I'm just starting my second year with chickens. I started last year with some hatching eggs acquired from ebay. It was a lot of fun, but I ended up with almost all roosters 
. They made it through the winter along with four guinea fowl I raised from chicks that were given to me. All told I ended up with one Ameraucan hen(black) and one French Black Copper Maran hen and a bunch of roosters. I've slowly been thinning the roosters down by finding them homes. I was also given 5 Buff Orpington hens, and three RIR hens by a woman who had to get out of chickens for health reasons.
I recently lost four of the hens to a fox grrrr. I have 18 chicks in the brooder from this barnyard mix of hens and roos. I'm still in the process of deciding which rooster to keep, I currently have 1 each of French Black Copper Maran, Black/Blue Ameraucana, Black Sumatra. I'm leaning toward the Ameraucana because he's the friendliest. Maybe if I get around to building a couple more coops I'll start a spiral breeding program to generate rose/cushion/pea combed olive egg layers, but for right now I need to be more realistic
So getting down to one Roo and picking the best pullets out of my batch of chicks is the priority.
The adventure continues.
Adam
. They made it through the winter along with four guinea fowl I raised from chicks that were given to me. All told I ended up with one Ameraucan hen(black) and one French Black Copper Maran hen and a bunch of roosters. I've slowly been thinning the roosters down by finding them homes. I was also given 5 Buff Orpington hens, and three RIR hens by a woman who had to get out of chickens for health reasons.I recently lost four of the hens to a fox grrrr. I have 18 chicks in the brooder from this barnyard mix of hens and roos. I'm still in the process of deciding which rooster to keep, I currently have 1 each of French Black Copper Maran, Black/Blue Ameraucana, Black Sumatra. I'm leaning toward the Ameraucana because he's the friendliest. Maybe if I get around to building a couple more coops I'll start a spiral breeding program to generate rose/cushion/pea combed olive egg layers, but for right now I need to be more realistic
So getting down to one Roo and picking the best pullets out of my batch of chicks is the priority.The adventure continues.
Adam
