Actually, yes. Yes I do. Why? Two reasons… One, because I have too many roosters and not enough hens. The ideal ratio is one rooster for 10 hens. I have 9 hens and 2 roosters. It’s going ok, but I need to balance it out better because I don’t want my hens to be overworked. One of my chicken ladies is looking a little worrisome due to the missing feathers on her back. One of my roosters is a bit more aggressive than the other, so I need to provide more hens to take some of the heat off of her. Two, because I needed more eggs to sell. Lots of eggs! Once I started selling the eggs I do have, I couldn’t keep up with the demand. It got so bad I had to ban our household from eating eggs for several days so I could have enough to make up the dozens I had promised to paying customers. We had company at the time and Rickie was not pleased with me and my poor planning. This cannot happen again; therefore, I need a lot more hens. There are a few different ways to acquire more hens.
I could buy hens from someone else. People sell their chickens for several reasons, but I just don’t see it too much here where I live. Folks really don’t want to part with their hens (neither do I). I also don’t want to introduce potential illness to my flock – I have been very lucky in that regard.
Buying chickens from the farm store is another option. I like this option because I can get specific chicken breeds that are already sexed so I know I won’t be buying more roosters. I want to expand the color pallet of my eggs so I bought more chickie babies that make pretty colored eggs. Our Midnight Moran babies will eventually grow up to produce beautiful chocolate-colored eggs. I feel like the more vibrant color variety I have in my eggs, the more likely they are to sell, and the better likelihood I can sell them at a more profitable price.
I also have a dozen of my own chicken ladies eggs in an incubator. I have a friend who happily agreed to hatch my eggs for me. She has lots of chickens, lots of chicken experience, and lots of advice to give me whenever I call her in a panic because I saw a feather on the ground, or my chicken looked at me wrong, or whatever nonsense questions I might have at the moment. Yes, there is a strong likelihood that I will get a rooster or two out of incubating these eggs, but I will cross that bridge when I get there. I can sell the rooster, give him away or determine if he is still needed after I have rounded up all of these new chickens. I will have to do some chicken math to when the time comes.
BROOD
[bro͞od]
NOUN
a family of young animals, especially of a bird, produced at one hatching or birth:“a brood of chicks”
THEN after I bought new chicken babies and put eggs in an incubator, our little silkie decided she wanted to be a mommy and went all broody on me. Welp, now we have even more chickie babies on the horizon. his is my first experience with a broody chicken so I am happy to let this process play out and learn from it as much as I can. I am really excited to see how chickie mama (her name is Boots n’ Pants) takes care of her babies. If she is taking good care of them, then that means I don’t have to. Raising baby chicks is a whole other blog post, that will be coming soon, but I have my fingers crossed that she will do the right thing and raise them up right.
So, in all I have 6 baby chicks from the store that I am raising right now, Boots n Pants is sitting on 4 eggs, and we have 12 eggs in the hopper. But my dear friend strictly warned me, “Don’t count your chickens till they are hatched“. But I did. I can’t help myself. I did the chicken math – I should have plenty of chickens to lay lots of pretty colored eggs to sell to anyone who wants to buy fresh, local, naturally colored (and might I add…BEAUTIFUL) eggs.