Chicken Fever

My first blog will be just a little history. Mike and I moved into our first owned home together in November 2008, just before Thanksgiving. There was a dog pen in the back yard we didn't know what to do with. We joked about putting chickens in it. Then, Henry, our neighbor, got some Buff hens and a Buff rooster. So we started talking a little more seriously about it. Of course, neither of of knew a thing about "chickening". We started looking. Then Mike surprised me. One night about 9 p.m. I heard a truck pull up in our back yard. It was Henry. He had found some White Leghorns that were raised for Perdue. They were escapees, so we got a good deal on them. We had 14 hens and a Rhode Island Red rooster that he got the farmer to throw in for us. I started getting frustrated because we initially got them just for the eggs. It took 10 weeks before they started laying. Then Henry got some bitties and raised them. Just recently, we bought all of Henry's chickens from him. He bought his for his kids, but they had little interest in them. He hatched our first 2 in an incubator 5 weeks ago. One died after trying to escape at 2 weeks old. So we have on left, a small speckled rooster. We had 5 more hatch on
Sunday, and there seemed to be one more trying to hatch this morning. Our fingers are crossed. We now have 13 White Leghorn hens, 4 Buff hens, 10 Black Sex Link hens, a Rhode Island Red rooster, a Dominique rooster, a funny looking something (not sure if it's a rooster or hen. Looks like a rooster, but doesn't crow), a mixed bantam rooster and hen, and all our little bitties. It's pretty fun. But this is what I'll be blogging about. Our little chicken farm.