I kept hens for quite a few years when the children were growing up, starting from when my 8-year-old daughter cried herself to sleep every night for several weeks because her friend had hens and she really, really wanted some. At the time we had a home-made aviary with an albino crow living in it. My husband was a bird ringer then, and had been visiting an RSPB reserve where somebody had brought this crow in as a fledgling, saying they had found an 'abandoned baby seagull' (in the Midlands, 100 miles from the coast..... ) As it was not possible to return this bird to its parents, he brought it home and we successfully reared it. It was pure white with a pink beak and claws. I've no idea whether it was male or female. It did get reasonably tame but I was always a bit nervous of its huge strong beak and the wild look in its eye. We would have liked to release it back to the wild, but thought that, being albino and not part of a local flock, it wouldn't survive on its own, having missed the socialisation that its parents would have given it. It got out once or twice, and neighbours reported it sitting on a dustbin looking hungry, and demanded we came and collect it as they were afraid to touch it. In the end, it was let out by a friend who was supposed to look after it when we went on holiday, and rather to my relief, we never heard anything more about it.
So for a while we bred budgies in the aviary, which was fun, and then we got 8 Silkie chicks, to keep on the ground level whilst the budgies flew around overhead. We didn't know the first thing about keeping poultry, and in those days, back in the 1970s, there was no Internet, of course, and very few books available on basic poultry keeping. However, we raised them all under a heat lamp, and they turned out to be 6 boys and only 2 girls, of course, but they were all very beautiful. There was a near-derelict farm which we passed when out riding, inhabited by an old couple who had let it all go to rack and ruin, which was overrun by what must have originally been a flock of RIR chickens, all living totally free range and unsupervised. So one day we took our 6 boys up there in a box and released them under a hedge. I now realise this is a terrible thing to have done, but at the time I just couldn't think what else to do. Advertising the boys in the local paper would have cost a fortune and not been likely to solve the problem, Preloved and forums were 40 years away, and even if I had known how to kill them, none of us could have possibly done the deed to these lovely boys. I hope they survived - maybe the were some pretty RIRXSilkies running around up there in time!
We were left with two Silkie girls, Matilda, who was white, and Emily, who was brown. Of course they were always going broody and they didn't lay many eggs, but they were so tame, the children used to dress them up in dolls clothes and sit them on their knee to watch TV after school. Matilda lived to be 8 years old, when unfortunately she fell into the ponies' water trough and, not being waterproof herself, she drowned. We got a few RIR pullets to supplement the eggs, and it was really funny to see Matilda bossing them around, even when they were fully grown hens who towered above her. The RIRs didn't have so much personality, or maybe I was too busy to see it in them by that stage and my daughter wasn't interested by then, so we gave them to a friend and demolished the aviary.
Busy life took over for many years, until a few years ago, and now retired, I offered to look after my friend's hens when they were on holiday, and of course I was smitten again. Found to my delighted amazement that there was now so much choice and help available online, and within a few weeks had my first three hybrids. When we were down to two, I got Marigold, a Buff Sussex, and Nutmeg, a CLB, as 5-week-old chicks, mainly because with these breeds the sex is evident at hatch - no more boys to worry about! It was very satisfying to raise them and I learned a lot. They are so very different - Nutmeg is intelligent and bossy, and has always been in charge of Marigold and is now top hen over the other two hybrids I now have as well. Marigold is a bit dizzy, not very bright, would love to be a Mum, is now on her 5th period of broodiness this year ATM, but is such a lovely big golden armful of soft warm feathers. The other two hybrids are also much loved but not quite so special as the two I raised from chicks - a Brown Leghorn cross and a Columbian Blacktail, both excellent layers, which is their main job. I think I shall be very upset when Marigold or Nutmeg go, and shall try to keep them as long as its kind to do so, never mind the eggs, but so far I seem to be able to part with the hybrid layers when inevitably they get the end of their natural lay and become unproductive, or get egglaying problems. I would not get another Sussex, though, because all that broodiness is such a nuisance.
Sorry to have rabbitted on at length - I'm in bed at present, getting better after an op, so not much else to do. I too am interested in what birds you keep, and why - and also, how you got the 'bug' in the first place, and whether, like me, it went sort of dormant for a few years and then re- emerged when conditions were right again.
bring on next summer and my adventure into one of them hatching some eggs....
, but what birds do you have, & why did you choose them rather than something different? 