Since 11:20 this morning
Where things stand
Four things moved, and together they rewrite the whole schedule.
What changed
- Your friend is away until the second week of September. That kills Aug 28 and Sep 4 for anything they raise, and you did not want to start chicks for two weeks and then hand them off, since that is the good part.
- Peninsula Feed entered the picture. DNA sexed, guaranteed females, a fresh hatch every Saturday instead of every other Friday, and breeds Urban Farm Oasis does not carry.
- Price gap is real. Oasis is $10 a chick. You found the French Black Copper Maran at Peninsula for $40, four times as much for one bird.
- Your broody Silkie is the unlock. A broody hen will adopt day old chicks and raise them herself. That covers the September gap, keeps the baby chick experience at home, and gives you a natural path into the flock.
Buy from both
The two sources
They are good at different things. Peninsula sells certainty, Oasis sells volume. The plan uses each for what it is best at.
Guaranteed hens
Peninsula Feed Store
346 El Camino Real, Redwood City. About 50 minutes down the peninsula.
- Sexing
- DNA sexed females. No rooster risk, no rehoming plan needed.
- Cadence
- A local hatch every week, pickup Saturdays at 9:00am.
- Price
- Not published on their site. You saw the French Black Copper Maran at $40. Confirm the rest by phone.
- Health
- Vaccinated for Marek's, same as Oasis. Their site publishes no other health guarantee.
- Limits
- 2 per breed, 6 per family. Chicks sell out, so call first.
- Contact
- (650) 365-6738
theteam@peninsulafeedstore.com
Use it for: the rare egg colors and the birds you cannot afford to have turn out to be a rooster. Buy 2 here, put them straight under the Silkie.
Ten dollars a bird
Urban Farm Oasis
Berkeley. Fifteen minutes from the house.
- Sexing
- Unsexed straight run. Roughly half will be cockerels.
- Cadence
- Every other Friday through Oct 16, which is their final chick day.
- Price
- $10 per chick, vaccinated for Marek's.
- Reserve
- Email breed plus phone number, they confirm by phone and take payment.
- Contact
- ufo@urbanfarmoasis.org
(510) 665-5509
Use it for: the Polish, which Peninsula does not carry, and the Brahma. At $10 you can buy two Polish as rooster insurance and still spend less than one Maran.
New birds52 from Peninsula, 3 from Oasis
Flock after1611 today plus 5, minus any cockerel
Chick cost$1102 Peninsula at $40, 3 Oasis at $10
First new eggFeb2027, from the Peninsula pair
The whole arc
Timeline
Two batches, five weeks apart, raised in two places. Every date below is a real calendar day, Peninsula pickups on Saturdays and Oasis pickups on Fridays.
Wednesday, Aug 26make the callsToday
Nothing on this page is bookable until three questions get answered, and all three are phone calls.
Peninsula
Call and ask what is hatching Saturday
Their site lists the Aug 22 batch, which is gone. Ask what is on the Aug 29 list, ask the price on each bird you want, and ask them to hold. Limit is 2 per breed and 6 per family.
Coop
Confirm the Silkie is actually broody
Sitting flat in the nest, plucked breast, hissing when you reach under her. If she is not broody, the whole home batch moves to your friend and the Peninsula date slides to September.
Oasis
Email to hold Oct 2
2 White Crested Polish plus 1 Buff Brahma. Give them your phone number, they confirm and take payment to lock it.
Saturday, Aug 29the home batch arrivesWeek 0
Peninsula pickup at 9:00am. Two DNA sexed females, home by lunch, under the Silkie that night.
Bird 1
French Black Copper Maran
The darkest chocolate egg of any breed. Seven were available on the Aug 22 list, so odds are good they run them again.
Bird 2
Olive Egger or Cream Legbar
Olive green egg, or sky blue plus a crest. This is the one open call on the whole plan.
That night
Slip them under the Silkie after dark
She will not question chicks that appear under her in the dark. They have to be under five days old, which a same day pickup guarantees. Give her a ground level nest she cannot fall out of, chick crumble, and shallow water.
