Peeps in Europe!

[maceleneo]

Hi Lady Gallina, I love your nickname!

 

[Lady Gallina]

Hi Lady Gallina, I love your nickname!

Thanks

 

[BDutch]

Hi and welcome to this thread! I visited Greece with my parents when I was a child, we were staying in a rural house and there were indeed a lot of chickens all around, I loved it. I have great memories, I would love to visit the country again.
Now I live in the countryside near the city and curiously production breeds are becoming increasingly rare here, most of the people keep chickens as a hobby (so do I), so ornamental breeds go for the most. So much so that I'm searching for some ISA brown or similar red mixes and I couldn't find them so far. I never ordered eggs by mail, but I'm going to give it a try next time my ladies go broody, however it's not going to be from abroad... I'm going to try to order some within the country first!
At the moment I have Marans, Araucana, Olive eggers and I recently received four Australorp chicks that could actually be mixes, but let's see how they will grow!

Are there no commercial hatcheries for factory farming were you live? Shouldn’t be hard to buy a dozen eggs if you ask friendly.

My uncle had such a hatchery long time ago. He supplied my mother with new pullets every two years.

Do you know that Isa Brown and other high production breeds often can’t live longer than 4-5 years. And never go broody. ?

 

[fluffycrow]

Actually, I have seen some broody ISA browns, though EXTREMELY rare. They are very fierce broodies, but they tend to mess things up, especially once the chicks hatch

 

[BDutch]

Hello new member here... We're from Germany and have our chicken since October...we started with 4 bielefelders and two wyandottes .... They're finally all laying now . We hope that one of them goes broody in spring so we can hatch some eggs... We don't have a rooster (yet) so we'll be buying some eggs to hatch...
However I just wanted to say hello to all the other chicken owners in Europe

Hi lady Gallina, welcome to this thread !
I don’t know about Bielefelders, but Wyandotte’s are in general great broodies.
I’m planning to buy fertile eggs too this year. Bantam Vorwerk and maybe some nicely coloured Dutch.

 

[abpatchy]

Hello new member here... We're from Germany and have our chicken since October...we started with 4 bielefelders and two wyandottes .... They're finally all laying now . We hope that one of them goes broody in spring so we can hatch some eggs... We don't have a rooster (yet) so we'll be buying some eggs to hatch...
However I just wanted to say hello to all the other chicken owners in Europe

Welcome to byc and to this thread!
I used to have 3 Bielefelder hens but it just didn't work out with them for me. Not that they were bad chickens!! It just didn't fit with my breeding.

Greetings from southern Hesse

 

[maceleneo]

Are there no commercial hatcheries for factory farming were you live? Shouldn’t be hard to buy a dozen eggs if you ask friendly.
Do you know that Isa Brown and other high production breeds often can’t live longer than 4-5 years. And never go broody. ?

I wouldn't buy in commercial hatcheries, I never did: my chickens all come from sanctuaries or private individuals... but I would actually love to have chickens who don't go broody once: all my chickens do it and last summer I almost didn't have eggs, because all the ladies kept going broody. I literally had all my 8 ladies broody together many times during the summer.
I'm not sure ISA brown even exist where I live (they're not so common in Italy), but there are other red crossbreed layers and I would like to find some... but as I was saying it would be just for a change. I already adopted animals with short lifespan or even already old, that's not a problem for me, it would be different if I was buying them, but that's not what I meant!

 

[fluffycrow]

Unfortunately, you won't be able to find ISA browns if you dont buy from a hatchery, because breeding ISA browns requires a permit, since they're basically branded. But on a different note, I'd love to switch with you, I NEED more broodies

 

[maceleneo]

Unfortunately, you won't be able to find ISA browns if you dont buy from a hatchery, because breeding ISA browns requires a permit

Eh eh, I'm not interested in branded ISA brown, I'd be happy with any red mix who doesn't go broody ... or at least who does it less frequently!
If we were closer we could definitely swap eggs!

 

[Lady Gallina]

Hi lady Gallina, welcome to this thread !
I don’t know about Bielefelders, but Wyandotte’s are in general great broodies.
I’m planning to buy fertile eggs too this year. Bantam Vorwerk and maybe some nicely coloured Dutch.

We don't have much experience yet, but the Bielefelders shouldn't go broody... That's why we have the two wyandottes... We don't want broodys all the time so we have mostly the Bielefelders and we will only add other "non broody" breeds for now.