Chickens!

Current Inventory of Chickens - 18 hens / 1 rooster

Chicken Math is fuzzy, below is a history (updated January 10, 2021)

• 6 black sex link + 2 not pictured (from Feb 2018, March 2018, March 2020 )

• 5 brown / red hens (March 2020)

• 1 buff orpington (Feb 2018)

• 1 white frizzle (June 2018)

• 1 green queen (March 2020)

• 1 barred rock (March 2020)

• 1 white leghorn (March 2020)

• 1 Polish rooster (July 2020)

January 2021: They have started laying eggs! We collected 14 eggs one fine day in early January! It is interesting that the hens are laying now. Was it getting the numbers down in the chicken coop at night? Or maybe it is the ROOSTER! Funky Elvis (rooster) has matured and now crows non-stop. And plays “leap-frog” with our hens. Perhaps this stimulated the egg laying? A bit unpleasant to watch. Nature is harsh.

December 2020: Our hens that hatched March 1st should be laying. We should be getting about a dozen eggs each day. We are getting maybe 1 egg each day. One theory is the chickens are too crowded in the coop at night - 21 chickens in a coop meant to hold about 16 chickens might be stressing them out. Stressed out chickens won’t lay eggs.

So… I gave away 2 hens to a sweet friend who is trying to rebuild her flock. It was 2 of the brown hens that hatched March 1, 2020. At least the intention was to give away 2 young ones from the March 1st hatching. It was definitely 2 brown ones, but we still had one brown one from our barnyard mix. This is getting hard to keep track of! At any rate - we now have 18 hens + 1 rooster.

July 2020: During summer camp, I was talking to one of the dads and he mentioned he had 2 roosters to “donate” to us. The dad enjoys ordering interesting and rare breeds of chickens, but they live in a subdivision where they can get away with having hens, but not roosters. I was hesitant - but the next day, Funky & Hey-Hey arrived. Funky is a polish rooster, an ornamental breed. And Hey-Hey is a “Turkin”, an interesting looking breed that has a “naked’ neck. By October, Hey-Hey was being too aggressive, so he went to live in downtown Oviedo with the brotherhood of other unruly solo roosters.

March 2020: On a fun day, I ordered 15 baby chicks from Meyer Hatchery. They sent the 15 +1 (they included an extra for the chicken farmer to either donate the eggs or the meat). We lost 4 of them, and 1 turned out to be a rooster. We gave the rooster to my friend at Green Acres Farm, but her hens were serious about bossing him around, and he actually didn’t survive his first 48 hours with those girls. The remaining 11 include: 1 white leg horn, 1 green queen (she is supposed to lay olive green eggs), 1 barred rock (black and white stripe), 2 black ones and 6 hens of varying brown-ish red-ish shade. So with the 9 surviving from our previous adventures + 11 hens we now have 20 hens that should be laying eggs. Lots and lots of eggs. Where are all our eggs?

2019 & 2020: We managed to keep these 9 hens alive for all of 2019 and 2020!

June 4, 2018: 5 baby chicks, a straight run barnyard mix hatched from Green Acres Farm. 2 roosters grew up, turned into mean ol guys, and were promptly donated. 1 hen was mistakenly given away. so 2 remain, 1 is our frazzle hen. She is hilarious. She looks like a frizzle hen so we named her frazzle, because our cleverness exceeds no bounds. The other is a brown hen, she is pictured sitting on the hay box below.

March 8, 2018: 5 black sex links hatched from Green Acres Farm of Oviedo. We still have all 5 of these hens.

In the beginning…

Feb 2018 - 8 hens given to us by our friend Diana. 1 rooster donated (Goldie was his name, and a pizza place adopted him and named him Willy,) 3 hens died (1 of them ate a rock, 2 were taken by predators) and 1 slacker non-laying hen was given to Green Acres. We have 2 remaining - 1 yellow buff orpington and 1 black sex link.