Spring Chicken Order

                On our snow day Michael and I sat around talking about what we need to do to get ready for spring/summer and some of our garden and animal goals.  One thing we have spent a lot of time debating is what chickens to add to our flock.  We went through the catalog and each marked the breeds we wanted.  We then combined our lists and found out that we selected 18 breeds.  That is a little much considering we already have about 30 chickens at home!  We worked to narrow down our list and finally made our order yesterday.  Maybe making the order after snow-ritas (see “snow day” post below) wasn’t the best idea.  We sort of threw the narrowed down list out the window and ended up ordering A LOT of chickens.  We ended up with about 60 on our order.  There are still 3 breeds that weren’t available for the delivery date we wanted so we will still be making another order.  My goodness we are going to have a lot of chickens! 

                When deciding on which ones we wanted to order we used some strategy.  I am pretty darn crazy about spreadsheets, in fact, I love them.  I assembled a sheet that broke down the breeds into categories.  This allowed us to have a good overview of what our overall flock will be like.  Our categories are: ornamental, layers and meat birds.  Our ornamental list is probably the most fun.  We won’t rely on them to lay eggs and may have to keep them separate from our established group due to the picking order, etc.  We picked three kinds of bantams and a few varieties of top-hatters in addition to some that are just crazy looking.  They will have no major purpose except being fun to watch!  For the layers I ordered a lot more araucanas because they lay the beautiful green/blue eggs and I am down to one layer in my current flock.  I want to increase my colored egg production so this will aide in that.  We also selected some other hardy varieties that will be consistent layers.  As far as the meat group I don’t believe that there is much explanation needed there.  We also selected a few breeds of ducks which I am excited about because I have never had ducks before.  We have selected some that will be grown for food and some that are good layers/setters.  I can’t wait!

                The worst part about ordering was that I got all excited to get them and see what they will look like but they won’t arrive in the mail until the last week of April! I am just not sure how I will ever wait that long!  I have no choice but to wait so this will be a great practice in patience, and also give me time to build a bigger coop and run because I am going to need it!