#easter-egger rooster

[thomas--bombadil]

An Easter-Egger rooster, psychedelically golden, and proud of it...

[superfluffychickens]

More good chicken noises, this time with the whole flock!

[angrybatart]

This fowl-tempered bird has a low probability rate of appearing, with a nasty peck. And a soft spot for bread. 🍞

Her battle theme would probably either be:

Or:

Actually more fitting. My sibling agrees.

[vellatra]

My beautiful boy <3

[boywizard]

i might get more chickens !! deciding between plymouth rocks, more andalusians or livornos, or play surprise chicken at the feedstore and take whatever's there

[evlonarts]

Apparently people really liked the chicken photos and that makes me happy because I love these little idiots a lot!! Here’s some more photos to enjoy of my little flock!

[woundedheartwithin]

So I got new chickens the other day, and they’re not fully feathered yet so they have to stay in the brooder coop for a couple more weeks before they can go in the big coop, and my small feeder fuckin broke??? So I had to buy a new one. In the meantime, I had a rubber bowl in there with them with their peep feed in it (which they opt to sleep in instead of under their heating plate). Well, they climb in it to eat cuz they’re still pretty small and can’t reach over the lip of the bowl, and naturally they end up pooping in there. Except for the little cuckoo maran, who was eating in their bowl and suddenly popped her little head up, peeped at me, hopped out of the bowl, pooped in the shavings, then hopped back in and started eating again

[berkshirebowls]

It’s that time of year, the #chicken horde is expanding. Mostly #easteregger #chicks like this little girl.

[kedreeva]

Hi! 😁 I might soon have the chance to have a garden and I've always wanted to have a few chickens, and I've started some online reasearch about keeping chickens but since you're an expert and I don't trust some of the online sources, do you have any tips for absolute beginners? 😅

I do! You can have a garden, or you can have chickens, but the two are diametrically opposed forces that do not coexist peacefully without fully enclosing one or the other. Chickens can and will obliterate gardens and landscaping if they have access to it, including absolutely destroying mulch patches by helping you spread it all over the yard.

I'll put the rest under a cut ^_^

When you acquire chickens, don't get them from a hatchery, get them from a small breeder you've looked into and spoken with about their actual birds. Hatcheries have poor quality animals, so while you may be getting a "black copper marans," they're not gonna necessarily look very nice, and they're almost certainly not going to lay that nice, deep chocolate marans are known for.

Vs straight from one of the bigger hatcheries pages, photos of their eggs:

You also are NOT going to get the breed qualities of any given breed except maybe some of the production breeds. For example, a Jersey Giant from a reputable breeder will get up to 10-13lbs, which is as big or bigger than my peafowl. Same with Brahmas and Cochins. Hatchery stock you will be lucky to see 6-8lbs, and people are OFTEN disappointed about this kind of thing. Silkies, as another example, can look WILDLY different from a hatchery vs a private breeder. A show quality silkie is a puffball:

Hatcheries also pull skeevy moves like calling easter eggers (mutts that lay blue, green, pink, brown, or white eggs) "americanas" hoping that you mistake it for "ameraucana" the pure breed that lays stark blue eggs. Then they charge you ameraucana prices (like, $25/chick) when they should be charging more like $3-5 a chick. They'll do things like call a marans/barred rock mix a "mystic marans" as if it's a new color morph of a marans chicken instead of a mixed breed mutt they invented to be able to sex their chicks at hatch easier. People get these guys expecting MARANS eggs, and they get tan barred rock eggs. Same can go for temperament and behaviors. You go anywhere that has a group of chicken owners and ask them what their favorite breed is, you will get a range of answers with reasons like "my X is so sweet" while the next person will go "mine's the devil" and if you ask, 9 times out of 10, it's hatchery stock birds. Well bred private breeders often have MUCH more stable temperaments.

vs hatchery stock

Getting from a private breeder also lets you get eggs, which can help you dodge a LOT of disease bullets. There's very little that transfers through the egg, strangely, and some of that is transferred on the surface of the eggs (like mycoplasma) so a quick santizing dip before incubation gets rid of that. I know that hatching them yourself is more of a hassle, but so is losing your flock to newcomers that came in with something entirely avoidable if you'd hatched instead. If your breeder is NPIP certified, they're getting tested for the major egg-traveling problem (pullorum) and a dip will take care of most anything else unless you're super SUPER unlucky.

Lastly on acquisitions, be prepared to get roosters. If you can't have roosters, be prepared to get them processed for yourself for food, or let the roosters go to food homes. Please please please please. There are so many, many excess roosters. They cannot all go to homes. The rooster to hen ratio in a flock is like 1:9. The rooster to hen ratio in hatching is nearly 1:1. Let someone make use of them. EVEN if you order from a hatchery, and order all pullets, they can make mistakes and send rooster babies. It's not a guarantee! Have a plan in advance! Mentally prepare yourself! Don't be one of Those People making posts in local groups about how you don't want/can't have this rooster but also no one else can eat it either. Chickens are a lot of things. Sometimes food is one of those things.

