Our little flock, Olive Eggers, Buff Orpington, Light Brahma, Black Australorp

[Australorpfamily]

Since I haven't updated this in awhile, here are some recent photos of our girls! (With a couple extras haha)

 

[Sylvester017]

You have a nice fenced set-up for your open ranging flock!

Beardie is very close to being classified Blue. Every once in a while an Easter Egger comes out looking like a true "Ameraucana". Beardie is very precious. Don't you just love their fluffy beards? My avatar picture is a true Blue Wheaten Ameraucana from a private breeder but she was so overly timid around a mixed flock that we never got more Ameraucanas or Easter Eggers for that matter -- I didn't want to take a chance on adding more gentle birds to the flock.

I think breeds should be kept in "alike" flocks otherwise the gentler breeds in a mixed flock get picked on mercilessly. Our Ameraucana had a sister but it died early so our lone Ameraucana didn't fare well with the other breeds. After our 13 year experiences with different breeds we decided for ourselves to stick with just one breed type in our backyard.

As you may know from my other BYC posts we experimented with a few different breeds and now in senior years thru attrition we're down to just Silkies and one lone old Dominique who has been nice to the littles so we keep her around. I don't want to add any more birds to the backyard cuz I don't want the birds to outlive ME and stick my DH with caring for them by himself. It's a team effort to keep poultry and the Silkies will be easiest for just one person to care for. Plus, Silkies lay a decent-sized egg for a large Bantam.

Hey, I'm 80 this year so if our chickens live 8 to 12 years more I don't want to die BEFORE them -- teehee! Gotta think about these things. Chicken math is not an option for us. We are thinking conservatively. One BYCer lost her DH suddenly and had to re-home over half her backyard flock cuz she couldn't care alone for so many birds. Can you imagine trying to decide which birds stay and which ones go? I felt so bad for her going thru that decision after losing her DH too!

 

[Australorpfamily]

You have a nice fenced set-up for your open ranging flock!

Beardie is very close to being classified Blue. Every once in a while an Easter Egger comes out looking like a true "Ameraucana". Beardie is very precious. Don't you just love their fluffy beards? My avatar picture is a true Blue Wheaten Ameraucana from a private breeder but she was so overly timid around a mixed flock that we never got more Ameraucanas or Easter Eggers for that matter -- I didn't want to take a chance on adding more gentle birds to the flock.

I think breeds should be kept in "alike" flocks otherwise the gentler breeds in a mixed flock get picked on mercilessly. Our Ameraucana had a sister but it died early so our lone Ameraucana didn't fare well with the other breeds. After our 13 year experiences with different breeds we decided for ourselves to stick with just one breed type in our backyard.

As you may know from my other BYC posts we experimented with a few different breeds and now in senior years thru attrition we're down to just Silkies and one lone old Dominique who has been nice to the littles so we keep her around. I don't want to add any more birds to the backyard cuz I don't want the birds to outlive ME and stick my DH with caring for them by himself. It's a team effort to keep poultry and the Silkies will be easiest for just one person to care for. Plus, Silkies lay a decent-sized egg for a large Bantam.
View attachment 3771042

Hey, I'm 80 this year so if our chickens live 8 to 12 years more I don't want to die BEFORE them -- teehee! Gotta think about these things. Chicken math is not an option for us. We are thinking conservatively. One BYCer lost her DH suddenly and had to re-home over half her backyard flock cuz she couldn't care alone for so many birds. Can you imagine trying to decide which birds stay and which ones go? I felt so bad for her going thru that decision after losing her DH too!

What do you mean by gentler breeds? We don't have any bullies and very little pecking issues(standard pecking order) we got our girls' breeds because they were gentle/docile and not likely to have issues. Our BAs are the top, the Orpingtons can be a little feisty but the Eggers will even put them in place.

 

[Sylvester017]

@Australorpfamily -- Yeah, I heard a lot of EE owners say that their EE's can be authoritative but mostly my feedback from them was that EE's were sweet friendly birds and even docile. Our Ameraucana was totally timid and wouldn't even hang out with our littles. My neighbor said her Buff Orp was a bully among 15 hens and there were a lot of squabbles with her. Who knew? Owners say how sweet their Orps are and then one comes along the opposite?!

Your flock looks like it has a lot of Brahmas and Aussie's which I've been told are calmer birds, Altho my BYC friend said her Aussie was a total terror and could not remain in a small flock. She had to re-home the bird to a large rescue farm where the Aussie couldn't reign.

My feeling over these long years (both as a farm girl and now a backyarder) is that the quantity of birds, the amount of space, the choice of what breeds to mix, and whether there are good roo's to keep the peace between the hens is what determines a flock temperament.

We can't have roo's in our current neighborhood, so we experimented with a few breeds of hens with calm (not timid) reputations and found our favorites were Silkies, B/B/S Bredas, and Dominiques as a small mixed flock. Our more prolific egg layers i.e. Buff or White Leghorns and Marans were aggressive. We quickly re-homed those birds. After that we never considered adding prolific layers like Aussie, RIR, Barred Rock, Hybrid layers, etc. Just a personal decision.

