Icelandic chickens was our goal, but the seller would only let them go in lots of 25. The seller stated that the mortality rate was approximately 25%, so we could expect to have 17-18 survivors. Lets say that they turned out to be 50/50 rooster to hen, that would leave us with 9 hens and 9 potentially hostile roosters. After we thought about this for a while we decided that having too many chickens may be just too difficult for beginners, so what could we do?
A trip to the local farm store revealed that they bought peeps in lots with all the local wood-be farm types, thereby allowing us to combine our order with the others in order to obtain 8 Golden Wyandotte hens and a single Rooster. The Wyandotte's are supposedly calm, cold hearty, good layers of large brown eggs, and somewhat frost bite resistant.
If you need to get information about the various types of chickens out there or hints on keeping them alive you could do worse than to visit the Back Yard Chickens website. http://www.backyardchickens.com
The same process allowed us to pick up 10 Guinea Hens (5 purple and 5 lavender), and they will all arrive the first week of June. This will give us time to set up the coop and fencing, the weather SHOULD be warm enough for us to raise them in the garage (away from the house predators), but unfortunately this means no eggs until late fall.
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