Our Chickens

Here's a post about our chickens. I figure they deserve some recognition and praise. Marco and I have yet to pay for chickens. All the chickens we own were given to us! And they have proved wonderful additions to Cedar Hills.

We began our chicken family with two roosters. Usually that's trouble because they fight to be top rooster. The one that was the origional head rooster ended up being ousted from the chicken community and eventually died. It was a sad situation and I realized how perilous life can be for a chicken. The reigning rooster - Big Red - has proved a fair and reasonable leader. He does a great job of keeping his hens in check. I once saw a fight break out between two hens and suddenly Big Red came running up to them and broke the fight up. I was impressed with his

peace-making strategy.

In the summer we let our chickens roam through the farm. They're usually out and about before I wake up. I often hear Big Read crowing at the front door of the house.

I feed our dog, Boston, in the front yard and must stand guard while he eats. If I don't, the chickens will sneak up and steal his dog food morsels.

Around the end of April, while cleaning out the barn, Marco and I heard little peeps coming from our hayloft. We went up to investigate and found three baby chicks had been born. There were also about 20 un-hatched eggs! Marco and I retrieved the chicks and disposed of the eggs. We still have two out of the three chicks (one disappeared while pecking around outside.) The two are doing great and are getting big. They are still smaller than our older chickens, but they have their adult feathers and are free-ranging around the yard together. We hope one of them is a rooster, since Big Red is becoming older. We've heard that fertilized chickens eggs are tastier than un-fertilized eggs.

The chicks on the left.

The free-range chickens on the right.

This is a picture of Uni-Leg. She usually stands on her good leg. When she's walking, she hobbles on her foot-less leg. After that happened to her, we heard from a fellow-neighbor that it's common for chickens to survive after missing a limb. I'm a big fan of Uni-Leg.

In our barn we have nesting boxes set up for the chickens to lay their eggs. A chicken will lay one egg a day. Older chickens usually lay every other day or so. We have a variety of chickens, so we get a variety of eggs - from tiny to ridiculously huge eggs. It's great.

The nesting boxes are lined with hay and the chickens like to pick at the hay and create their own nest. One morning I went into the barn and discovered two chickens using the same nesting box. They looked like a chicken sandwich.

The chickens have allowed Marco and I to go without buying eggs for the past two years. We use the eggs in our baking, cooking and also sell them at the farmer's markets.