Flockorama
In the Brooder
- Apr 8, 2025
- 2
- 21
- 21
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?
I've owned chickens most of my life. I'm a bird person in general. I'd own turkeys if I had the room, and we're contemplating a guardian goose as we have two hens who frequently stand in the middle of the yard wondering why that weird dot in the sky is getting bigger. But right now it's just us and the girls, and I can't imagine NOT having chickens. I grew up on a farm far enough removed from literally anything that the livestock were my closest friends, so I spent a lot of time in the poultry barn.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
39! We have two flocks at the moment. 19 big girls, and 20 chicks that are about 7 weeks old. Our oldest is 13, and the rest of the adult flock is 2-6 years old. Most of our girls are mid/heavy layers, with a sprinkling of personality hires, and one that's blind and kind of stupid but is bonded to one of our other girls (she's also a personality hire, if "elevator music" can be considered a personality). We are partially brooding the chicks for my MIL, so we're waiting for temperaments to develop to see who's staying and who's going.
(3) What breeds do you have?
So many. Golden Sexlinks, Rhode Island Reds, Lavender Marans, Silver-lace Wyandottes, Black Copper Marans, Olive Eggers, Speckled Sussex, Salmon Faverolles, a white Americauna/Legbar mix, Cream Legbars, Mystic Onyx, Easter Eggers, Chocolate Orpingtons, Gold-lace Wyandottes, and Barred Rocks. The adults and a couple of the chicks are all named, 2-4 of each breed, we keep them color-banded but honestly at least for the big girls I can name them by sight. They're somewhere in that gray area between livestock and pets.
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?
I like the free pest control, I like the eggs, and I like their little personalities. Chickens are just cool. We're aiming for a rainbow basket, so I like seeing what colors we get day to day. And if we're being real, it's one more thing I get to make a spreadsheet about. On a more niche note, my favorite books/movies are Jurassic Park (the original 3) and I think it's entertaining to laugh at people who scoff at the dinosaur-chicken evolutionary pipeline. Think of the T-Rex scene and replace it with a chicken that size, I don't know about anyone else's birds but mine would eat people without a second thought.
(5) What are some of your other hobbies?
I know enough about basic construction to have a mostly-justified sense of "yeah I could probably do that" when I see a video on TikTok or Pinterest, and more importantly I'm stubborn enough that when I hit the is-it-supposed-to-look-like-that point in any DIY project I can usually figure out how to make it work. Recently I've been getting into homesteading. That aligns with most of what we do anyway, but there's always room for improvement and new processes. I read a lot of books, horror/thrillers mainly, and I think most hobbies should be tried out at least once, so I like to have two or three projects going at any given point.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
It's me, my husband, our three kids, and my mom in the house. We have two dogs, two cats, two teenagers, and a toddler running around so it's kind of a zoo. Mom is a veterinarian, but she's close to retiring so she spends most of her time in the garden with her dog. My husband stays home with the kids and runs the daily household routines, and I am in Logistics/Warehouse management. We live in a rural suburb. I don't know how else to describe it- we can have chickens and roosters, geese, goats, but we do have next-door neighbors. However, we're 15ish minutes outside of town and it's quiet this close to the mountains. The only problems we really have are hawks, and maybe the occasional coyote, though they usually stay away from us because we have dogs.
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
We've used this site for answers on and off for ages, I just never got around to making an actual account. We're going to start breeding our own birds this year, and I figured it was a good idea to finally make an account so I could get more involved in the BYC community rather than lurking in the shadows.
I've owned chickens most of my life. I'm a bird person in general. I'd own turkeys if I had the room, and we're contemplating a guardian goose as we have two hens who frequently stand in the middle of the yard wondering why that weird dot in the sky is getting bigger. But right now it's just us and the girls, and I can't imagine NOT having chickens. I grew up on a farm far enough removed from literally anything that the livestock were my closest friends, so I spent a lot of time in the poultry barn.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
39! We have two flocks at the moment. 19 big girls, and 20 chicks that are about 7 weeks old. Our oldest is 13, and the rest of the adult flock is 2-6 years old. Most of our girls are mid/heavy layers, with a sprinkling of personality hires, and one that's blind and kind of stupid but is bonded to one of our other girls (she's also a personality hire, if "elevator music" can be considered a personality). We are partially brooding the chicks for my MIL, so we're waiting for temperaments to develop to see who's staying and who's going.
(3) What breeds do you have?
So many. Golden Sexlinks, Rhode Island Reds, Lavender Marans, Silver-lace Wyandottes, Black Copper Marans, Olive Eggers, Speckled Sussex, Salmon Faverolles, a white Americauna/Legbar mix, Cream Legbars, Mystic Onyx, Easter Eggers, Chocolate Orpingtons, Gold-lace Wyandottes, and Barred Rocks. The adults and a couple of the chicks are all named, 2-4 of each breed, we keep them color-banded but honestly at least for the big girls I can name them by sight. They're somewhere in that gray area between livestock and pets.
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?
I like the free pest control, I like the eggs, and I like their little personalities. Chickens are just cool. We're aiming for a rainbow basket, so I like seeing what colors we get day to day. And if we're being real, it's one more thing I get to make a spreadsheet about. On a more niche note, my favorite books/movies are Jurassic Park (the original 3) and I think it's entertaining to laugh at people who scoff at the dinosaur-chicken evolutionary pipeline. Think of the T-Rex scene and replace it with a chicken that size, I don't know about anyone else's birds but mine would eat people without a second thought.
(5) What are some of your other hobbies?
I know enough about basic construction to have a mostly-justified sense of "yeah I could probably do that" when I see a video on TikTok or Pinterest, and more importantly I'm stubborn enough that when I hit the is-it-supposed-to-look-like-that point in any DIY project I can usually figure out how to make it work. Recently I've been getting into homesteading. That aligns with most of what we do anyway, but there's always room for improvement and new processes. I read a lot of books, horror/thrillers mainly, and I think most hobbies should be tried out at least once, so I like to have two or three projects going at any given point.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
It's me, my husband, our three kids, and my mom in the house. We have two dogs, two cats, two teenagers, and a toddler running around so it's kind of a zoo. Mom is a veterinarian, but she's close to retiring so she spends most of her time in the garden with her dog. My husband stays home with the kids and runs the daily household routines, and I am in Logistics/Warehouse management. We live in a rural suburb. I don't know how else to describe it- we can have chickens and roosters, geese, goats, but we do have next-door neighbors. However, we're 15ish minutes outside of town and it's quiet this close to the mountains. The only problems we really have are hawks, and maybe the occasional coyote, though they usually stay away from us because we have dogs.
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
We've used this site for answers on and off for ages, I just never got around to making an actual account. We're going to start breeding our own birds this year, and I figured it was a good idea to finally make an account so I could get more involved in the BYC community rather than lurking in the shadows.
Glad you joined.
