Well OM, I would have to say that your families' Buff Orphingtons are beautiful! When we "retire" and move up near JimShaw (scary, huh) on a decent piece of land we own, we can have a proper flock. We can't have roosters where we live for the obvious reason.

Our friend gets new chickens each year. Last year we went in with her on a batch of 25+.



This is a chick scrum with 5 different breeds. They are all pretty cute at that age...



When they lost their down, we stuck them outside (still had the heat lamp at nite).



I looked into birds and choose the Plymouth Rocks just because they looked durable and fairly well behaved (and were good for meat and laying). Michaela is holding one. But by the time we put them outside, they were also the most personable of the birds. Very curious also. It was easy to dispatch birds I really didn't know, but I was starting to like these. They are the ones roosting highest; predominantly black with a little white scullcap.

I forget what the solid yellow ones were, but the only ones we lost were two of those out of 30 total.