Found a hen in the street "Backyard Chicken"

[Irving]

I heard a bunch of screaming in the backyard. When I came to investigate, my wife and daughter informed me that one of the chickens just caught and killed a young finch. I've heard that chickens are murderous killers and I've been excited to see them in action, but I was more thinking worms, slugs, and mice. I can't even get them to eat a worm or slug so far. The ducks would eat anything that moved, or didn't move. Oh well.

[BladesNBarrels]

Oh, that just generates too many mental images!

[Irving]

I like that last one.

[Irving]

White are store bought, brown are my hen's eggs. The eggs are getting bigger. The one she laid today was nearly the same size as the while eggs. Still only one laying so far.


Look how dark and healthy and nutritious those yolks look!

[Irving]

I never made a post, but I had to get rid of the ducks because they both turned out to be male. As much as I liked the ducks, I'm not going to have males around. Ducks are very rapey.



See how he stands on her back and pins her head down? Male ducks will do that to all the ducks, whether they want it or not. They'll do the same thing to chickens. They can break their backs and injure them. In addition, apparently roosters don't have much of an "outie" penis, whereas ducks have a monster spiral penis, apparently. Hens aren't really equipped to take that monster duck penis, but the ducks don't care. So I really couldn't have two males fighting over who gets to rape the chickens all the time. Like most group animals, if you have a male and too few females, they'll get pretty beat up. So I had to get rid of them.

We were worried this cat would try to hunt the chickens, but they are too big now and she just likes hanging out. They don't seem to mind at all.

[Irving]

Eggs are getting bigger. Store bought, chicken, store bought. Pretty quick growth, it's only been a week and two days since she's been laying.

[sniper7]

Ill have to get on and update my chicken story as well. Need to figure out how to post images quicker from my phone or iPad though. Clicking the picture tag on this quick reply takes forever.

I’m still learning a lot, but have 14 chickens now. 5 silkies, 1 Americana, 7 Rhode Island reds and a black sex link.
Having 2 boys, they named several of them after transformers. Optimus prime and bumblebee are my two survivors from the first couple trials....we had 10 chicks killed at a couple days old thanks to the kids leaving the cover off and our small dog got to them. Then my bird dog got 3/5 of the older group I had that were about 8 weeks old.
Then we ordered more and picked up a couple spares at bomgaars.my wife wanted the silkies and they are special order only. One died in shipping, but the other 5 made it and are now pretty cool looking.

I built my own coop and run, will get pics up when I can. But yeah this chicken thing is pretty fun!

Irving, where do you get your pullets?

[Irving]

I got my original straight run batch of Rhode Island Reds and Jumbo Pekins from an outfit in Brighton called Camp Awesome.
I got my Easter Egger and Golden Laced Wyandotte from Big R (they told me they were a Barred Rock and a Speckled Sussex). Don't ever assume you're getting what is advertised from a tractor store like that.
I got my Colombian Rock, Barred Rock, and Silver Laced Wyandotte from a lady in Boulder that I found in the Colorado thread on Backyardchickens.com.

Have you trained your dogs to leave them alone? With respect to your hunting dog, are you concerned that it would interfere with his hunting training?

That Red Healer puppy can't resist chasing them around the yard 10 times a day. She'd not biting them though, so I try not to flip out over it too much.

That egg that I posted today was a double yolk by the way, but I didn't get a picture of it.

Fun fact, the world record for most yolks in a chicken egg is NINE.
The world record for most eggs layed by a hen in a year period is something like 371 eggs. The record for most eggs laid in one day is 7.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/art...g-facts.64568/

[sniper7]

Ok I’ll check them out if I’m in need of some more. Pullets would be nice just to shave some time off but the chicks are pretty easy.

My hunting dog is 9, I don’t think he will change and I don’t want to untrained him to go for birds. He knows they are part of the family now and stays away from the coop and isn’t scratching the wire and the door any more, but if he were out when they freerange on my property...it would get ugly. And since he is a bird dog I don’t think that instinct will go away, so they will just have to share time outside!

I’ve started getting eggs from the older two and they are each about 1 a day which is pretty cool. First egg was small but tasty, second egg was nice and big double yolk! We celebrated as a family and each had a little taste. Now we are already accumulating eggs. Once the younger ones start to lay it’s going to get crazy

[Irving]

Do silkies lay much? I haven't really looked into them. 10-14 eggs a day and you'll be giving them away to the neighbors, if not selling them. I've had friends offer to buy eggs from me before any of them were even laying.