WHAT brought you to the Hobby, and what made you stay?

Ontario Chick · Post by **Ontario Chick** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:37 am

This was a very interesting thread on PSO and it would be nice to have it on PTO.......
This is a copy of mine....

Our first Chicken Coop was a re-purposed Kids play house, wit a run that we thought was brilliant, included a giant hemlock.
In the seventies you could still buy and sell livestock at ByWard MKT downtown Ottawa.
We proudly brought home a small flock a nondescript Bantams, possibly a cross of Jungle fowl and a Tasmanian devil.
The birds took one look at our perfect coop and hied it in to the giant hemlock.
That summer DH had to retrieve them from the hemlock every evening.
Those were the last Bantams we ever owned.
Looking back, I am a bit surprised our poultry adventure didn't stop right there.
Our next flock was from Freys Barred rocks and we were hooked.

Breeder of Wyandottes and Ameraucanas
Raising poultry for 35 years.

Colleen Kinzie · Post by **Colleen Kinzie** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:59 am

Always had chickens, pigeons,rabbits etc when a kid
Had chickens and rabbits and one pigeon and cattle when my husband and I bought our country home
My husband passed away and I found it just too hard to keep up the property let alone feed etc twice a day and work
Sooooo everything went except cats. Lol
Five years later met my new love
About 6 years ago a friend came by with a truckload of chickens
Wanted to know if I could keep him some roosters. Just for a little while
Heck Colleen you might as well keep some hens for eggs he said. Lol
Rick said. I didn't know you liked chickens! Why don't you get the kind you like
Thus my varied flock of mutts and not up to standard breeds
Never been without my chooks since then
Poor Rick lost his parts storage shed and built me a chicken coop
First just half of the building
You guessed it. Now the whole building
Haha. Gotta love it
What made me stay is I totally enjoy my chickens

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 11:33 am

I grew up on this "farm" 62 acres of ponds, a swamp, and rolling hills. 30 acres of field, 15 acres of it good land. And the forest was 138 acres of rocky hardwoods, creeks and beaver ponds. Now we own the place
I spent my childhood catching everything that moved. We always had a few chickens for personal consumption. My brother moved out and left behind boxes of Field & Stream mags and I got hooked on hunting birds. Everyday after school: off the bus, grab the gun; and try to shoot a grouse. By the end of Nov i got 2. My brother moved back from northern Ont: his little Chev truck loaded with everything he owned: boat, furniture, etc. he stopped on the driveway on his way in... found the .22 in back of the cab...rolls his window down... and shoots a grouse. I haven't been hunting since. I'm still insulted.
So I've kept quail, pheasants, partridge, and every domestic bird except peacocks. And now Carla wants peacocks.
I better get to work... got to build a different pen.

rebellofts · Post by **rebellofts** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 6:09 pm

My Dad and I sold birds at the Byward market way back then

Post by **Killerbunny** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 6:19 pm

We were citiots I guess. My aunt worked on a Scottish farm but I only got to go in school holidays. About 5 years ago we got fed up with supermarket food etc and decided to get a few Freys RTL for eggs. Built a great coop and picked up the birds. We have electronet around the coop. Put the birds in to settle. Next day go out to enjoy them and are treated to the sight of them sailing over the fence. Next part should have been a you tube video. They were lovely birds but oh dear they have personalities and talk to you. Nearly, the hen who was killed at the weekend was the last of these birds. One of them, Mama Bird went broody, yikes. Got some eggs for her and all went well. The 2 roosters turned out incredibly nasty and they ended as food. I waited for quite a while to try another boy and then we found love on line. We saw OCs beautiful splash Wyandotte guy and took him home. The ladies loved him right away and we built our little hobby flock from there. Last spring we got our BSWs and another adventure began. It was amazing to put our own turkey on the table at Thanksgiving along with home grown veggies (we'd always grown a lot of our own) . I first dealt with birds as assistant to the Gamebird pathologist in the UK and it took a few years to get back to birds. I loved that job but couldn't exist long term on research grants. We couldn't have done it without great poultry sites especially PSO and now PTO to help and share the joy and heartbreak. You guys get it and you rock!

Bobbi · Post by **Bobbi** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 7:49 pm

Knowing where my food comes from, happy animals and that's also why I'm still doing it.. Plus I like it. Its like therapy.

WaupoosCowgirl · Post by **WaupoosCowgirl** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 8:13 pm

I am a military brat, raised in PMQ patches across Canada and overseas. The only pets I had growing up were goldfish that got flushed every time we got posted. As an adult I found myself in Alberta and decided "when in Rome" and bought my first horse and got a dog. When I left to come back to Ontario I came with three dogs and three horses in tow....moved back in with my folks for a couple of months (my best friend took in my critters while I figured things out) and met my husband because I needed hay and well moved in because as the neighbours says "she figured out it was cheaper to put out than pay for hay" anyway.....We had dogs, cats, horses and cows..chickens were the next logical progression! I was in the feed store and they were having their "chick days" so next thing I knew I had ordered 50 assorted heritage dual purpose brown egg layers and a dozen colourful bantams! that was 5+ years ago and of those original birds we still have 2 roos and 8 hens. I have since add 10 Marans hens and a Marans Roo. I just set 17 eggs in the incubator tonight!

