With a Chick Chick Here!

Today is a drippy day. It's 40 degrees outside, the snow is melting, and the horses are happily sloshing around in the mud. A good day to blog about chickens!



The picture is of Bryan and one of our favorite chickens, Star.




Spring officially starts for us when we buy our little chicks....ususally around Easter. We only buy females, because we just raise the chickens for eggs and no rooster is required....Roosters are very noisy and don't just crow at daybreak (1am, 2am is fine too). For those of you who need a biology lesson...eggs are well..just eggs. To be honest, we didn't know that at first...and our friendly fence builder, Anthony, had to inform us...much to his amusement.


Our chickens are free range chickens. They spend the night in a chicken coop and are free to roam around the farm during the day. Usually they hang out around the horses, hoping to catch a few bits of grain that the horses don't eat. Then they happily eat bugs and grass for the rest of the day. At night, they head back to the coop on their own and Bryan and I shut the door so they can sleep safe and sound. One interesting thing we learned: It's almost impossible to catch a chicken during the day...they scamper away. But at night, they get very drowsy and will let you pick them up as much as you want.



The eggs are fantastic....far different from anything bought in the store. The yolks are bright yellow, and the whites actually stand up. And the taste is amazing. We raise chickens that lay brown eggs, and chickens that lay blue and green eggs (shells)...our Aracaunas. When kids come to visit, they get such a kick out of gathering the eggs every day.




Fortunately, the chickens prefer to lay in the coop...so we don't have to hunt! We built six nexting boxes for them...but they all stand in line and wait their turn for the preferred next up on the "chicken condo".



We now have 5 red chickens, all identical! Our feed store owner, Tammy, offered to give me 4 of her chickens. As it turned out the only four she could catch were also red! I'll be in need of new names for the new four....any ideas? By the way, the only payment that Tammy would take for her chickens was a plate of homemade brownies...and I had to insist on that!

Here's a video of the 5 Reds! They're not doing much except hopping around...but again, this is a pretty quiet, drippy day...and they're not too excited about going outside....so hopping around in a nice warm coop isn't too bad :-)