Chickens

Our ducks we bought last spring have been laying, but their eggs taste awful to us so we just use them for baking. We aren't sure if that is because of what they eat or the pond water seeping through the eggshell (they lay most of them in pond water) or what, but it just ain't working out.

So, we bought some chickens. One rooster, six hens, all chicks but now growing nicely.

We put them in our garage when we first bought them, in a small rabbit cage that was in one of the barns. We kept a warm light on them, set the cage outside when it wasn't too hot.

Unfortunately, they pecked through a hole I didn't see and got out. One of our new pups killed and ate three. We have since found that puppy a new home. She was very cute and smart, but I have always been taught you can't keep a chicken-eating dog if you have chickens. Growing up, it was pretty much a captal offense for a dog to eat one of your chickens, but times have changed.

We bought some unusual chicks to replace the others. They were very cute and mild, but shortly thereafter we began to wonder if they were even chickens. We investigated the possibilities they were quail, ginea, or pheasants, but the investigation was inconclusive. We have decided to just let them grow and reveal themselves in their own good time.

We moved them out to a chicken tractor (also found on the farm) when they were big enough, bringing them in nightly for comfort and safety. They soon outgrew their little night cage, so we moved them into a larger cage inside what was once used as a chicken coop/rabbit hutch. We would bring them out each morning and put them in the tractor.

This past week we felt they had outgrown the cage in the coop, so I made some repairs and allowed them on the floor. Finally I spend a day shoring up the pen and fixed a sliding door for them. Sunday we let them out into their large pen (about 2500 square feet, I think). At first they just hovered outside the door in a space about the size of their chicken tractor, eating the bugs and such from the weeds and grass in the 4'x8' area. Finally, yesterday I saw them out running in their little yard, going from one end to the other, apparently over their fear of the open spaces.

It is so much easire to care for them now. We just feed and water them when needed in the morning and evening, and remove the small sliding door in the morning and close it back up in the evening. We do worry about predators. We have many large hawks in the area, and our dog (a black lab that doesn't bother them) has chased a few raccoons and skunks and the like. There are also a few stray dogs and our neighbors also let their dogs run wild, and we worry about them. So far, so good!

Today I build some perches for the chickens in their little coop. Look forward to seeing how they handle that.