Saturday, Sep 12the October dates go liveWeek 2
Home batch is two weeks old and wing feathered. Your friend is back this week, which reopens Oasis.
At home
Silkie is doing the work
No heat lamp, no brooder box, no daily checks on a thermometer. She keeps them warm and teaches them to scratch and dust bathe.
Decision
Confirm Oct 2 with your friend
Three chicks in one brooder for six weeks. If they can also take an Oct 16 pair, the two week gap is the easy integration window.
Friday, Oct 2the friend batch arrivesWeek 0
Urban Farm Oasis pickup, $10 each. Three chicks straight to your friend's brooder.
Birds
2 White Crested Polish plus 1 Buff Brahma
Two Polish because they are unsexed. Each chick is a coin flip, so with two the odds that at least one is a pullet run to 75 percent. The Brahma is the gentle giant with feathered feet.
Spacing
34 days behind the home batch
That is 4.9 weeks, which is the awkward gap. It does not matter here because the two batches are in different houses for the whole stretch.
Know this
The Polish are the riskiest bird in the plan
A crested bird in a flock of eleven non-crested birds is the classic head-pecking target, and a bad case can blind one. Two Polish raised together helps because they have each other. Go in slowly at integration, keep an eye on the crest, and be willing to trim it back if they are getting hit.
Saturday, Oct 10home batch off heatWeek 6
Fully feathered. The Silkie starts weaning them and they begin ranging with the flock during the day.
Coop
Broody raised chicks integrate themselves
This is the big advantage over a brooder. The flock has watched them grow up under a hen since day one, so there is no introduction event to manage. Keep an extra feeder and waterer at chick height.
Friday, Oct 16optional, and the last chanceWeek 2
Final chick day of the season at Urban Farm Oasis. Welsummer and Cuckoo Marans are both on this date.
If you add
Welsummer for the terracotta speckled egg
Only worth it if you skip the Peninsula Maran, since Cuckoo Marans and French Black Copper Maran both give you a dark brown egg and one is $30 cheaper. The Welsummer speckle is genuinely different from anything else on this list.
Spacing
Exactly 2 weeks behind Oct 2
The easy window. Your friend runs two brooders side by side with a wire divider for about two weeks, then merges them.
Friday, Nov 13the friend batch comes homeWeek 6
Polish and Brahma are six weeks old and off heat. Home batch is about eleven weeks by now and already running with the flock.
Setup
Wire divider inside the run
An eleven week old outweighs a six week old by roughly double. Look but do not touch for a week or two, same run, hard barrier, so everybody gets used to each other without a fight.
Watch for
The Polish crest
The crest blocks upward vision, which is why they get pecked. Trim the feathers around the eyes if they cannot see approaches, and give perches with clear runways.
Saturday, Dec 19home batch at full sizeWeek 16
Maran and the green egg bird are close to adult weight and fully in the pecking order. Nothing to manage.
Roost
This is when roost space starts to bite
Thirteen birds on the bar at this point, sixteen once the October group joins. See the roost math below.
Friday, Jan 22, 2027everybody in one flockWeek 16
Polish and Brahma hit sixteen weeks and go in with everyone. One flock of sixteen, or fifteen if a Polish turned out to be a cockerel.
Method
Merge at dusk
Move them onto the roost after dark so they wake up as part of the group. Extra feeders and water stations for the first two weeks, plus hiding spots so a bullied bird has somewhere to go.
If cockerel
Rehome window is now
A cockerel will start crowing between sixteen and twenty weeks. Oakland allows hens but not roosters, so line up a rehome before he announces himself.
Jan 30 to Feb 27, 2027the first chocolate eggWeek 22 to 26
The Peninsula pair starts laying. This is the payoff of buying the expensive birds first.
Basket
Four colors instead of two
You go from one green and one dark brown to green, dark brown, deep chocolate, and either olive or sky blue. All four in the same basket, in the middle of winter when nothing else is laying much.
