By now some of you may have heard about the “incident” with our chicks, may they rest in peace. Due to a breakdown in communication the dogs were allowed in the chicken run unsupervised, which resulted in crime scene of sorts. We knew we were facing a steep learning curve, going from city slickers to chicken farmers, we just weren’t expecting catastrophic failure so early into our new venture.
Not to be deterred by our little setback, we’ve restocked our flock. This time we elected to go with mature (14-24 month old) birds and have two different varieties. Three – Barred Rocks (white with black stripping) and three- Red Sex-links, which are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn (who knew there were so many breeds of chickens?). Some of the qualities we were looking for were: good layers, docile, bears confinement well and can handle our cold winters.
We were able to build a pretty decent coop (Wendy says it’s better than our house) with minimal investment (thanks to the Dworak’s Landscaping’s recycled materials program). The birds will have close the 4 sq ft. per bird, they’ll share two-nest boxes, all the walls and roof are insulated with R-7 rigid insulation, the doors on the side open for easy cleaning and the front and sides are screened with hardware cloth for plenty of ventilation. It’s even wired with 120 volt power for a wintertime heat lamp and water de-icer. I also plan on converting the pop door (chicken door) to open and close at dawn and dusk via a photocell, but that’s another project and blog entry.
The beauty of the mature birds is we already have a supply of fresh eggs. We also don’t have to worry about the neighborhood cats, as the birds are too big for the cats to bother with.
We gathered five fresh eggs today and we’re pretty excited about that kind of production. We also think it will be great for the boys, actually knowing where eggs come from.
The eggs are brown and light brown (white ones in the back are from the store), we haven’t figured out which breed is laying which egg. The lighter brown eggs are about the same size as the store bought eggs and the dark brown eggs are jumbo sized. I also picked a couple fresh peppers from the garden tonight, looks like we’ll be having a couple fresh omelets for breakfast tomorrow.
Hopefully we won’t have any more “incidents” to report.
Heidi
Tho’ the details are sketchy, I believe we named most of those chickens on Saturday night. As I remember it through my whiskey goggles, the names are Wanda, Braveheart, Bertha and Rosie. Braveheart ate directly from my hand (thus earning her name). It was quite thrilling. Once Rosie’s tail feathers grow back she may be harder to identify. I think we named the biggest one Bertha and Wanda only has one waddle (the dangly thingy under their mouth/beak).
I’m praying to the big chicken god in the sky that the racoon and fox we saw Saturday night won’t be back! You may have to teach Molly & Pete to be Chicken Guard Dogs.
Now if you can just teach those chickens to eat mosquitoes everything would be pretty darn perfect!