Peeps

Newest member of the family.
1 Cuckoo Moran, they lay a very dark brown egg.
2 Barred Plymouth Rocks.
Hope to add a couple of Americauna's too before these guys get too big.

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How many birds you have Carl? Is this your first time with raising chickens? My wife is trying to convince me to get a couple.

Nope, I raised them as a kid back up in PA.
We are allowed to keep up to 5 hens (no roosters) in Mobile. Right now, we have just these 3, hope to add 2 more next week.
Even with just 3 hens, it should be about 14-20 eggs/week when they get crankin', more than enough for a family of 4.
They are pretty easy to keep, there are a lot of backyard chicken sites on the web for advice. But for 3-5 hens, all you need is a small coop and about a 10'x10' pen. Most backyard keepers build an elevated 4'x4' coop with 2-3 laying boxes.
If you can let them roam free once they get older, even better.

Nice looking birds. Barred rocks are one of my favorite breeds and are big enough for the crock pot when they get past their prime. Speckled Sussex are the other ones I used to raise that had good personalities and were excellent dual purpose layers/meat birds. The hybridized production reds we used to have were great layers of big brown eggs but we're mean little things. Once you've had good fresh eggs the store-bought ones don't taste the same. I used to get a kick out of ordering day-old chicks online and picking them up at the post office in a box. One of these days I'll build another small chicken tractor and raise a few birds but the fishing has consumed all of the available funds this winter.

NO ROOSTERS!!! Now those liberal lesbians don't even want to let a chicken have a little romance.

If anyone is close to the stapelton area and wants some eggs let me know I put probably 6 or 7 dozen in the fridge this week been getting 1-2 dozen a day.Got brown ones green ones sometimes white , n double yolk every now n then.even got one big as a quarter the other day

I also used to raise chickens had game chickens and yard chickens as well.as for info some info some of you may already know when it comes to the egg laying area.alot of people think that chickens lay eggs according to the temperature but thats not true.they lay eggs according to the amount of daylight hours in a day.I do believe 10 hours of daylight or more is what is needed to kick them into laying,on some rare occasions some may lay in 9 hours of daylight(have also heard it was 14 but tried it on several of my hens and found 10 hours to work on most hens.so the point of this info is if you can get an extension cord to your laying coop with just a single light leaving it on so they get at least 10 hours of daylight( i always used 14 hours,as some of the hens were slower than others)the hens will lay year round.I do not reccommend 24 hours of light as it will exhaust the hens.

Would you need to have a full spectrum bulb, or would any old incandescent type work?

back when I tested this I used a regular incandescent 60 watt bulb.what I done was bought a droplight from the local car part store and took the shield off of it so the light would shine in all directions.

I used to put a light in the coop in winter, got eggs all winter. Just a single 40 watt bulb.

Sorry, I know this is a bit of an old thread but just looking for your guys opinion on Rhode Island Reds?

Thanks,
Brad