I gave away eleven roosters and sold two hens and three chicks  this past weekend.  Now, I am looking at my chickens and trying to decide if I want to sell anymore.  Some are older and no longer laying so they have to stay.  The 6 month old hens are the ones that I feel more comfortable selling.  I make sure I see the hen on the nest to verify she is a laying hen before I sell her.  That usually happens accidentally because I do not spend all my time out there checking to see who is laying.  When I see a much smaller egg in the nest, I know someone new is laying.  I actually found an egg one time from a Silkie that was about the size of a small marble.  Every once in awhile I use to find an egg that didn’t have the hard shell on the outside.  It just had the membrane on the outside and it was pretty tough but the egg was all wiggly.

I guess I could keep them all.  After all, I have buyers for my eggs and that gives me at least $40 toward the purchase of feed.  I probably spend more like 80.  I only get 16-18 eggs a day because:

I have 16 chicks that under 6 weeks and another group of about 18 that are about 3 or 4 months old.  One other group of about 14 should start start laying any time now.  Then I have about 10 that are not laying…too old.  And of course, there are the males which I would say is approximately 15.    So that leaves about 35 hens that could be laying.

I don’t sell the Silkie eggs because they are so small.  I use them for our consumption.  BTW, don’t make hard boiled eggs out of fresh eggs.  The shell is so difficult to get off.  I put some aside for about three weeks that I will boil.  Obviously, the egg on the right is the Silkie egg.

I read an article on line that said the eggs you get in the grocery store are sometimes 2 months old.  It said the farmer had 30 days to get the eggs to the wholesaler and the wholesaler had 30 days to get the eggs to the grocery store.   I wish I could remember where I read that so I could quote it to you.   Guess that’s why you can peel  the shell off pretty easily because they aren’t that fresh.

Did you know you can tell if an egg is spoiled by putting it in a bowl of water?  If it floats, it is spoiled.

I think I won’t sell anymore chickens for awhile.  If I look on Craigslist and someone wants something that I have, then I will respond to the email.  For instance, I have more white Silkies than anything now….I think.  So I would be willing to sell a few of them.   First I have to know if they are hens or roosters though so I need to wait a little longer until one either crows or tries to mate.

I do have one more Silkie hen sitting on six or seven eggs and she is due to start hatching on the 21st.  I so want some more buff colored Silkies and none of the eggs have hatched.  Darn it.

It is suppose to be my plan to breed the Silkies and sell them.  I still need to figure out a chicken yard plan to separate each color with one male and a couple of hens.   I bought straight run chicks from Leah and fortunately, I picked out just one male that is black and one male that is dark blue.  Then I have a light blue rooster but all the other light blue chicks were killed off by the chicken hawk before I could get my yard closed in.    So I need to purchase a couple of light blue hens.  I have plenty of white and a few buffs.  I am pretty sure all four of my Splash are females.     See below.

These black, grey and white chickens are Splash Silkies.  You can actually see three in the picture with one lurking in the doorway.   They are all about the same size so I do not suspect any of them are roosters YET.  I have been wrong more than once though.

These are a few of my white Silkies trying to get away from the Florida sun.   Off hand, I would say I must have about 15 of them.  It is amazing that they can stay so white all the time.  I recently put three smaller ones into this group and one of them must be a rooster because he was only in there about five minutes before he was trying to establish that he wanted to be on the top of the pecking order.  He was pecking at a chicken twice his size.  It was so funny to watch.  I separated him for half a day just because he was being so mean to the small ones.  That “time-out” seems to have done the trick.  He is now use to his new environment and not causing havoc.

Over the years, I have met some really nice people who own chickens or want to own chickens.  I have visited other people’s chicken yards and gotten lots of good ideas for my own yards.

It is also amazing how much information chicken people are willing to share, too.  Leah took time out of her busy life to explain to me how she uses three incubators to hatch and sell baby chicks as straight run.  She seems like she is definitely making a few bucks on her hobby.

Today, I met a nice gentleman who came and picked up my 11 roosters that I needed to remove from my property.  I was afraid to ask him what he was going to do with the roosters.  I always fear they are going to eat them.  But he has five acres and only 20 chickens and looking to put more on his property.

