Our Chicken Adventures Meet Our Chickens

So we have a guy helping some with the chickens now. His family has been breeding poultry for 9 generations. He's helping us with birds, feed and building materials for part ownership in what we're doing. My son Eldon also put his own money into our chicken project last year and owns his portion of it.

Anyway, his name is Kerby. He has a YouTube Channel, if you want ty check him out.

Our first set of breeders.

These guys are all that's left of the 72 chickens/chicks we had last year. They are almost exactly 1 year old now.

This is the rooster, he's mostly leghorn and not sure what other cross he might have.

This is the hen, she's mostly buff orpington and a little of something unknown.

Our second set of breeders.

These guys are Black Copper Maran.

They lay the darkest eggs of any chicken. They can be almost as dark as chocolate. They don't always lay this dark though. If they are stressed or old they tend to pay regular brown eggs.

The rooster we've also had and is one year old now.

The hens are from Kerby. He gave these to us about one month ago. I'm not sure their age.

Our Ayam Cemani

We have 2 breeding trios of the Ayam Cemani.

These are a real special breed. In Indonesia where they come from they are considered sacred and only used in ceremonies. They aren't raised for meat or eggs.

They are completely black. Eyes, beak, meat, organs, even the bones. This comes from fibromelanosis. A mutation that causes the genes to produce black through and through.

They don't produce many eggs and they are small so these are mostly just cool birds to own at this point. They were quite expensive when they first got America.

We had 3 roosters been this breed last year that were from green fire farms. Some of what the neighbor dog ate. These all came from Kerby.