Note
Maran color fades through the season
The darkest eggs come first and lighten as she lays. It resets after each molt, so the deep chocolate comes back every spring.
Caveat
Point of lay lands in the short-day window
Twenty two weeks from an August hatch puts them at laying age in late January, which is the darkest part of the year. Pullets often hold off until the days lengthen. If February comes and nothing appears, that is normal, and a timer on a low coop light bringing the day to fourteen hours will start them.
Apr 2 to Apr 30, 2027the October group startsWeek 26 to 30
Polish comes into lay around late March or April with small white eggs. The Brahma is slow, closer to seven months, then lays steadily right through the following winter when everyone else slows down.
Full basket
Six colors by May 2027
Green, dark brown, chocolate, olive or blue, small white, and medium brown. That is the whole point of buying by egg color instead of by lay rate.
Guaranteed hens, higher price
Peninsula breeds
Availability counts below are from their Aug 22 hatch list, which is the most recent published one. The Saturday list changes every week, so treat these as what they carry rather than what is in stock today.
Marans hen, black with copper hackle. Wikimedia Commons.
1French Black Copper Maran Peninsula
7 available on the Aug 22 list · DNA sexed female · $40, per your call with the store
Deep chocolate, the darkest there is
The prestige version of the Marans. Black body with a copper hackle, lightly feathered shanks, calm and quiet. Lays around 180 eggs a year, and the color is the reason people keep them: a genuinely dark chocolate brown that stops people mid sentence when they open the carton.
Worth the $40 because a rooster here would waste eight months and you would still have no chocolate egg. Certainty is what you are paying for.
Adult Cream Legbar hen. Wikimedia Commons.
2Cream Legbar Peninsula
2 available on the Aug 22 list · auto sexing, so hens are certain from day one
Sky blue
British breed from the 1930s, cream and silver with fine barring and a small backward swept crest. Auto sexing means the chicks are visibly different by sex at hatch, no DNA test needed. Lays around 200 sky blue eggs a year, active forager, a little flighty.
Two things at once: a bluer egg than your Ameraucana gives, and a second crested bird alongside the Polish. If you want the crest theme, this is the pick.
Easter Egger pullet. Olive Eggers are crossbreds with no fixed appearance, so this is representative rather than exact. Wikimedia Commons.
2Olive Egger Peninsula
1 available on the Aug 22 list · DNA sexed female
Olive green
Not a breed, a cross. A blue egg parent over a dark brown egg parent, and the brown pigment washes over the blue shell to make olive. Because it is a cross, no two look alike and the exact shade varies bird to bird. Hardy, good tempered, decent layer at around 180 a year.
The single most different color you can add. Your basket has green and dark brown already, and olive reads as neither.
Silverudd's Blue young hens. Wikimedia Commons.
4Silverudd's Blue Peninsula
1 available on the Aug 22 list · listed by the store as Silverrudd's Blue
Mint green, sometimes speckled
Swedish breed developed by Martin Silverudd in the 1980s, also sold as Isbar. Slate blue plumage with a slight sheen, small and efficient, lays around 200 mint green eggs a year. Genuinely rare in the United States. Calm, quiet, and a strong forager.
Rarer than the Olive Egger and a softer green. Only one was available, so this is a call ahead bird rather than a plan bird.
Bielefelder hens. Wikimedia Commons.
5Bielefelder Peninsula
1 available on the Aug 22 list · auto sexing
Large brown, slight pink tint
German breed from the 1970s, big and unhurried, hens run 7 to 8 pounds with a warm partridge pattern called crele. Auto sexing at hatch. Famously the calmest bird in most flocks, tolerant of handling, and a reliable winter layer at around 230 eggs a year.
If you want a gentle giant and the Brahma date does not work out, this is the Peninsula version of that bird, with a guaranteed hen attached.
Ameraucana pullet, silver variety. No lavender photo exists on Commons, so this shows the breed type rather than the color. Wikimedia Commons.
