South Carolina

[Ray_n_Debi]

 

[peafowlmom]

That's beautiful!!!

 

[RockerHen]

Merry Christmas!!

 

[EggieRowe]

Why not get standard hens? Even with clipped wings, they can hop onto a 4 ft fence. I imagine a banty could do much better. Mine are fairly quiet unless they suspect a predator or my roo gets them started. I'd say my noisiest, aside from the roo, are the Delawares. My EE's still seem to chirp more than cackle so they are the quietest. I keep my flock in Greenville County and am not zoned for it. I doubt you'll get any complaints without a rooster and if they stay in your yard. We live about block from #18 Linkside at Pebble Creek (but not in the neighborhood) and no one ever noticed our six hens. Even had an occasional escapee, but they usually returned. Now we live in an industrial zone so we have no neighbors to complain about 20 hens & a roo.

My plan is to semi-free range them. I have about 1/3 acre fenced in back yard and I already read how to clip thier wings which should prevent them from flying over it. In addition I'll keep them spoiled with meal worms, table scraps and other treats to hopefully give them no reason to want to fly out of the yard.

The coop will have a small run that I can close them in if nessicary if a storm is coming or something but for the most part they'll have the yard to run around in. One of my neighbors has a herd of about 15 goats 100 yards away so I'm not too concerned. I live outside city limits but on the edge of a neighboorhood. I just think it may not be 100% kosher for me to have chickens since I beleive you're supposed to have 3+ acres to raise any kind of polutry. But as long as I keep it small and contain them I don't think I'll have any issues.

 

[HBruemmer]

I love the Silkie with a bow. And the little guy hugging her! So cute!!!

 

[peafowlmom]

Yes, so sweet

 

[HBruemmer]

I thought this would be a good place to post about our Chicken filled Christmas. A gift we got from a fellow BYC member, really upstaged all of our store bought gifts this year. We really lucked out when we wanted to get started with chickens by joining this board and getting to meet RedBugPoultry. Such a sweet lady with so much knowledge about chickens. She helped us get started with our Black Copper Marans and some hatching eggs for our incubator. Then, because I was nervous about the outcome of my hatch (today is D-Day and so far not a pip!

) she offered me some day old chicks so the girls would have their long awaited chickies for Christmas. This sweet lady drove out on Christams Eve and gave us 14 chicks. A Dorking, some Dominiques, Delawares, 2 Blue Copper Marans, and some Black Copper Marans. She even sexed the Dominiques and Dorking to make sure we would get hens! Our brooder was set up temporarily in the living room for the girls to find on Christmas morning.












Everyone was so happy with our new babies! And the immediate questions came out "How do we know which ones are boys and which ones are girls?" So I explained how Heidi had been able to sex the dorkings and Dominiques at birth for us. I told them the rest would be a suprise. But my 11 year old Sophie, did some research on the internet about feather sexing. She used the following photo as a guide.

And so, she determined that we have 2 female Blue Copper Marans, 1 female and 1 male Delaware, 7 female Dominiques (Heidi had one she was unsure of, but Sophie concurs based on the feathering), 1 female Dorking, 3 male and 5 female Black Copper Marans. We banded the suspected boys and will be keeping track to see if this was an effective way to sex the chicks. I suspect she'll be off a bit because some of the chicks hatched a day or so before others, so they are at different stages of development, but it was fun to let her try. She will be using a control group with any chicks that hatch out of our incubator because we will know exactly how old each one is. This is now her proposed science fair project! If she's right, that is a lot of new hens for us! Either way, we are so thankful for RedBugPoultry's kindness. I hope you all had a great holiday with your chickens!

 

[WestKnollAmy]

You are very lucky to have met Heidi! She is a wonderful person and so knowledgeable! She was a great help to me with Guineas when no one local seemed to know anything. I have always valued her friendship!

 

[HBruemmer]

You are very lucky to have met Heidi! She is a wonderful person and so knowledgeable! She was a great help to me with Guineas when no one local seemed to know anything. I have always valued her friendship!

Yes, we feel very blessed to have met her. She has helped us so much!

 

[HBruemmer]

Ugh! THREE power failures this afternoon. I'm hoping my hatching eggs will be O.K. but we are pretty far into day 21 and so far, not a pip.