I
know it isn’t easy to get back up after you lose so many chickens. I had a
really hard time figuring out what I wanted to do. My daughter was completely devastated,
and I wasn’t doing too great either. However,
I know I really wanted to give it another shot. The person I received my eggs
from gave me a call and said he had a friend that lived 45 minutes away who was
selling day old chicks in a week. I thought about it and decided to give her a
call. It wasn’t the breed I was looking for, but it was at least some
chickens. I went ahead and called her up
and secured five babies to join our family starting the first week of May. This
would give us enough time to grieve our lost chickens and prepare a new, safe
brooder for some day-old chickens. It gave me some more time to read a few more
books as well. To this day, I am still
reading and still researching as I do not feel I will ever have enough
information. I have to say that I have
found a forum that has saved my life. Backyardchickens.com has completely, 100%
walked me off the cliff I put myself on. Knowing that incubation isn’t as easy
as I thought it was, and most thought I was nuts for trying it when I haven’t
touched anything remotely close to farm animals in years, actually made me feel
better. If you are new to chickens and need help, I recommend this site, and I
have a permalink at the bottom of my blog. I am in now way affiliated with the
site, I just really find them extremely helpful and welcoming.
With that being said, I did mention early I have five chickens, what I didn't mention is I also have three more on the way. I originally wanted Lavender Orpingtons and I found some. I do have some coming in. I can only house a few where I live, 8 total. I will have the 5 Olive Eggers and 3 Lavender Orpingtons. I did create an Instagram page (Link below) to showcase them growing up, but this page is more of a dialog on their lives and what we are going through as a chicken family to make it happen. To share what it takes to raise chicken in a City, with neighbors.
With that being said, I did mention early I have five chickens, what I didn't mention is I also have three more on the way. I originally wanted Lavender Orpingtons and I found some. I do have some coming in. I can only house a few where I live, 8 total. I will have the 5 Olive Eggers and 3 Lavender Orpingtons. I did create an Instagram page (Link below) to showcase them growing up, but this page is more of a dialog on their lives and what we are going through as a chicken family to make it happen. To share what it takes to raise chicken in a City, with neighbors.
The other issue we will run into is the Olive Eggers are not
sexed. They are straight run. We will not know if they are Roos or Hens until a
bit later on. I have my suspicions that we may have two Roos. However, I can
hope that they are all hens, so we do not have to get rid of any of them. There
are experts who can “vent sex”. This can be dangerous if you do not know how to
do this. If you do this wrong you can damage the babies vent and basically, you
kill them. I do not recommend you vent sex unless you are a trained
professional. Other breeds you can feather wing sex, this would be done in Rhode
Island Red and New Hampshire Breeds, alas I don’t have those. Then I have also read that if you pick up a day-old
chick and place them on their back, if she kicks, it is a Roo, if she doesn’t,
it is a hen. So, you see, the best way to know if your hen is a hen, is to wait
to see if she Crows, or if she lays an egg. Please pray for me that they all lay eggs. I
would hate to have to give up one of my kiddos favorite chickens because it is
a Rooster and not a Hen.
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