6Lavender Ameraucana Peninsula
7 available on the Aug 22 list · DNA sexed female
Blue
Same breed as your spotted bird, different color variety. Lavender is a soft dove gray that holds its color all over, with the muff and beard and pea comb the breed is known for. Around 180 blue eggs a year, friendly, cold hardy.
Ranked last of the Peninsula six only because it repeats an egg color you already have. As a bird it is lovely and the lavender looks nothing like your spotted one.
Ten dollars, unsexed
Urban Farm Oasis breeds
Ranked as before, with the dates that still work now that Aug 28 and Sep 4 are out.
White Crested Black Polish hen. Wikimedia Commons.
1White Crested Polish Oasis
Available Oct 2 · unsexed · buy 2
Small to medium white
Your top ask, and the reason Oasis stays in the plan since Peninsula does not carry them. A pompom of white feathers over a dark body, docile and curious. About 150 small white eggs a year. The crest blocks upward vision, so they get bullied and need perches with clear approaches.
Buy two. At $10 each, two birds cost half of one Maran and take the odds of getting at least one hen from 50 percent to about 75 percent. If both are pullets you keep both, and a pair raised together does not crest pick the way two strangers would.
Brahma. Wikimedia Commons.
2Buff Brahma Oasis
Available Oct 2 · unsexed
Medium brown
The gentle giant. Feathered legs and feet, small pea comb, up to 10 pounds. Extremely docile, handles cold, tolerates confinement, rarely flies. Slow to mature at around seven months, then steady right through winter when other breeds stop.
Balances the flock. The Polish are highly strung and the Brahma is not, and a big calm bird takes the edge off a run. Different silhouette from anything you own.
Welsummer hen. Wikimedia Commons.
3Welsummer Oasis
Available Oct 16, the final chick day · unsexed
Terracotta with dark speckles
Dutch heritage breed, salmon breast with fine gold penciling. About 160 eggs a year. The egg is the draw: deep orange brown with dark speckles, among the prettiest in the hobby, and the speckling is unlike anything else on this page.
The one Oasis bird whose egg the Peninsula list cannot match. Only worth adding if you want a fourth or fifth new bird.
Cuckoo Marans. Wikimedia Commons.
4Cuckoo Marans Oasis
Available Oct 16 · unsexed · the $10 route to a dark egg
Chocolate brown, dark but not the darkest
Same species of dark egg as the French Black Copper, one notch lighter and a quarter of the price. Cuckoo pattern looks close to your Barred Rock but with clean pinkish legs and a stockier build. Around 180 to 220 eggs a year, quiet and easy.
The real decision on this page. $10 unsexed here against $40 guaranteed hen at Peninsula for a slightly darker egg. If you are comfortable with a rehome risk, this saves $30 and gets you almost the same basket.
Delaware pullet. Wikimedia Commons.
5Delaware Oasis
Available Sep 18, which is now too early for your friend · unsexed
Large brown
American heritage breed on the Livestock Conservancy watch list. White with black laced hackle and tail bars. Fast growing, calm, excellent forager, four large brown eggs a week even in summer heat.
Genuinely rare and a good bird, but Sep 18 lands before your friend is settled and the egg color repeats what you have. Skip this round.
Blue Ameraucana. Wikimedia Commons.
6Ameraucana, second one Oasis
Available Oct 9 · unsexed
Blue
You said you are open to another. A second blue egg layer doubles the prettiest color you already have. Pick a different variety from your spotted bird to keep the flock visually varied.
Superseded. If you want a second Ameraucana, the Lavender at Peninsula is a guaranteed hen and a more distinct look for the extra money.
