Made Easter eggers

[brewmaster15]

We have been keeping Chickens for a while now...years and years actually. The last 6 or so years we started keeping roosters too as many of our neighbors also had them and we live on the rural side of town. We did a few experimental breedings wherewe had broody hens hatch eggs...which was okay.. but kind of random with the outcomes. This past year we decided to try and make easter eggers .. hens that lay blueish/greenish eggs. Our Rooster is a Blue Ameraucana , Named OZZY and is a really gentle bird...hes good looking to. Supposedly if you cross this to breeds that lay white eggs , you can get easter eggers. WE happened to have a few white leghorn hens which lay white eggs. I bought a $100 incubator on line and started collecting eggs. .. we hatched out two small batches this summer. that have now grown up... and yes we get light blue to light green eggs. We re -homed several roosters from the batch but opted to keep one, a truly beautiful roo named RED. The neat thing about this batch of easter eggers is one , they are large birds, and two they have beards!

Ozzy.. Our carrier of the Blue gene.

IMGP0115 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

Red and his flock.. we only have 4 of these hens... but plans to hatch out their eggs this summer and we also will cross Ozzy to some hens that we bought from ideal poultry this past fall.

IMGP0126 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0129 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0140 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0137 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0129 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0177 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0185 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0186 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

20230118_095703 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

[jwcarlson]

Pretty chickens! We have had a few with muffs over the years, I think they look hilarious.

This is currently the weirdest looking one we have...

20201031_194557.jpg.ede4a06049f0840d69f9a6b7c48b7557.jpg

Watching a hen hatch and raise her babies is probably the best part of the chicken hobby, I think. She sat these until they were like 8+ weeks old.

20190824_214127.jpg.a4aa56fad5253512256c9972bf72a9f7.jpg

[brewmaster15]

Pretty chickens! We have had a few with muffs over the years, I think they look hilarious.

This is currently the weirdest looking one we have...

20201031_194557.jpg.ede4a06049f0840d69f9a6b7c48b7557.jpg

Watching a hen hatch and raise her babies is probably the best part of the chicken hobby, I think. She sat these until they were like 8+ weeks old.

20190824_214127.jpg.a4aa56fad5253512256c9972bf72a9f7.jpg

Those are hillarious! I do love how the little ones poke out from the mothers feathers. The incubators are great for easy hatching but I love when we have a broody hen to do the work. We have a small coop set up that works great for a hen and chicks

al

[brewmaster15]

We also have a bunch of hens that are just starting to lay. In another week we will put Ozzy in with them and hopefully hatch some eggs this spring. These are my new girls from Ideal poultry.

IMGP0319 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0311 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0275 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0264 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0258 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0243 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0238 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0211 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0267 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0384 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0297 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

[brewmaster15]

I have one last set of pics here. I have a confession to make.. I do not name my Hens...most of the time we get a flock of all one kind and I could not name if I wanted to ... but we always name our roosters..usually after singers. Generally we find the roosters have more of a personality, maybe because they are always interacting with as the flocks intermediary and they notice the fastest. All that has changed. For the first time we have a hen that has literally imprinted on us. She is a blackstar hen and from day one she has been like pet. She responds to you, comes over when you call..not just for food..Has to see what you are doing, and be under your feet. She likes being picked up, practically flies into you. Just an all around spaz and nut case. ..so yes we named her..SPAZ

Spaz is a photo hound.. she probably has an instagram page and is a chicken idol.

IMGP0228 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0220 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0201 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0369 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0345 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

IMGP0339 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr


We have a policy with our birds.. you produce or else. I don't want anyone thinking I am crazy chicken person. I am not. We process and eat our birds here as well as raise them for their eggs. I have no qualms with that...but I will say this, I will most likely break my policy with Spaz, unless she turns into a nasty old hen.. Spaz will probably get the golden handshake and live on here past her eggs years.

Weird, I know but this is not your ordinary hen! lol.

alp

[jeep]

I've been thinking about getting some chickens for some time now. I have a pretty large lot but I'm also inside city limits and I'm limited to 3 chickens, although I've been looking into quiet chickens so I may be able to push that number up a bit. I know there are others in my area who have them but I rarely hear anything from them. Another house up the street has them because every time it storms hard about 6 black ones get out and roam the street. I just need to make sure the foxes don't break in, lol...

