Chickens: Our Flock

I am an animal science major at my university and it has been difficult at times for me to be patient when waiting to start our dream farm. This is largely due to the fact that you need land to have livestock, which is a main focus of mine. We have finally got to a place in our lives where we can afford to rent a house with a yard. Since our city allows the keeping of chickens, we have a flock of our own. This has been one of my greatest pleasures, from raising the chicks to taking care of the hens. So I thought I would share with you all about our flock.

At the moment we have seven hens. We have two "generations" in the coop, so we are getting half full sized eggs and half pullet eggs. Our older girls we raised from chicks in the spring of 2016. We raised them in my Dad's garage as we were preparing to move to a place where we could have them. We started with seven chicks, two of them turned out to be males and one was too independent for her own good and got lost (literally).

Of the four in our flock now one is a Gold Sex Link, one a Rhode Island Red, and two are Americanas. I have fallen for the Americanas and not just, because their pretty blue eggs. The Americanas are smart and watch out for the others. The Gold Sex Link has impressed me with her laying, she lays an egg just about everyday. I will not get another Rhode Island, they are just unimpressive in just about every way.

I won't bore you with everything about each hen, yet. I will just mention my top hen, Bumblebee. She is a gentle Americana and watches over the others like a rooster most of the time. She and my other Americana are very attached to me and follow me around the yard. Bumblebee is especially friendly and will often let me pet her. She's a great head of the flock.

For the new crew we wanted to increase our production so we could sell to others more consistently. This made us consider some higher producing breeds. I'm general against leghorns, they just look weak and would make great prey for anything, so we skipped those. We went with an sex link, but black this time. I'm hoping she turns out to not be such a brat as Lily, but still produce good. We also got a Astrolorp, Walnut. They are known to be excellent layers. Then I got another Americana, because I'm in love and a silver laced wyandotte, since they're gorgeous. Unfortunately, the Americana turned out to be a little boy =/. The others are laying well and have integrated into the flock well now.