A Pet Cemetery. :eek: What could possibly go wrong?
I agree with the comments about the broody Orpingtons.
It gets very cold in the winter here, and I don’t provide supplemental light when the days get short, so the chickens get a 3-4 month vacation from laying. I can’t take it when a hen goes broody in the middle of summer, taking yet another vacation! Damned freeloaders!
That said, I usually have a few Buff Orps because they are pretty.
Nothing. It’s not a Sematary, after all.
They be here, among us.
Bolding mine.
Leaving the hyphen out of “co-op” in this thread’s context conjured up some strange images as I was first working through this sentence. 
First I thought of “Chicken milk. … Hmm, how come I’ve never seen it? … Oh wait!”. Then I though of cows sitting on giant bird nesting boxes full of hay like maybe Foghorn Leghorn only larger, and …
Finally I went back and processed “co-op” correctly. Thanks for the chuckles.
Processing one old hen for eating is a pain in the ass. You have to kill it, drain the blood, gut it, scald it, and pluck it. Then you probably have a tough, leggy bird that doesn’t taste great. It’s one thing to process a bunch of meat birds at one time, but the mess produced to process one old hen is not worth it.
Me too, man. My mother decided we needed to raise chickens and ducks when I was in my early teens, and our first chickens were Rhode Island reds. They were sweet. But unfortunately, one day my brother’s dog decided to kill all the chickens and ducks - super weird because she was lazy and never before aggressive. We gave her away to a family without birds.
So the next chickens we got were barred rocks…and they were huge jerks. Two of the chicks ended up being BR roosters, and somehow a leghorn rooster got into the set too (he was lovely. Godzilla the chicken), and boy did they cause troubles. Mean, aggressive jerks. They killed poor Godzilla 
I wasn’t sad when she gave up on chickens - but not ducks - after them.
QuickSilver, we didn’t eat ours (just the dog did…) either, but yes, they were definitely pets who laid eggs.
Silkies kinda creep me out. Feathery feet just seems mutant.
Ref China Guy …
IANA agro-anybody, but I grew up in the mixed boundary between suburbia and ruralia. And have lived in similar spots off and on since. As such, I like traditional county fairs and especially the livestock exhibits. The hokey rides, crappy food, and loud music are detractions not attractions IMO. OTOH, the hogs, sheep, rabbits, chickens, etc. are the whole point of the event.
At the chicken barn I like to do my own private judging of the best chickens. In my system, the chickens, regardless of breed, are graded according to who has the ugliest feet. It’s funny how often my judging comes out close to that of the official chicken judges with their high falutin’ scoring systems. Try it; you’ll see.
The silkies always creep me out too. That just ain’t right and they get foot-graded in a class by themselves. Shivvers.