TomK · Post by **TomK** » Thu Feb 04, 2016 7:24 am

Wonderful idea OC...

I was a townee til i was 8 when my dad moved us out to a rural property. He bought a house and a few acres from a local farmer who retained the farmland and moved to another farm nearby. I got to be frends with the guys oldest son and ended up working my summers and after school on his farm. Did that til I was 15 and it was a farm that did it all...pigs, dairy, chickens, cedar harvesting, cream production, even had so e sheep for a bit. I think it was my foundation and fascination with the land. Life took its path and did the marry, house and family path but i ended up in high tech for a long time. I lived semi rurally so the bug for critters came creeping back and i got to wanting heritage breeds of chickens. I want heritage anything these days. All the other stuff is crap, sorry, but thats the way i feel. Anyway, i read about chickens ad nauseum, drove MJ nuts, made my daughters giggle and the RME was constant. Then we got this land, decided to build and go offgrid as well and that stalled the chicken thing a few more years but not getting any younger are we? So last spring i just ordered 25 pullet dayolds from the now defunct Lanark Leeds feed mill in Smiths Falls on a spur of the moment thing. No coop, no nothing prepared, just jumped in. A now or never kind of thing. The chicks came in, the coop was half built and I've never looked back, nor will I. Best thing ever and there are more birds coming my way come spring. Aside from a foray im thinking about for meat birds, it will be heritage breeds. Might evn get an incubator.......shhhhhhhh...dont say a word to MJ...lol

Post by **WLLady** » Thu Feb 04, 2016 8:42 am

when i was a kid i went "against the grain of the family" and worked on farms.....a horse racing farm, haying, mucking stalls, you name it, i did it. but that was definitely not to my parent's liking, because only "poor" people were farmers, only "uneducated" people were farmers. oh my goodness. that attitude didn't sit well with me! so i went to a "farm" university (guelph). i showed horses and cows at the college. I worked with the animals, i loved it. i taught veterinary school courses to make some money while doing my PhD. I also worked in several slaughterhouses to make a little more money. sure saved on my grocery costs....i've always loved working with animals but never had any idea that i liked poultry. then met my hubby and we moved out to the country. i was buying eggs from the farm down the street. they were AWESOME. and we had ticks. and flies like mad. and bugs....so i decided to try out a little 10 pack of mixed chicks from freys-more pest control with the added egg bonus. i built a chicken trailer. from the ground up. designed and built. then got the box from freys....with 12 chicks. 10 plus 2 "packing peanut" chicks. i had no clue what they were breed wise. and i was hooked. trying to figure out what they were...figured it out. they were all hens too. so then i tried my first hand at sex linked breeding. and got it backwards. LOL. of course. oh, i was so young and naive!! LOL. so i hatched out 30 black and white striped kids. ate the boys. kept the girls. still have 2 of the old girls hanging out, they must be almost 10 by now! but then i needed a bigger coop. so i built an 8x12. then i wanted roosters and purebreds....i started researching and "collecting" heritage breeds. i hatched a lot. brown eggs just weren't good enough, i got white eggs, and blue eggs too. then blue layer came back with chicks one day and i got olive and green eggs, and that was it, the geneticist in me couldn't refrain any longer. i started reading up on SOP, and heritage breeds, and then got some black copper marans that were throwing red birds like mad....oh, those are black tailed buff marans...well, let's breed those and separate the lines.....and then oooo rhodebars! and welbars! and figured out that 90% of the wheaten ameraucanas sold in ontario were actually easter eggers on the wrong e locus, and found some "real" wheaten ameraucanas and have been trying to breed those up for better size....(losing battle)....and well, why don't i try to recreate the delaware...um. well. hook line and sinker. i now have pure welbars and rhodebars, just now after 3 years of selective breeding, have several other projects on the go, and might even try for the delaware recreation....hm. i have a couple nice candidate boys....built another 8x12 for the boys...then that was a nightmare to keep up water in the winter, so gutted it, built a barn a REAL barn, and well, there was lots of space upstairs and downstairs....and well. now i have about 12 different breeds going, plus a few layers and a grow out coop for the boys. and 3 stalls full of turkeys, and 2 stalls full of horses.

and someone 3 years ago (a definite enabler) decided i should try guineas. i have ticks, i thought why not? yeah, guineas and i do NOT get along.....they're too darned noisy. and started killing my chickens! so then someone (yes, the same someone) 2 years ago suggested turkeys. now i'm in the midst of cleaning up the royal palm heritage line i have, have a bronze/narry x red slate project and a couple of red palms. all breeding for heritage conservancy.....thanks BVF! i like the turkeys. guineas not so much. man, guineas were great on ticks......but not so much for me.

and here i am.
lovin' every minute of the chickens and turkeys and horses and enjoying at least pretending to be something like a farm type person, living in the country, plowing our own snow, digging our own trenches, cleaning up poo generated right here on the farm...and i will always have at least a few chickens putting around the place. it's better than tv. plus, they eat bugs

ross · Post by **ross** » Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:48 am

Hardwired to the critter thing started when I could crawl / walk catching " wild ones " .Evoloution from there . Luck