It’s hard to write a nice post about them because I don’t like them! They aren’t nice to me, they aren’t nice to each other. They don’t lay big eggs like my other red chickens did. They’re here and they’re laying an average size brown egg every day so for now . . they stay. I’m not making any promises about their future.
The Red Hens
It’s pretty obvious which ones are the mean red hens. The others are Iowa Blues. We now have three Iowa Blue hens and two Iowa Blue roosters. The hens aren’t laying yet. Depending on how well they lay, this may be one of the heritage breeds we keep. Not all heritage breeds do well in the terrible Texas heat and I don’t want to try to raise a breed that suffers through our summers. They’re too young to know this summer so I’ll watch them through the year and see what happens with them next summer. If they do ok, I’d definitely like to keep them. I love their history. Ours are the Birchens.
In this coop right now, there are 13 hens and 2 roosters. I’d eventually like to get at least 10 hens per rooster. We gave away our third rooster and so far, these two have not been fighting but if they do begin to fight, we’ll have to get rid of one of them.
Rebecca in SoCal says
Well, they look big and sturdy, like they could “throw their weight around.” Wish their egg-laying matched!