The Girls are about 9 months old now, the Nuggets are fast approaching 3 months old.
So I call the hatchery to ask what they have available for Marans. The Family and I agree, we are done raising chicks in the house, too much mess, smell and work in our little space. With our current egg basket filled with cream, tan and green eggs as well as the hopeful promise that our like grey Easter Egger chick may be a blue egg layer, the addition of another, richly colored egg would be so fun. The breed second on my list would have to be the Olive Eggers.Īptly named as they are layers of olive green eggs. At the top of the list are the Black (French) copper MaransĪs they are layers of deep, rich, chocolate brown eggs. I already know the type of chicken I’d like to add, in fact, I have a list of breeds and color varieties within those breeds that I would like to one day add to our flock. Since we had to cull one hen, the Hubby said we can replace her. On that order, our plan to start with four chickens grew to six and then grew again until we were at eight. See, I am a mom, and as a mom I am always looking for new learning experiences for my kiddo, so I saw this as just that, a great new learning experience. It is such a neat experience.” I find a local hatchery and we head down on nothing more than a fact finding mission and return home with 2 Easter Egger chicks, for the sake of experiencing raising chicks. Then my mom tells me, “Oh you have got to raise some chicks. Then a friend of a friend was needing to re-home her flock of 6 laying hens. Definitely no more than 6, but 4 would be good. When the Family and I first talked about adding chickens to our menagerie I said 4 chickens should be the perfect amount to start with.
Then I went to another feed store and saw baby chicks….bought 8 of them! Re-homed 2 roosters, a hen died from being r***d by one of those roosters! 1 died from a neighbors dog attack, and one pullet “came up missing”.Chicken Math is a funny sort of math. 2 were DOA (not Meyer Hatchery, from a different place I will no longer order from) and 1 died the next day. One of the “pullets” was a “cockerel” so I ordered a replacement, but had to order the required shipment amount, so I added 5 more. The next spring I wanted hens that produce COLORFUL eggs, so I ordered 5 more. I started with 6 (because when you buy them from a feed store in KY you are REQUIRED to purchase at least 6). There is no exact rhyme or reason to chicken math, but that is part of its beauty! How has your flock grown in unexpected ways? Please share your own chicken math in the comments! 12 adolescent chicks (but they were a gift so they don’t actually count towards a total) = not knowing how many chickens I have.21 chicks (needed some more color in the egg basket) = 10 broilers.50 (ish) chickens + 12 sale chicks = too many brown eggs.32 chickens + 1 guard dog = 2 bantams (but bantams only equal ½ a chicken).First flock of 14 chickens + 6 chicks = 2 goats.Here are some examples of my own chicken math:
Throughout your chicken keeping adventures, your knowledge and experience will grow, and chances are very high that the quantity of your flock will also grow. Or maybe you planned to only have chickens but have mastered advanced chicken math and now have ducks, rabbits, and a cow! My personal theory on chicken math is not only are chickens a lot of fun to keep, they are relatively low maintenance, and do not take up much space, so it becomes very easy to say “what difference would a few more make?” Chicken math can be perpetuated in many different ways perhaps a broody hen hatched some eggs, you incubated eggs yourself, Meyer Hatchery had a sale, or you were gifted some birds. Perhaps you planned to have 6 birds but now somehow have 14, 22, 30. These little ladies spent the winter growing out in a greenhouse. They’re so little and cute at first, but then we realize that chicks grow fast and need more space.
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