New to raising chickens

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KeliD

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Jul 12, 2017
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Hello, my name is Keli. I live in Eastern NC. I've been working my husband for a couple of years to let me have some chickens. This spring he finally caved...sorta, and I bought 8 chicks: 4 Easter Eggers and 4 Road Island Reds. They were unsexed and at least a few days old so we got the luck of the draw on sex. My husband quickly started naming them and immediately banned any consideration of eating them. The goal has been fresh eggs anyway. Now they are about 10-12 weeks old and it is quite clear we have 3 roosters and 4 hens - one committed suicide a couple weeks ago. (We found her expired under the waterer with no evidence of an intruder in the pen or fighting amongst the flock; so we figure either she broke her neck or choked to death.) Anyway, I know I must either expand the flock or remove two of the three roosters. We have decided to remove two roosters, but since we can't bring ourselves to kill them and eat them, I'm looking to re-home them. I realize the demand for roosters is low, but most everyone I know keeps at least one to protect their flock, so I'm hoping to find someone in the market for a rooster. One is a Road Island Red, the other is an Easter Egger.
 
Have fun with chickens, they're great! And welcome to BYC!:welcome I don't know where you live, but when I found out I had a rooster, I let him have chicken paradise in my neighbor's giant girls and cow pasture ( with his permission, of course).
 
I have plenty of room (we live on a couple of acres that connects to neighbors with a couple acres each) but everyone of my neighbors has a Labrador retriever -one looks like she has some pit mixed in. We have two Chesapeake bay retrievers and the dogs have all stayed out of the road and been welcome in everyone's yards. My chickens are double fenced (a fence around their fenced run) to protect them from predators. The dogs have shown little to no interest in the chickens but I don't want to press that by leaving two roosters loose in the yard. They might be able to protect themselves against one but if the dogs ganged up (like they do on rabbits and moles) the birds would be done for. Then they may be motivated to get through the fences to the flock.
 
Nice to meet you Keli, Welcome to the Backyard chickens flock. You may also want a top on the run to protect from aerial attacks (hawks, etc). Everything seems to love chicken but, not in a good way.
 
My run is covered. The outer yard is not. Thanks for the advice.
 

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