Hi all, I have 10 7 month old laying hens of various breeds. I raised them from day old chicks. I can definitely say that I have been bitten by the chicken bug. After I realized this and my family's desire to become more self-sufficient, I thought about doing meat chickens. I didn't think my husband would be on board with this so I didn't bring it up. A couple weeks later our small group had a couple that does meat chickens every year and my husband said he would love to learn how to do this. So we ordered them and grew them and now we are off to process on the third! We only lost 1 to pecking and have had to segregate a few for pecking but we are learning in the process. We are in sunny AZ and love our little tract home homestead!
Welcome to BYC. I'm glad you decided to join our flock. Very few members are immune to "chicken math." ) Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. We are here to help in any way we can. Good luck with your flock.
I'm new to byc, I have 8 hens & 1 rooster. The rooster & 4 hens were given to us from a friend who had to move & knew we were building a coop to get started. Then someone else needed to re home 4 more hens so we took them as well. I am so entertained by them all. I was afraid we were going to have a problem introducing them so we did it at roosting time & it remained pretty quiet all night & then next morning they were turned out together and did pretty good. The 4 newest are a little bossy, they are barred rocks, & the other hens are 1 Rhode Island Red, a turken and an aracauna & I think the other is a black sex linked. My rooster I am not sure what he is except happy, lol. We average 4-6 eggs a day. My barred rocks are about 6 mos old but the others I have no idea. My horse likes to play with the chickens as well. I turn out my hens only when we are home & keep an eye on the flock so during the week they get 3-4 hrs of turn out right now til the time changes again, on the weekends they get most of the day out. We enclosed our extra10x10 stall for them so they have enough room. Any advice on keeping is always appreciated as we are clueless. I mix their pellets with some cracked corn, dried meal worms, oyster shell, whole flax seed, & a little black oil sunflower seeds. They get any veggies scraps we have left over & I know we can feed them chicken but we feel like it's not right, lol.