Our 5 girls were admirable producers. I fed them regular laying pellets, obtained at great cost from the only feed store in our suburban town. They also got every imaginable table scrap, except chicken. (That just grosses me out.)
We got 3-5 eggs daily for the first year, didn't even lose time for molting. Oprah, Uma, Ruby, Diamond and Yetta were friendly enough, but the two RIR were somewhat aggressive to our toddler. Oprah, a barred rock, was the lap chicken of the group. We were lucky, and we were giving away 1-2 dozen eggs a week.
One afternoon I found Yetta, one of the RIR, dead. She was wedged between the fence and a rose bush. No sign of trauma, no obvious sign of disease, she was simply an ex-hen. We buried her beneath the apricot tree.
I expanded my knowledge of chickens by buying a bunch of chicken books and joining a bunch of Yahoo chicken groups. As the hens hit their second year, I knew their egg production would drop, so I posted them on Craiglist and promptly sold them for $20 each.
Our local feed store (highway robbery) had buff Orpington chicks for sale. I wanted 5, so of course I bought 12. We constructed a ridiculous brooder consisting of a red wagon with shavings in it and a dome of chicken wire over it. A clamp lamp with a 60-watt buld provided heat, and with a plastic quart feeder and waterer we were in business.
We weren't worried about drafts, for in our advanced wisdom we decided to raise the little darlings in the family room. What naive city-slickers we were. A dozen golden balls of fluff in a red wagon next to the couch. How much trouble could they be?
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