[brewmaster15]

I've been thinking about getting some chickens for some time now. I have a pretty large lot but I'm also inside city limits and I'm limited to 3 chickens, although I've been looking into quiet chickens so I may be able to push that number up a bit. I know there are others in my area who have them but I rarely hear anything from them. Another house up the street has them because every time it storms hard about 6 black ones get out and roam the street. I just need to make sure the foxes don't break in, lol...

Brian, Chicken owners use a different math than non chicken owners... Most of the time number of hens isnt an issue thats enforced... its number of or mere presence of a rooster thats an issue.

al

[jwcarlson]

We're limited to six hens. I have 10, had 11 until about a month ago when a possum got one.
All chickens (in my experience) will do an egg laying "song" and they do like to encourage each other when they get going. But the vast majority of the time it's soft clucking and scratching from hens. Our buff orpingtons are probably the quietest ones we have and also the sweetest personalities. The only other ones that we more quiet were blue egg layers called Lavendar Ameraucana. They were absolute dolls and I'd venture to say nearly silent. Though because of the configuration (keeping them at another location), I never really got to hear them during egg laying activities. We lost that place to keep chickens and I didn't have a place for them at home, so the ended up with my brother. His chickens are nasty mean and they killed one of them and the surviving one only has like half of it's head. It's never laid another egg, but it is alive.

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They're the lightest gray ones in that picture. Four total. The one at the trough was a cockerel. It is also my experience that chicken you incubate and "hand raise" are nicer and more calm. The hens that I have kept and let a hen raise are much louder and more rowdy. I have one easter egger. It's a great layer, but it's the only chicken I have ever had to go retrieve from 20' up in a neighbor's tree. They do all seem to calm down a bit with age, so she's at least a couple years old now and is more tolerant of me and respects the fences pretty well. I think everyone should have a few hens in their yard. They eat most food scraps and the drop out the best eggs you'll ever have.

Al is right about chicken math. Once you have one you might as well have 10. And if you have 10, then 25 isn't that big of a jump.

[jeep]

The city code states if you have less than 5 acres then you can have a maximum of 3 "chickens". But, it wouldn't be the first time I broke city code, lol...

[jwcarlson]

Yeah ours says six hens and you have to permit it, blah blah blah... Just make your own rules.

[brewmaster15]

Well one could argue that the code says "Hens". Technically they are called "pullets" until 1 year old... so I just read it as I can have x number of hens that are a year old or older.. but any number of pullets is fine!

I mean they dont lay forever so you usually have pullets growing up to replace old hens.

[Second Hand Pat]

There are some nice looking hens in this thread and I totally get eating the hens once the egg laying days are over. We had hens when Diana was small (my daughter). We also had horses, geese, bunnies, snakes etc, etc. There was a fancy development three lots over from my place and one of the guys building a house there told my neighbor that he hoped there wasn't any roosters around. I was so tempted to get a rooster lol. No rules here as I live in a rural settlement. Smallest lot is two acres here in the rural settlement.
Pat

[brewmaster15]

My young pullets are in now in production mode...

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Al

[jwcarlson]

Finally got our first egg of the year on Saturday. I noticed a little different "singing" than normal so I went out to check. Nothing Sunday though... and our hens are getting pretty old, so I expect they're going to start petering out. Some have got to be five years old.

[LizStreithorst]

These stories and pictures make my heart swell and then bleed. I lost all my hens except one to a fox. The one I still have saw her best buddy who was my favorite hen taken and came running in the house. I couldn't make her go outside for 2 weeks. Now, she's out during the day and spends most of her time with the cat outside the fishroom. At nightfall she comes to the front door and walks back and forth until I notice her and let her in. When I do, she heads straight for her cage and hops in.

I can never have chickens again because I want my animals to run free range. And I no longer have the strength to fence in a large enough area to fence them in nor can I afford the electric netting which wouldn't require strength.

I miss my chickens.