 My dog Sadie and I |
 Kayaking with my sis in San Juan Islands, WA |
My name is Adele and I grew up in southern Missouri with my mom, dad, and two older sisters. When I was in 5th grade my best friend’s grandmother got chickens and I was introduced to the idea of keeping chickens as pets. I fell in love with being able to watch all of their different personalities and oddities. My best friend and I (still my best friend today!) used to run over to her grandmother’s and watch the chickens interact, talk to them, and pick them up. Over the next several months I went to convincing my dad we needed our own chickens. Luckily my dad has always been easily convinced of adventures, so he said yes. My friend gave us 4 bantam eggs and we purchased laying hen eggs from a nearby farmer. We incubated the eggs and 21 days later I watched my first chick hatching from the clear plastic window in the incubator.
We started out with that first flock hardly knowing anything. I read a lot of books on chickens from the library and we undertook the escapade. My first rooster was Sinco, a 5-toed rooster whose bantam size never stopped him from doing anything. All of the chickens got to be extremely tame. My dad and I would sit on benches made of 2x10s and buckets. The birds got so tame they would jump up on the bench right next to us and bump into us to be petted. They never minded being picked up or carried around for a while. From that point on we added to our flock, lost from our flock, and had whole new hatches. One major down point was when two stray dogs killed 30 birds in one swoop. I was in 6th grade at the time and it was very upsetting, to say the least.
When I moved away to go to college my dad slimmed back on the flock. This past summer we raised our numbers again to a staggering 70 chickens (some were meat birds) but after 50 meat birds were sold and some deaths due to my sister’s dog, we have 3 survivor hens currently. We just recently (June 2011) got 25 new day-old chicks in the mail and our adventure has begun again with our next batch. I hope this website helps you find the answers you are looking for!
Picture of me and my two older sisters when we were little, riding a horse on my grandparents farm. I'm the one squashed in the middle.