So earlier this spring I decided I would get a few day old chicks, 5 to be exact to raise for the fresh eggs. I have always had a love for simpler times and doing things myself rather than being so reliant on big business, corporate America, "The Man". or whatever you want to call it. Plus I have always wanted to raise chickens. I found a hatchery that would ship small order runs of chicks, and I placed my order. I mixed and matched 5 chicks, I ordered 2 Black Australorps, 1 Barred Rock, and 2 Golden Laced Wyandottes (which are the two I wanted most of all.
They all arrived as day old chicks on April 6th.
Of the 5 chicks, 1 of the Golden Laced Wyandottes died after 3 days, which, from what I hear is fairly common, and the other Wyandotte turned out to be a rooster. I figured out that he was a rooster a couple of weeks ago when I went to let them out of the coop and he was defiantly crowing at me. Unfortunately, for me I can't have a rooster in the village, but luckily for me a friend of mine has been raising chickens and lives in the country so he traded me a hen roughly the same age for my rooster. After all of that I now have 2 Black Australorps and 2 Barred Rocks, and hopefully in a month or two I'll have two more girls hatched from eggs fertilized by the rooster I traded away.
So now the girls are about 14-15 weeks now and I'm still waiting on eggs. Day after day I trudge out to their coop and check the nest boxes hoping to see that first delicious brown egg.
The wait continues, we'll see what tomorrow brings.
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