Ok, long story short, my fiance and i are building a 4x8 coop with a very large run attatched. We have 7 day old chick on order for may (4) and july (3). We have found 3 breeds of Brahma we would love to add to the coop and olive eggers as well. Problem is we have to order in groups of 6 of either 2 breeds of brahma (3/3) 6 of one breed BRAHMA or 6 of the OE. Our coop wont hold that many birds to get more then one option!! Given chicks are very hard to find of all the above it looks like we have to incubate eggs. Now trick question is, how many should we order to incubate? I have never had chickens, know almost nothing about shipping eggs or incubating them and am clueless on how this is gonna work. We dont want roos but we have come to accept its gonna happen. We dont want to order to many and over rowd anyone.
If you have never incubated eggs I would not recommend starting with shipped eggs. Order what you want and sell the ones you don't need on craigslist.
Are you planning to breed them for show or have them for eggs/pets? If for eggs and/or pets you can order them from hatcheries and specify you only want pullets in any number they have available. If for show I'd contact a breeder and arrange for him/her to hatch the number you want but if you're only wanting pullets you should get double the amount of hens you want to end up with. If you're dealing with a breeder you'll only be able to get straight run chicks. Same goes for getting eggs of course. You'll have to have a plan in place to get rid of the roosters you don't want. The two usual options are BBQ or sell/give away.
Unfortunately all but the Olive Eggers have to come from breeders due to their just being so rare i guess. Olive eggers most hatcheries i have found are sold out with no restock date for this year. I would like to show at some point and possibly breed in a couple of years but given this is our first year with chickens it will be primarily for eggs for now.
