I asked each one of my littles what my current obsession would be and we all agreed…chickens! In this house, we are animal lovin’ fools. I must add, I was also born with a touch of farmer in me. So for years, having backyard chickens has crossed my mind. Every time I would bring it up, I was met with a resounding no. But this girl, she’s a persistent one! I guess I just wore them down until the answer was yes {actually, more like an I guess so}.
I spent months researching different breeds, narrowing down what ones I wanted and one day I just took the plunge and ordered them. I just jumped in blindly with both feet. I kinda roll like that sometimes. I think that might be a quality of mine that drives my Mama nuts.
The first chicken we got were ordered online and came through the mail. The postal worker had a bit of shock in her voice when she called and said you have a package here, and I think it’s chirping. The breeds I got first were golden laced wyandotte, buff orpington, buff brahma and cuckoo marans. Once they came, we decided we needed a few more. Off we went to a local farm and brought home a few black copper marans.
The next year I got the bright idea to hatch out my own. I mean, how fun would that be! So I borrowed a friends incubator and went to work. I’m so thankful I did. My favorite roo passed away suddenly, but I was able to collect a few eggs beforehand. I knew if I hatched them out, they would be his offspring. Out of my first batch, only one egg hatched. I thought he was super lonely, so I went to TSC and bought 3 bantams to keep him company in the brooder.
I wanted to try my hand at hatching out my own again and I still had a few breeds I wanted. It’s all about the egg basket looking pretty y’all. I found a listing on Ebay for hatching eggs that included the breeds we wanted. Once they came in the mail (and warmed up) I put them in the incubator. That hatch yielded six babies. Of course half of them were roo’s, totally my luck. We’ve since gotten rid of two of the roo’s, they were super aggressive and kept terrorizing my ladies.
We’re in the process of building a new coop. The current coop is an old camper, and it just doesn’t have the room we need. With the room we’ll have in the new coop and run, I have room to add a few to my flock. And with that, I have a dozen eggs in my incubator. I currently have this huge desire to have olive egger layers. With an olive egger roo and my black copper marans, I can hatch out my own.
If you have had a huge desire to get chickens, like I did, you can read a blog post I wrote last year about what I wish I had known before getting chickens.
