of being immersed in it like I dreamed of when I was little. If only I could have stepped into a Laura Ingalls book! I want that experience now for myself and my family.