I showed him the green and blue eggs from the Americuanas and he may come back for a few hens, too.  And I don’t know how any one can resist the Silkies.  Their fluffy bodies of fur and sweet dispositions.  And they don’t run fast so they are easy to catch and hold.

At noon, I have another lady coming over to purchase a couple of hens.  She sounds real nice, too.  I forgot and let the hens out to free range so I am going to need to get them back into their chicken yards when she gets here.   I have spoken with her on the phone and shared some of my knowledge about chickens.   It is fun to show off my chickens, too.

Buying and selling chickens is a good way to meet new people and enjoy your shared hobby.  Again, Craigslist is always helpful.  I try not to allow any one at my property without another person with me.  You know there are a lot of crazy people out there so you could put be putting yourself in harms way.  Though everyone I have met so far has been really nice, I don’t want to take a chance.

I spoke with a lady today who is wanting a few hens and I realized there are a few things I could share about keeping your chickens in the pen/yard.

First, clip one side of the chicken’s wing feathers.  This throws the chicken off balance when they try to fly over the fence.

I had a couple chickens that wanted to perch in the small trees on the edge of the fenced-in yard instead of the house on the perches.  Once the chicken is perched (ready for bedtime and dark), they are fairly easy to grab by the legs.  I grab the chicken and then place it on the perch in the house.  It usually takes 3 or 4 nights and the chicken then understands the whole perching in the house idea.

Also, I have a net on a 8 ft pole…looks like something a fisherman would use to pull his fish into the boat…that I use to catch the chickens if I don’t want to wait until dusk when they perch.  Occasionally, someone wants to come buy a couple chickens and I don’t know which ones they will pick so the net is a great help.

Remember, if your chickens don’t return to the house or get out during the day, just wait until dark and watch where they are perching so you can catch them.

Another thing, if you keep the chickens confined in the fenced-in yard or pen for a couple weeks, then you can let them out and they will return to their yard as long as you leave the door open for them to get back in.

I use a milk crate with hay in it for a nest for the hens to lay.  Then of course you need food and water.  Scratch has seeds and is a good general feed but if you want eggs on a regular basis, be sure and buy egg laying mash.  It comes in pellets or crumbles.  If you have smaller chickens, you might buy the crumbles.  The pellets are larger.  Crumbles look like large pieces of dirt.

There also needs to be a house of some kind (see my previous post about building a chicken house for 36 bucks).  During the summer I don’t have any problem with leaving the chickens to come and go in the yard and house.  But, during the winter when food is harder to find for wild animals, you need to close your chickens in to avoid them being an animal’s meal.

And by all means, don’t forget a perch for the chicken.  If you have an old rake or hoe handle that has broken off, you could use it to make a perch.  I usually buy my perches if I am building an 8 ft long house.  Go to Home Depot or Lowes and look in the wood/lumber area.  You will find large dowels.  Basically, it looks like a wooden round pole that you would see inside a closet.  I think it is a a dollar plus per foot and you can have them cut it whatever size you want.  Since I have a hole on each side of my house for the pole to go thru, I always add another foot to the length of the pole (9 ft pole for an 8 ft house).

If you want a quick and easy chicken yard, you can purchase a 10×10 dog pen (about $250) made of chain link fencing.  You will need to put a tarp across the top to keep the rain and sun off the yard.  You can also move the pen, too.  A 10×10 area is 100 square feet and you should have (4 sq ft) 16 feet for each chicken if it is a larger adult.  So, 16 into 100 is 6.25 so you can have 6 chickens in the yard.  If you have smaller breed chickens you can go with 3 square feet each (9 feet)…bantam type chickens.. so that would be 9 into 100 which means you could have 11 chickens in the same 10×10 yard.

It is important not to overcrowd your chickens for many reasons.  They will fight more in small areas.  I read you should never have more than 30 chickens in a chicken yard even if it is large enough to hold more.  They have a pecking order.