On hold and off the list
Paused and skipped
Colored Silkie: paused. Adding a third Silkie in a color other than white was on the list, and Peninsula had eight available. Their birds are the black and white paint pattern, and your wife does not like the look, so this is parked rather than dropped. If a partridge or buff Silkie shows up on a later Saturday hatch it is worth reopening, since that was the color contrast you wanted next to your two whites.
| Breed | Why it is off the list |
|---|
| Silver, Golden and Blue Laced Wyandotte | Five of your eleven birds are already Wyandottes. |
| Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red | You have the Buff and the Barred. Rhode Island Red overlaps both. |
| Red, Black and Golden Sex Link | Great layers but hybrids. Two to three productive years against four to five for a heritage bird, and ordinary brown eggs. |
| Serama and Japanese Bantams | Nineteen available at Peninsula, and they are charming, but a true bantam in a flock of standards gets pushed off the feeder. |
| Hampshire Red, Danish Brown Leghorn | Both good utility birds. Neither adds an egg color or a look you do not have. |
The practical part
Integration and roost math
Broody hen versus brooder
A broody hen will adopt day old chicks if you slip them under her after dark. She has to actually be broody, meaning sitting flat and tight in the nest, breast plucked, and hissing or growling when you reach under her. Chicks need to be under five days old. She will raise two to four comfortably, she keeps them warm, teaches them to scratch and dust bathe, and defends them, which means they grow up inside the flock instead of being introduced to it later.
Buying from two hatcheries
Mixing birds from two sources is the one new risk this plan introduces, and it is worth naming. Both hatcheries vaccinate for Marek's, which is the main thing you want. The vaccine is leaky though, meaning a vaccinated bird can carry and shed field virus without ever looking sick, so two vaccinated flocks meeting is not automatically zero risk. Respiratory disease travels the same way, mycoplasma and infectious bronchitis in particular.
The good news is that this plan quarantines itself. The Peninsula pair lives at your house under the Silkie and the Oasis three live at your friend's until Nov 13, so the two sources never share air for the first ten weeks, which is longer than any quarantine period anyone would recommend. Keep it that way. If a schedule change ever puts both batches under one roof, hold them apart for at least two weeks and watch for sneezing, bubbly eyes, or a bird sitting apart from the others.
How far apart two batches can be
- Same day. One brooder from day one, nothing to manage.
- Two weeks apart. Separate brooders for the first week or two after the younger batch lands, then combine once the younger group is wing feathered and can dodge. Fully merged by five or six weeks. A wire divider so they can see each other speeds it up.
- Four to five weeks apart. Separate the whole time. A six week old is three to four times the weight of a two week old and will push them off food and water. This is the Aug 29 to Oct 2 gap, which is exactly why the two batches live in two different houses.
- Into your existing flock. Wait until the new birds are close to full size, around fourteen to sixteen weeks. Look but do not touch for a week behind a wire divider inside the run, then merge at dusk with extra feeders and hiding spots for the first two weeks.
Roost space
The rule is 10 to 12 inches of roost bar per standard bird. You are going from 11 birds to 16.
| Flock size | Roost needed | In feet |
|---|
| 11 birds, today | 110 to 132 inches | 9.2 to 11.0 linear feet |
| 13 birds, after Dec 19 | 130 to 156 inches | 10.8 to 13.0 linear feet |
| 16 birds, after Jan 22 | 160 to 192 inches | 13.3 to 16.0 linear feet |
If you are short, add a second bar parallel to the first, 12 inches higher and 12 inches back, so birds can step up without landing on each other. Note the Brahma is heavy and a poor flyer, so keep at least one bar low, around 18 inches off the floor.
Two calls to make
What I need from you
Answer these and I will draft both reservation notes, the Peninsula call script and the Oasis email.
1. Is the Silkie broody right now?
Sitting flat in the nest, plucked breast, hissing when you reach under her. If yes, Saturday Aug 29 works and the home batch happens this week. If no, everything shifts to your friend in October and the Peninsula pickup moves out.
2. Olive Egger or Cream Legbar?
Olive green egg, or sky blue plus a crest. Only one Olive Egger was on the last list and two Cream Legbars, so if you have no strong preference, take whichever they actually have on Saturday.
3. Is the $40 Maran worth it over the $10 Cuckoo?
The French Black Copper is darker and is a guaranteed hen. The Cuckoo Marans on Oct 16 is $10 and unsexed. The gap is $30 and one shade of brown.