When we first moved here we wanted to get some chickens so that we would have fresh eggs. Steve told a lady that he worked with and she gave us a mother and 4 babies when they hatched around this time last year. from those four babies only one survived. We then bought 5 chickens from a lady in Willmington. The five of them were aged between 1 and 2 (according to the lady we bought them from). These chickens were laying about an egg a day between the 5 of them and we weren't too happy with that. We asked Steve's parents to bring us 5 more from Adelaide so that we could get a good egg supply from them.
So to start of with we had one black chicken, her baby chicken and 5 bantams. (7).
Soon after we got the bantams, one disappeared. I was a bit worried that the dog and cat had killed her but we couldn't see any feather's around anywhere so I just assumed that this chicken had found greener pastures and taken off.
Boy was I wrong. This little chicken (the only one laying eggs from all of them) had taken off to hide because she was sick of us taking her fertile eggs.
About three weeks after she disappeared, Amelia was out in the backyard and came running in the house. She was shouting excitedly and I thought oh no, we have a snake in the back yard. She came in and said to Steve and I, we have baby chicks. I said we cannot have any baby chicks, we don't have a rooster. Steve went out with her anyway and our little chicken that had disappeared was sitting behind a fence with 5 baby chickens.
From those 5, one died so we ended up with two roosters and two chickens.
The two roosters and two baby chickens are now mature. One of the bantam's we had, never laid any eggs and continually sat in her little box. One day she got out and we saw 10 eggs that she was sitting on. We left her and when 4 eggs had hatched she took these babies and left the eggs. Our black chicken got in the box and sat on the eggs. She hatched another three babies. About two weeks after this one chicken came out of our shed with another 6 baby chicks. (we hadn't even noticed that she was in hiding because of all the chickens running around). The last one isn't a very good mother and doesn't really defend her babies the way the other chicken's have so now she only has three babies. I don't think a mother can take care of more than four (well they haven't been able to at our house anyway).
So, from the 5 original bantams we have 3 left. One brown one, one black and white one and one yellow one.
The yellow one had the first 4 babies. She had 2 roosters and 2 chickens. We chopped the head of one rooster to stop the roosters from fighting (and because one attacked Christopher). Fortunately Christopher wasn't too badly hurt but it scared me enough to say off with his head. (from this lot we have 3 chickens and one rooster)
The brown one has 3 yellow chicks. (another 4)
The black and white chicken has 4 baby chicks. (5 all together here)
The black one that the lady Steve works with has one grown chicken and 3 baby chicks. (another 5 here too).
Total chicken's/roosters from our bantams = 18.
We also have 4 Isa brown chickens that Steve's parents bought from Adelaide. Over all we have a total of 22 chickens/roosters.
Maybe we will have a dinner party at our house in 6 months and serve some chicken. Maybe we will keep them all and get lots and lots of eggs. I don't know what we will do but this should help out with our food bill a bit.
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3 comments:
Chicken stew with dumplings? mmmm... We had bantys when I was a kid (eons ago). I had a rooster named Shorty and my sister had one named Lucky, who wasn't so lucky as he ended up in the stew pot! She didn't have supper that night... you do have to be careful with banty roosters and children-they(roosters) are known to be agressive.
Therese, my oldest dd wants chickens so she's been doing some research for a few months. We only have a small yard so we'll only get a few chickens but we think it will be worth it---for the kids to have that experience as well as ease our grocery bill since we do consume a lot of eggs.
My daughter says Stars and Buff Orpingtons are friendly (but the Orpingtons are broody).
Michelle,
We just had a hot spell here and all the chickens stopped laying. I haven't bought eggs for about 6 months now and I needed some for our Easter cooking. I couldn't believe that one dozen eggs were over $3.00. If I wanted free range eggs they were nearly $5.00 a dozen.
Shirley,
I had heard that too about the bantams so I suppose if many of the baby chicks turn out to be roosters we will be eating lots of chicken dishes. Just as well everyone in our house likes chicken.
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