For sanitary reasons, you don’t want to overcrowd either.   I rake out my houses frequently.   I collect the poop and put it in feed bags.  You can actually sell it but I usually spread it on my two acres where the soil doesn’t look like it is producing good grass.  I also have a friend in town that I give some to every year when she is preparing her garden for the coming year’s crop.   If you have a compost bin, you can throw some in there, too.

If my chickens are out on my two acres instead of in their yard, I grab a couple slices of bread and call them and throw the small bite size pieces of bread into the yard I want them to go into.  Works like a charm.

I would also suggest that you call your chickens when you are going to feed them.  It makes them come to you.  I just say, chickie, chickie, chickie and they know I have food for them.  Even if they are in their yard when I feed them, I call out to them.  Chickens are certainly creatures of habit and I have given them a habit that helps me.  I look like the “Piped Piper of Hamlin” when they all follow me.

Today I had someone request that I put more pictures on my blog.  So I thought I would introduce you to some of my chickens.

So I will start at the beginning.  These are some of my eggs that my chickens lay.   The tiny egg up top on the right is  one of the first eggs Pex laid.  Pex was named by my grand daughter.This is a two week old Americuana baby chick.

This is a Silkie baby  chick that is less than a week old.  I took this picture with the coffee cup so you can get a better idea how small it is.

This is my favorite baby in the whole world.  My second grand daughter who was born Jan 8, 2011.   Ain’t she cute?

This is Mr. Henny Penny.  He is a Patridge Silkie and the first Silkie we purchased.  Mrs. Henny Penny was killed by a chicken hawk while protecting her baby chicks.   Mr. Henny Penny has two buff colored hens in his pen in order to guarantee buff colored chicks.  At least we hope we get buff.  Not sure there are guarantees when it comes to chickens.

These are my four adult white Silkies.   The back one and the middle front one are bearded Silkies.    The one on the left one is the rooster and the one on the right is a hen, both non-bearded.  I also have four white babies about two months old plus three whites that are about one month old.

This is my Silkie chicken yard.  The grey and white colored ones are called Splash Silkies.  The one in the middle of the pictures is a Patridge Silkie (that has a gold colored neck).  We call her Trouble because she was always getting out of her yard.

This is an Americuana/Silkie mix hen.  She has the speckled coloring of the Americuana but she is small and with feathered legs like the Silkies.  I have about 9 of these mixed chickens and I think they are really pretty.

These are a couple of my Patridge Silkie roosters.  Both of them were hatched out on our property.  I have too many roosters actually but I just can’t seem to allow them to be sold.   Silkie roosters don’t fight with each other like other kinds of chickens.  If they are raised together, they seem to get along fine.  I have about six of them and they are in a separate yard.

I have another chicken yard where my brown egg laying chickens are kept.  This is my rooster, Barred Rock mostly.  You can see the black and white hen on the right behind him and then a hen with a black with a gold colored neck.  Still can’t figure out how she ended up that color.  There are about 14 chickens in that yard.  I recently hatched out some of my brown eggs because I realized my hens were getting old and dying off.

This one of my Americuana chickens.  They lay either green, blue or pink eggs.  Mine lay green mostly but some lay a pale blue.  One lays an olive green egg.  I was surprised when one of the chicks hatched out of a green was a white Americuana.  Strange.This is a good picture because you can see the different colors of the Silkie chickens.  The chicken in the middle of the yard is a  greyish white Silkie but they are considered  Light Blue.  Then you can see some Black Silkies, too.  The ones that are dark grey are considered Dark Blue.   You can also see the yard is divided so the younger ones are together.  They will go out into the larger yard once they are about 5 months old.

These are are two chicken sitters…lol.  Their yard is very close to our chicken yard so if we hear a lot of barking at night, I get up to check on my chickens.  I hate when there is a full moon because they bark a lot.  Cassie is the black and white dog, part Border Collie and Australian Shepherd.  My daughter, Bonnie helped me pick her out and she has been a joy.  I got her for my birthday when I turned 50, and she is almost 12 now.  Olivia is the Hound dog that Bonnie gave me for Christmas one year and is about 7 years old.  Her sister, Chloe passed away just a few months ago and I miss her so much.  She was a bouncy, happy dog.

I hope you enjoy my pictures, Michael, Dan, and Vince.