CKfarm22
Crowing
I've been on and off about writing the story of how we got our chickens and I wish I could do it in an article... but I guess here goes nothing.
Growing up I was never around chickens but I always thought chicks were so cute. The only time I ever came into contact with chickens was in elementary school when they did a lesson on incubating them and hatching them and then the students would be able to bring them home for a weekend before they got sent off to a farm. In the town I live in we are unable to have chickens and I was taught chickens are gross and carry diseases.
Fast forward, I met my boyfriend December of 2020. We decided to go to tractor supply one night in March 2021, and they had chicks. I looked and my boyfriend and asked if we could get them. He looked at me and said "we dont have anywhere to put them. and those baby chicks grow up to be big chicks".. We walked around the store a little longer and I asked him if we could get some. He looked at me and said "what are we going to do with them when their bigger? we dont know how to care for chickens" To which I had no response but "but theyre so cute!" He agreed and we got four chicks (group A) that were labeled "pullets" (rooky mistake to buy 'pullets' from TSC). The worker walked us through all the things we would need... a heat lamp, food, feeder, waterer, etc. We got home and put the new chicks in a large tote in the basement with a heat lamp. A couple weeks later I went back to tsc (unsupervised while my boyfriend was at work) and got 4 more "pullets" (group b). A couple weeks later we had soon learned that one chick from group a was a rooster, luckily my friends dad wanted an EE rooster and he homed him for me! We lost one chick from group b a couple days after we got them.
Now it was time to talk about what to do with them, do we keep them? do we try to sell them? We didn't really have intentions on keeping them in all honesty. My boyfriends two neighbors have chickens so maybe we could just give them to them, we weren't really sure what to do.
Well those tiny baby chicks started getting bigger and bigger and outgrew that tote they were in. Well what do we do now? We put them in a large rabbit cage because again we weren't sure what to do with them. Being the animal lover I am, I grew to really like these chicks. "Well why don't we just keep them" I say to my boyfriend. "Where are we going to put them?" my boyfriend replies. Well, we can buy a chicken coop! He agreed that we could keep them. So we looked and searched high and low for, what i now know, is prefab coops. And with a lot of research with how much room chickens need, we soon realized that none of the coops we looked at would either meet our necessities or our budget. So we decided to build one! (I'm working on an article for that right now!).
After a couple months, our coop was built and we realized out of the 6 chicks we had left, 3 of them were roosters... uh oh! We all know roosters can be very loud and in the area we live, we have a lot of neighbors and some people would call the cops if they heard a rooster all the time. So I searched for farms that would be able to take them, a lot of them said no because they had too many that people got rid of, but luckily I found someone that would take them! At this point it is now July and we have 3 hens, two cream legbars and what we think is a poorly bred barred rock! We went on vacation and I asked my boyfriend if we could get two more guaranteed females. And he said yes. We bought a Buff Orpington and an Easter Egger. We brought them home and again kept them in a tote in the garage this time. We eventually built a "see no touch" to put inside the coop, and thanks to the people here on BYC that suggested this. A couple weeks later we unfortunately lost the EE. A lot of people suggested getting the BO a friend so she wasn't lonely. So we set off and bought three more chicks, a delaware, a welsummmer and a columbian. After a lot of thought, we figured it would be too difficult to integrate the baby chicks in with the BO especially since the BO isn't integrated in with the bigger girls yet. We decided to sell them and a sweet lady with a hen who just lost babies ended up taking the chicks we bought. So as of right now we have 3 hens and a 10 week old BO. But im sure thats not where our chicken story ends!!
Growing up I was never around chickens but I always thought chicks were so cute. The only time I ever came into contact with chickens was in elementary school when they did a lesson on incubating them and hatching them and then the students would be able to bring them home for a weekend before they got sent off to a farm. In the town I live in we are unable to have chickens and I was taught chickens are gross and carry diseases.
Fast forward, I met my boyfriend December of 2020. We decided to go to tractor supply one night in March 2021, and they had chicks. I looked and my boyfriend and asked if we could get them. He looked at me and said "we dont have anywhere to put them. and those baby chicks grow up to be big chicks".. We walked around the store a little longer and I asked him if we could get some. He looked at me and said "what are we going to do with them when their bigger? we dont know how to care for chickens" To which I had no response but "but theyre so cute!" He agreed and we got four chicks (group A) that were labeled "pullets" (rooky mistake to buy 'pullets' from TSC). The worker walked us through all the things we would need... a heat lamp, food, feeder, waterer, etc. We got home and put the new chicks in a large tote in the basement with a heat lamp. A couple weeks later I went back to tsc (unsupervised while my boyfriend was at work) and got 4 more "pullets" (group b). A couple weeks later we had soon learned that one chick from group a was a rooster, luckily my friends dad wanted an EE rooster and he homed him for me! We lost one chick from group b a couple days after we got them.
Now it was time to talk about what to do with them, do we keep them? do we try to sell them? We didn't really have intentions on keeping them in all honesty. My boyfriends two neighbors have chickens so maybe we could just give them to them, we weren't really sure what to do.
Well those tiny baby chicks started getting bigger and bigger and outgrew that tote they were in. Well what do we do now? We put them in a large rabbit cage because again we weren't sure what to do with them. Being the animal lover I am, I grew to really like these chicks. "Well why don't we just keep them" I say to my boyfriend. "Where are we going to put them?" my boyfriend replies. Well, we can buy a chicken coop! He agreed that we could keep them. So we looked and searched high and low for, what i now know, is prefab coops. And with a lot of research with how much room chickens need, we soon realized that none of the coops we looked at would either meet our necessities or our budget. So we decided to build one! (I'm working on an article for that right now!).
After a couple months, our coop was built and we realized out of the 6 chicks we had left, 3 of them were roosters... uh oh! We all know roosters can be very loud and in the area we live, we have a lot of neighbors and some people would call the cops if they heard a rooster all the time. So I searched for farms that would be able to take them, a lot of them said no because they had too many that people got rid of, but luckily I found someone that would take them! At this point it is now July and we have 3 hens, two cream legbars and what we think is a poorly bred barred rock! We went on vacation and I asked my boyfriend if we could get two more guaranteed females. And he said yes. We bought a Buff Orpington and an Easter Egger. We brought them home and again kept them in a tote in the garage this time. We eventually built a "see no touch" to put inside the coop, and thanks to the people here on BYC that suggested this. A couple weeks later we unfortunately lost the EE. A lot of people suggested getting the BO a friend so she wasn't lonely. So we set off and bought three more chicks, a delaware, a welsummmer and a columbian. After a lot of thought, we figured it would be too difficult to integrate the baby chicks in with the BO especially since the BO isn't integrated in with the bigger girls yet. We decided to sell them and a sweet lady with a hen who just lost babies ended up taking the chicks we bought. So as of right now we have 3 hens and a 10 week old BO. But im sure thats not where our chicken story ends!!
Do you have any pictures of your flock? 
She’s my favorite but don’t tell the rest!
