Our Feathered Family: Populating the coop

Last year saw an outbreak of avian influenza that resulted in the culling of 1.8 million birds, followed by another outbreak this year, and consequently a slowly recovering impact to egg production. It seems like this has encouraged many to consider alternative sources of eggs, by keeping backyard chickens. We have been working on our chicken coop project for quite some time now, only having recently finished, but we are now seeking chickens at a time when demand hasn't been much higher.

Chicken auction

This year I learned that poultry auctions are a thing. They are held every couple of months by a nearby poultry club, so we decided to take a look and get a feel for how they are run. We arrived just about at opening time, but already the place was buzzing (...clucking?) with people. In fact, it was somewhat cumbersome squeezing past people to examine the poultry up for auction.

Now that we were here, attending an auction without participating seemed unreasonable, so we registered for a bidding number. We managed to raise the bid on a few boxes, but ended up being outbid on all but a trio of unsexed black Araucanas. There was a risk that we would come home with three roosters, but if just one was female, it still seemed like a good deal.

Since we weren't exactly prepared to come home with chickens, on the way home we needed to pick up feed and bedding for them.

First tenants of the coop

It was a delight to finally put the coop to its intended use, after so much work to prepare it. They were a bit nervous to start off, but after a day or so, they started to gain some confidence.

It wasn't long after that we became pretty sure that only one of our new friends was female. Apparently, this is the beginning of the slippery slope that is chicken ownership.

Growing the flock

Now that we had a contact poultry farmer, it was very easy to add to our chicken collection. Perhaps a little too easy. A week later, we had four more (this time all female), which brought our feathered family up to seven. The new additions were light Sussex, cream Legbar, black copper Marans, and a Plymouth Rock.

At time of writing, none have been given a name. I'm sure they will let us know soon enough, what we should call them.