Thank you!

I have a few eggs in bator now I only expect 3+ to hatch had quite a few clears don’t think the roos are performing or more likely the girls who are older and some bigger don’t like them :).

A link to some pic see the chick Tiara on page one grown on page two I have one of her eggs in bator and its developing, I think it going to be half bantam that should be cute :).

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v246/bethhook/?start=0

Beth in Massachusetts if you live near come visit :).

Re: livestock - right now we have chickens, ducks, angora bunnies, cats and the dogs. We had turkeys last year, and will have them again this year, and this year I plan to keep them over. I too have been contemplating Guineas, because of the tick situation. And we used to have geese - and I’m debating pilgrim geese. Oh, and bees.

The goats come in July, and my friend Elaine is talking about pasturing some of her sheep up on my pasture, and I’m thinking of at least buying a lamb to butcher at the end of the season, and maybe some older ewes….

Oh, the possibilities!

Sharon

Outside of the growing season, you have to give them hay during the season(s) when the grass isn’t growing. Up here in upstate NY, we have them on pasture from mid-April to Halloween.

That being said, they are wonderful - we have about 3 acres for them and the noises are pretty low key. Except at breakfast time

Many years ago, we raised large numbers of breeders in a cage-free setting (indoors, but with free run of the different enclosed rooms in the barn). The largest number that we had at one time was about 3,500 on two floors of the barn.

Not that long ago, after more than 30 years with no chickens on the farm, my father decided to start raising chickens again for local sale of the eggs. He started with 50 chickens (about 3 of which were roosters). Shortly after that, a cousin gave him six more (there is nothing quite like the sound of an adolescent rooster trying to crow). Not too long after that, he increased the numbers again so that he had 170 chickens (about 6 roosters) in two rooms of the barn — I was involved in moving an interior wall to expand one of the rooms so that the chickens wouldn’t be too crowded. That number has been reduced slightly through natural attrition.

He hasn’t gotten the eggs certified as organic, because the grain that he feeds them isn’t certified as organic, but a number of people are happy enough that they’re locally produced.

I’ve threatened to repair one of the old chicken coops on the farm so that it can be used for the chickens again (he’s been using it to store firewood), including a yard for them to scratch around in. We’ll see how that goes this summer, I think.

But yes: chickens! Eggs! Yum!

(And really, Sharon, tell your relations to start buying pullets! They are not that much more money….)

What I would really, really like to do is get chicks from one of the local flocks or from feral chickens out in farm country. Long time ago we had friends who were burned out of their house and moved to town, but there were still chicken escapees living and raising chicks in a hollow tree, two winters later. *Those* are useful chicken genes. And we used to have alley-neighbors whose chickens spent most days in a tree overlooking the alley. They *clearly* could have left the fenced yard but didn’t, and also clearly were coping just fine with cats & other critters.

Minneapolis has an interesting statute: you have to get the written permission of a certain percentage of the people who live within 200 yards of your property line at the time you apply for your chicken permit.

And for Nigerian Dwarf goats-you can’t just have one-it will be lonely. But they’re small-mine are knee-high, smaller than my big dog. So they look more pet like/less livestock-ish. Just make sure they come from a quiet line of goats. I thought my first two goats were noisy-then I got the screaming sisters. Wow.