BEFORE actually acquiring the chickens, locate a vet that will see them. You are GOING to have an issue at some point in their lives, and that's not the time to start looking for a vet, that's the time to already have a vet on hand. In fact if you can support a yearly wellness check on at least one of the birds to test for communicable illnesses (like mycoplasma) and have a good relationship with your vet in advance, that's even better.

As for care, if you plan to contain the chickens, the minimum recommendation for a backyard coop and run varies wildly. For stress purposes, most chickens will find 4 feet of floor space per bird inside the coop adequate, accompanied by 10 square feet of space in a run per bird. Unlike peafowl, it doesn't matter how big the run is, the chickens will be turning the entire thing to bare soil, which is one of the reasons most people don't keep both in the same pens. I literally attempted to keep 2 standard chickens in a 1200 foot pen and they systematically went about destroying everything they could get to.

Most layer feeds are 16% protein; most layer feeds are also /production/ layer feeds, meant to feed production breeds in a space where they get NO other feed except this. If you plan to feed anything other than layer feed to them, like treats or whole foods or scratch grains, then you need to find a higher protein feed for them, because most treats are lower protein than layer feed. Avoid anything produced by Purina or Dumor (which is purina but TSC brand), except MAYBE the organic dumor 5-grain scratch grain, it's well-known as one of the worst quality fowl feeds out there. Check out your local mill and see if they have any options that are better than the big box farm stores. Kalmbach makes good feeds, as does Belstra.

Possibly counterintuitive, but stick with a smaller waterer over a larger waterer. You can keep a larger one around for if you go away for the weekend or something to make it easier on a sitter, but a smaller waterer like a 5-quart or gallon waterer will be easier to clean and make sure that you're giving fresh water more often, plus avoiding mosquitoes growing in it. Waterers can slime up really easily in the summer, so just be prepared to give it a quick swish clean every time you change the water out. Smaller waterers also make it easier to give them medication if you have something that goes in the water, especially since a lot of the water medications are "make fresh daily." Personally I don't bother with heated water bases anymore in the winter, I just have enough waterers to exchange them for a fresh one a couple times daily, while the old one thaws inside the back door on some plastic. The galvanized ones you have to use with the heated bases always got gross fast, with rust and discoloration and the stopper in the bottom always dried out and eventually cracked over the summer when we weren't using them.

Try to avoid straw bedding unless you REALLY trust the source. Straw is mostly for livestock, not poultry. It cannot catch the droppings of poultry the way shavings or sand or other beddings do, meaning the wet gunk drops to the floor under it and/or collects into grossness. It also molds easily, can carry in field parasites (since it's not treated the way shavings are often kiln fired before packaging), and breaks down into shards. I'm not saying you can't ever use it for any reason (I use it in some fashion, and have for over a decade, but not exclusively, and I trust my source, we've never gotten mites or anything, and I'm very careful about which bales I pick out), but if you have a choice, go for the wood substrates, or even for sand. A lot of people put sand in their runs because they can then rake it like kitty litter.

Look into what plants chickens can't have, and check your yard over thoroughly for them before adding chickens. Things like lilac bushes are toxic to them. Tomato and potato plants are nightshades so while they can have the fruits, the leaves and stems can be toxic. Stuff like that.

Lastly.... if anyone ever makes a claim about what something does for a chicken (example: diatomaceous earth, apple cider vinegar, pumpkin seeds, oregano, red pepper flakes, lavender, etc are all things I've seen people claim do all sorts of things from worming birds to curing respiratory infections), ask them for their source. If it's a blog post, ask them for a scientific article. If they can't provide it and you can't find one that backs up what they're saying, maybe reconsider the value of that particular advice. The thing is, the BIG production companies are VERY invested in finding cheap or organic or tricky ways to do WHATEVER it is (treat endo/ectoparasites, treat illness, make bigger or more eggs, change egg yolk color, etc), and they pour money into trying to figure out which old wives tales actually work and which ones don't. And if they haven't been able to prove it to a point where they'll spend money on it as a solution, then chances are REALLY GOOD that it's not a solution at all actually.

Things like how to clean coops, what feeds to get, what items to use for care, where to source birds, behavioral information etc, that's all stuff you can ask advice on in general public spaces. You'll still get a range of answers, and some of them will be garbage answers, but hardly any of them will do harm to your animals to do or not do. Like, for example, you can use a big waterer or a small waterer, as long as it's clean. You can vary coop and run size and still be fine. You don't have to feed exactly what someone else is feeding for your birds to be fine. You're probably going to try a few breeds before you find the one(s) you like best.

But when it comes to medical info or any kind of "treatment" type stuff? Consult a vet and/or at least look for scientific papers.

And lastly.... chicken math is Real, yo. However many chickens you think you want to get, plan on having the space for double that amount so you don't gotta rebuild anything when you ultimately decide wait, you need a couple more. The bigger space won't hurt them if you don't get more, but it'll be so much easier on you if you do ;)

[catermeow]

Day 2! I wanna poke at this design some more in the future, but I’m happy with it for now.

And as requested, chickens!

