Introductions!

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I figured I would start with some introductions to our little world! Rocky Hill Farm (or this one as I'm sure there are several around the magnificent USA) is located in McCalla, Alabama. We have 6 acres, owned by Brian and Lydia. I am Lydia, the talkative and awkward one of the family. I have a very thin brain to mouth filter and it gets me in trouble a lot. Hence the awkward. My DH adores it too... HA! We have two 11 years old kids, a boy and a girl, and quite a few animals and more incoming often. We are embarking into a new adventure of hatching, selling and showing chickens (like beauty pageant for chickens type showing). So while this blog will be mostly related to chickens and our adventures, I will be throwing in a story here and there about our other crazy animals.

Now for a list of the animals we currently have. We will start with the chickens of course!

Our "mixed flock" is made up of a couple of Red Stars, one Rhode Island Red and one other chicken that we hatched who came out yellow. She was hatched from a Rhode Island Red (RIR for short) hen bred with a RIR rooster. So I'm not sure why she came out all yellow. Her name is Banana, named by my sweet niece, Ava Love. The two Red Stars are named Caramel and Nutmeg, the Rhode Island Red is Clove. No, they aren't very original names but Brian wouldn't let me keep with the fruit theme. We have a couple of White Leghorns that are seven weeks old that will be introduced into this flock in a few weeks. This flock is only used for eggs that we eat or sell. We've had several other chickens over the past few years but they have either been processed (for eating obviously), given away or our local wildlife decided they'd make a good meal. We used to keep a RIR rooster named Chief with this flock. But we decided to get rid of him as he was just taking up space. He was a beautiful boy!

Banana - 1 week old

Another of our flock are Bielefelder chickens. This is a German breed developed in Bielefeld, Germany in the 70s. It was first brought to the United States by Greenfire Farms in 2011. They are a great duel purpose breed good for meat and eggs. Our first hatch only yielded three out of seven. We got one female and two males. The second hatch we got nine out of fourteen; three females and six males. Obviously our male to female ratio is a bit out of whack. Males are fairly difficult to sell by themselves so we are holding on to them until they grow a bit. As of today, the 13th of April, the first three are 7 weeks old and the other nine are two weeks old. They are still separated for now due to the huge difference in size. These suckers grow fast though! I'll be adding pictures as ours grow.

Image from Greenfire Farms

Our last flock is made up of four Mottled Bantam Cochins. I have three females and one frizzled male. They are beautiful. Bonnie and Clyde came together from a friend of ours, TwentythreeAcres Farm. The other two girls, Salt and Pepper (the names are still up in the air) came from a sweet lady in Leeds. This flock is more for looks. Although I have found that these lay as often as my egg laying flock. The eggs are very small but are as yummy as any other egg! We have had these four together for about three weeks. I will be putting their eggs in the incubator starting in the next couple of weeks.


Chad and Pepper

We currently have two goats. A female Fainting named Izzy and Chad the Nigerian Dwarf. Above is a picture of Chad with one of the Cochins. I always have some funny story involving the goats that I'll share along the way. They are awesome pets and we always have a lot of fun with them.

Izzy

In addition to the unconventional pets listed above, we have two dogs, a cat, ferret and fish. One of our dogs, Prixie, is 16 years old. I bought her in 1999 as a tiny, two pound puppy when I was still living at home with my parents. She has been through everything with me and is my little shadow following me every where I go while at home. She is now completely deaf and almost blind. But that dog will wake up from a dead sleep and run to the kitchen at the first smell of a cheeseburger. Remi is our one year old German Shorthaired Pointer. She is the light of my DH's eye. She is also our residential chicken poo cleaner.... as in she eats it off of the driveway. Yum. :/ Lastly, is our cat. Brownie is a beautiful Siamese. He was a rescue from Brian's work, where he was abandoned. We guesstimate he is about 3 years old. I personally am not a cat person. Brian loves cats. Brownie, who we thought was a girl and named by Brian, was supposed to have been his cat. But after he came to live with us he took up with me. It took him a long while to warm up to us. He would sit as far away as possible and stare at me for hours. Every few days he would move a little closer. As it goes now, if my rear is sitting down he is in my lap. He and Remi have a love-hate relationship. They wrestle often. Sometimes it gets rough and we have to break it up for fear of someone (Remi) losing an eye. They are very cute though.