Welcome to BYC!!(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?
I was new to chickens in 2020, but not new to birds. I used to raise, breed, and sell parakeets as a kid.
(2) How many chickens do you have right now?
338
(3) What breeds do you have?
The first group I'll call "Hardy in my worst setup purebreds" which I have enough for breeding flocks and am moving into separate isolated clans this year:
-Silver Laced Wyandotte (the most survivable, as they can become tree chickens that frequent the tops of the few ornamental fruit trees I have. They still have all their original roosters even though the Bielefelders originally outnumbered them by a factor of 10)
-Barnvelder(no losses yet in 3 years, knock on wood, soft opalescent feathers, Jumbo chocolate color eggs, none of their own roosters either until this year though)
The next is "Purebreds with risks" where I may have pairs to hatch with and would try to breed them, but there are a lot of risks, and it doesn't always work out:
-Bresse(assuming I finally get more than 2 roosters from this years batch, last year's purchases were genetically shallow and defected, 1st year breeder hens still going strong even though there's no adult roosters due to a single hawk attack, so for now they free range with the rest of them)
-Crevecouer(trying these out, same risks as Bresse as a recovering breed so these are project development birds, probably won't free ranging until I see how they act among the others, got them for the meat-to-bone ratio plus delicate short fiber breast meat, which are traits I eventually want to add into my hybrid free rangers)
-Delaware Production Blue (trying these out, so far so good, had good grow-out producing fleshy birds so far)
-Bielefelder (I won't buy new ones as these did not do well here. Their roosters are gentle giants and guard their girls, but hens lay small or medium eggs, they don't look good on the table even if they are big, they are slow to react to predators and the hens randomly keel over when everyone else is fine. The ones still in my flock have proven themselves so I'll continue them, as 2/3 of the Roosters that take the hens on patrol far from the coop or to the stream are these Bielefelders. But they also started with 10x what's left. Their hybrids do well, but no more purchased ones for me)
Other purchased breeds which I may get more at some point: Welsummer, Golden Comet, Rhode Island Red, Buff Cochin
Previously had breeds which I may get again, that did well and are in my hybrids, but lost out to high pressure and low numbers: 1 very hardy Sanjack Longcrower hen and 1 vigorous Houdan that would stand guard over the broody hens, who stamped his genetics into more than 50% of my birds, since he was the only vigorous and fertile of 2 roosters through all of year 1 and the first half of year 2.
Purchased breeds that I won't get more: Dark Cornish, Silver Brahma, a Buff Brahma was the odd one out with featherless legs but also the only survivor
After the first 2 years which included a hot, long, harsh drought, then the Great Texas Freeze that shut down Texas, all while suffering persistent heavy hawk and coyote pressure ( at one point was losing a chicken every 2 days to ambush), I am just now finally confident in the hardiness of my free rangers and their hybrid children in this setup, but proud of how hardy my birds are now, so I am hatching more of them.
(Also, my neighbor shot the coyote that was ambushing my chickens from his property, spending a max of 10 seconds on my property each time. Neighbor fencing has gone up on the other side too, and we're no longer in drought, so we are finally 2 months into seeing little to no predator losses.)
Notable hybrids:
-Easter Eggers, Olive Eggers, and black-skinned Fibro-melanistic Olive Eggers, as well as Rose egg layers and Orange tinted speckled egg layers.
-Houdan-Bresse (called Hellspawn by my kids, they are bearded with muffs and have antler combs that look like a V comb made from 2 straight combs, they are the rose egg layers)
-a big Bresse-Bielefelder diluted in color to be a heavily white and light cuckoo who is big, fast, and watchful and is the free-range rooster-in-charge
-a Bielefelder-Wyandotte rooster presenting as barred red wild-type with rose comb whom I can use to make sex links with the SL Wyandottes... and my wife says it makes sounds like an elephant
-a hen my kids call Silver Legs who presents as a Bresse with very diluted whitish blue silver legs with a touch of buff and black bleed-through on her wings
-Silver legs had a chick, probably with rooster-in-charge that is completely diluted white: white beak, white feet, white skin, white comb with white crest and earmuffs
-the dark cuckoo Bresse-Houdan-Bielefelder rooster with ear muffs in my profile pic
-many solid or mostly solid black darkened children of the Bresse-Houdan-Bielefelder dark cuckoo rooster (called devil chickens by my kids because they were protective of the other chicks as they were growing out, savaging any stick you used to get the gunk out of their water. They don't attack you though, and have mellowed since they started free ranging.) All have white skin but everything else is black: black comb, black feet, and black beak. One of them is crested and solid black and was immediately opalescent upon getting its first feathers. Some have an unpigmented white middle toe and white middle claw to go with it, which is a defect in Crevecouer I'm looking for more info on, but I had no Crevecouer when I started getting these, they're just from a similar breed location history. Some are solid black. Some are black with a single red mottle on their breast. Some are from Silver Laced Wyandotte hen crosses and grow up into silvery black laced grey colors.
(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens?
Eggs. Breeding and hatching baby chicks. The sounds. How the roosters will nobly charge a predator and give their lives to protect the hens, the cats can give the chickens presents instead of me, and how they keep the grass short near the house.
(5) What are some of your other hobbies?
Farm chores, drones, computers, electronics, metalworking, kiln work.
(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.
Wife and 2 kids with 1 away at college who is almost done with his master's. We have dogs, lots of cats, a couple of goats, and a few bunnies.
(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community?
It kept coming up as the only and final place I could find answers to questions about my chickens. I've known for about 6-8 months. I kept finding more answers here and would like a chance to pose a question now and then.
and Welcome to Backyard Chickens.
to have you here with us. Enjoy your time here at BYC!
