Monday, November 7, 2011

New Chickens - New Plans

Since we got our first chickens in June 2011, we've added even more.  The first of September we got 8 new chicks: 4 Araucanas, 2 Easter Eggers, 1 Welsummer and 1 Light Brown Leghorn.  Then I decided I wanted to try hatching.  I acquired eggs from a nearby breeder, shipped eggs from two different breeders on eBay and shipped eggs from a hatchery.  Out of 23 eggs, we had 15 hatch around the first of October:  2 Light Brown Leghorns, 5 Welsummers, 1 Gold Laced Wyandotte, 1 Barred Rock, 2 Blue Rocks, 2 Rhode Island Red, 1 Rhode Island Red/New Hampshire Red, and 1 Easter Egger.

That gives us a total of 30 chickens.  Once the most recent two flocks grow a little more and we figure out which ones are boys and which ones are girls, we will re-home most of the roosters - keeping only the ones we want to breed.

We will work on developing the following breeds:  Araucana, Swedish Flower Hen, Chocolate Orpingtons.  We may add Light Brown Leghorns, too, in order to have a full range of egg colors. Our emphasis, for at least the beginning, will be on Araucanas and Chocolate Orpingtons.