All situations are different, all yards and terrains are different, the breeds of poultry that owners desire to obtain, all factor in the outcome of a person's ideal flock.

I love your flock set-up. Lots of room. Our cottage yard is smal and we partitioned half for us and half for the hens. We haven't kept them separated though. We like when they come visit at the kitchen door and even keep it open so they can come in to visit. We are totally chicken crazy!!!

 

[Australorpfamily]

@Australorpfamily -- Yeah, I heard a lot of EE owners say that their EE's can be authoritative but mostly my feedback from them was that EE's were sweet friendly birds and even docile. Our Ameraucana was totally timid and wouldn't even hang out with our littles. My neighbor said her Buff Orp was a bully among 15 hens and there were a lot of squabbles with her. Who knew? Owners say how sweet their Orps are and then one comes along the opposite?!

Your flock looks like it has a lot of Brahmas and Aussie's which I've been told are calmer birds, Altho my BYC friend said her Aussie was a total terror and could not remain in a small flock. She had to re-home the bird to a large rescue farm where the Aussie couldn't reign.

My feeling over these long years (both as a farm girl and now a backyarder) is that the quantity of birds, the amount of space, the choice of what breeds to mix, and whether there are good roo's to keep the peace between the hens is what determines a flock temperament.

We can't have roo's in our current neighborhood, so we experimented with a few breeds of hens with calm (not timid) reputations and found our favorites were Silkies, B/B/S Bredas, and Dominiques as a small mixed flock. Our more prolific egg layers i.e. Buff or White Leghorns and Marans were aggressive. We quickly re-homed those birds. After that we never considered adding prolific layers like Aussie, RIR, Barred Rock, Hybrid layers, etc. Just a personal decision.

All situations are different, all yards and terrains are different, the breeds of poultry that owners desire to obtain, all factor in the outcome of a person's ideal flock.

I love your flock set-up. Lots of room. Our cottage yard is smal and we partitioned half for us and half for the hens. We haven't kept them separated though. We like when they come visit at the kitchen door and even keep it open so they can come in to visit. We are totally chicken crazy!!!
View attachment 3771336

Okay understand, (thought you mean like my mixes were sutible together)-- my aunt had to re-home two silver lace Wyandottes because they kept bullying their others- Brahma and Australorp, yet my friend has Orpington/Australorps/Wyandottes all together just fine lol.

Yeah, most of ours were raised together as hatchlings, so I'm sure that helps too but I do know that each bird has their own personality. I spend a lot of time out in our pen with the girls and have since day one so getting to know them has been so much fun.

When they first started to lay we did have a head strong Australorp, but one stent in time out and she'd been fine since and that was back in july lol

 

[Sylvester017]

Yeah, who knew keeping chickens would turn out so addictive?! We've loved all our birds and it pained DH to re-home any bullies even after time-out or separation trials. For a man it affected him whenever one died or was put down at the vet and a couple passed as youngsters.

Raised on a farm I'm used to losing an animal but comforted that we gave it a good life. Sometimes health issues are beyond our control and birds pass. Our vet believes in preserving lives and not an advocate of "putting down" an animal so I know it was an extreme case when he put down one of our Silkies with a massive bleeding ovarian tumor cuz she was dying.

As for time-out issues with aggressive hens -- I recall one bird we separated cuz she was picked on. Oddly, when we re-integrated her she stood her own ground and especially where food was concerned. Another bird pecked her at the feed but she didn't flinch and kept eating and the other bird stopped annoying her. DH and I figured if a bird was timid or flinched is what caused another bird to continue bully behavior? We don't know -- we learn as we go along dealing with different bird personalities.

We have only 6 birds (only supposed to have 5 hens/no roo's per ordinance but we're not sure how long our oldest bird will be around which will bring us down to 5 again) cuz I don't want to have 5 birds only now, then lose one, and have to replace with a new pullet by herself to integrate without a friend. DH doesn't mind adding new birds but I don't want any more. I'm old, don't know how long the Creator gives me on earth, so don't want our birds to outlive me. DH is younger than me and still working and don't think he realizes how much responsibility there is to keeping chickens as a single working person. The love for chicken math interferes with our reasoning sometimes.

Anyway, with our small flock and small yard we have a different dynamic from owners who can have 15, 20, or more birds. One bully in a small flock can cause bully contagion in the rest of the birds so our choices were limited in how we handled our flock. If time-out sessions didn't work we re-homed a bird. Lucky for us that all our more aggressive egg-layer Leghorns and Marans went to a neighbor who wanted more egg-layers.

Later we had a Cuckoo Breda who was a 7.5-lb bully to our 2-lb Silkie so we re-homed the Breda to a rescue friend and she's a content hen. Our rescue friend is a vegetarian so I know this bird will never be on a dinner plate!

RE-HOMED BREDA HEN

FRIEND'S DOG SHARES NAP WITH BREDA HEN