We have four of em, three hens and a rooster! Willow, the rooster, and Obsidian are both Easter Eggers, Chickpea is an Orpington, and The Second is a Cuckoo Maran.

Here’s them dustbathing! The orange one is Willow, the yellow (buff) one is Chickpea, the black one is Obsidian, and the black one with white bars in the back is The Second. They’re all sweethearts.

Willow is very polite, and very protective of the hens. If one of them stays in the coop while the rest are outside, he gets nervous and starts crowing to try to get the missing hen with the rest. Obsidian is a little bit grumpy, and she loves treats. Whenever she hears the treat bag being shaken, she comes running, which for a chicken means a very fast, very funny-looking waddle. Chickpea is probably the friendliest of the bunch, and she is very poofy, so she’s fun to pet. The Second is fairly skittish, and she’s usually at the back of the group, but she’s smart.

Chickpea and The Second were later additions to the flock, whereas we’ve had Willow and Obsidian since they were chicks. We got four chicks, and they were supposed to all be female, but we ended up with three roosters so we gave two of them, Tuna and Junior, away and adopted these two from the rescue/farm where Junior went. The Second’s full name is technically Junior The Second, because Junior was named by my brother and he wanted to keep that legacy.

Baby pictures :)

[chick-it-out]

do you have chickens of your own? :0

i used to! (cw: no more chickens)

in 2017, i got five female day-old chicks from a hatchery and they threw in a 6th (that's how i learned that when chicks are mailed, they may include extra male chicks because males have a slightly higher body temp, and more chicks = warmer box). my little flock was easter eggers. i wasn't aware of the health problems associated with hens who are bred to lay eggs, and the particularly poor quality of life that easter egger hens experience. but i love their soft little beards and their tiny little combs. there are bearded chickens out there with good health,, but mine were not. i made mistakes w/ their care and overlooked things like predators. i learned a lot through loving them. keeping chickens changes u spiritually i think that unironically. joy is ephemeral and life happens so fast but whatta joy!!

anyway tl;dr: hens did not live for many years. but my rooster Lion (who i didn't even expect!!) is still alive :) he lives with my sister-in-law's flock on their farm with a small flock of new hens. he will be 5 this year and i am so proud of him! he is the one in my profile pic, a-honkin' the horn 🎷🐓

[thomas--bombadil]

A new rooster joins the family. This one is a young Easter-Egger.

Hopefully, he will be as brave a protector of the flock, as our last rooster (who lost his life defending against a large predator).

[superfluffychickens]

Just some good chicken noises, from when I first re-introduced Zeke to his girls after his injury!

[leftminnow]

Gosh they're such chickens aren't they. About 4 month old light Brahma chickens, my partner things Burr (redder and bigger comb is a rooster) but I don't think so. Our bantam rooster has been crowing since mid April (same age) and easter egger men started crowing mid May (2 weeks younger) Burr is very calm and sweet, one of my easter eggers went after them, and they havent crowed yet, so I'm just thinking dominant hen.

[justsimplyspace]

I LOVE YOUR CHICKENS!!! I'm a big chicken lover too!! What breeds are they? Do they have names?

YEAHHH SO DO I <33 Ohh boy here we go...

Our head rooster is Shmuel, and he's a rhode island red brahma mix! Then we have his son, Santa, who's mom was an olive egger! Then we have Rocket, the swedish flower hen rooster!

We have Big Red and Mavis, the rhode island reds, Janet the easter egger, Helen and Athena the olive eggers, Three ISA browns we can't tell apart so they're just the ISA browns-- Then we have Mama Karen the black jersey giant, Wendy and Odette the silver laced wyandottes, Annie and Rat Bird the blue stars, and my favorite girl Pumpkin who we dont know the breed of-- We also have Dweeb and Goldie the buff orpingtons.

Then we have Mulberry and Morrow--the first two we hatched ourselves. And we also have Cheese and Crackers, who are identical, but Cheese is a barred rock and Crackers is Mama Karens and Shmuels daughter. We also have two unnamed DweebxShmuel babies that we can't tell apart so we call them the Dweeblings.

Finally, we have Corn, the bantam silkie rooster, and his bantam silkie hens: Batman, Fifi, and Beans. (we also have Rampage the drake, and Momo and Elon Muscovy the duck hens) All my beloved creatures <3

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

New rooster, free from a stranger who was moving & couldn't take him. He was delivered by his former owner and even came with a red hen who laid an egg on her very first day here (and most days since) so A+ deal really.

I haven't been able to get a pic that really shows his size, but him BIG, dwarfing all the hens and even our other rooster. Also he is beautiful; I hope he works out with the flock long term. We don't know what he is really, beyond that he hatched from a green egg, so there is Ameraucana/Easter Egger in him.

So far he's no trouble to us or the dogs, but upon release from introductory chicken jail he immediately set about stealing all the bitches from poor Maurice. There's been a bit of fighting between them, which I assume will settle down once they work out the new social order, but I've been sending Omie to break them up whenever I see it.

J named him Big Rico, so naturally his wife is now called Lola, even though she'll be indistinguishable from our other reds once her back feathers grow back in.