It’s great! I can’t say enough positive things about having a tiny flock of chickens. The girls love them and our 21mo can identify wings and beaks and crops. So far, they’ve been very quiet; the birds that come to our feeder are louder. We lucked out with four little hens who love to be held and will just snuggle up with you which is nice.
They’re still too little to lay eggs; they’ll most likely start when they’re 4-5 months old and even then, the first few eggs are typically pretty ugly. But both Flora (the black one) and Fauna (the brown one) are from heirloom laying stock, which means that they’ll lay about 300 eggs a year per hen for awhile. Foo Foo is bantam, so her eggs will always be very small (which you’d expect since her top weight will be about 2 lbs). They seem to be making the transition to outside fairly well and after a few more days of accustoming them to their enclosed run and coop, I’ll probably test out our extended run to see if they can escape. Luckily, chickens roost in the same place every night once they get used to it, so we’ll just let them out near dusk and once the sun goes down, they’ll come home to roost regardless of where they might escape to. They also really like us, so it’s pretty easy to pick ’em up. 🙂
Alasdair
Finally !
Brendan has indeed found a Becky-approved (and societally-acceptable) way that he can pick up chicks !
So how is the eggsperiment going, so far ?
It’s great! I can’t say enough positive things about having a tiny flock of chickens. The girls love them and our 21mo can identify wings and beaks and crops. So far, they’ve been very quiet; the birds that come to our feeder are louder. We lucked out with four little hens who love to be held and will just snuggle up with you which is nice.
They’re still too little to lay eggs; they’ll most likely start when they’re 4-5 months old and even then, the first few eggs are typically pretty ugly. But both Flora (the black one) and Fauna (the brown one) are from heirloom laying stock, which means that they’ll lay about 300 eggs a year per hen for awhile. Foo Foo is bantam, so her eggs will always be very small (which you’d expect since her top weight will be about 2 lbs). They seem to be making the transition to outside fairly well and after a few more days of accustoming them to their enclosed run and coop, I’ll probably test out our extended run to see if they can escape. Luckily, chickens roost in the same place every night once they get used to it, so we’ll just let them out near dusk and once the sun goes down, they’ll come home to roost regardless of where they might escape to. They also really like us, so it’s pretty easy to pick ’em up. 🙂
Finally !
Brendan has indeed found a Becky-approved (and societally-acceptable) way that he can pick up chicks !
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