Big Chickens

The chickens are fully grown and major producers now. They are currently providing eggs for 5 homes (including ours). The chickens are voracious eaters and produce nearly 20 eggs per week. While we try, we probably only eat half that.


Economically it is a net loss, but they please us endlessly with their sweet trills, fights with little sparrows, sprints across the lawn, and dust baths. We can watch them for hours.

{Eggs from left to right: Light brown are from the Australorps (Amelia and Tulip); Dark brown with speckles are from the Wellsummer (Heidi); Blue are from the Ameracauna (Paloma); and Australorps again}

We have been free-ranging them for approximately 5 months now and have noticed a marked difference in the egg taste and color as their diet has become more diverse. They come out each morning before work and each afternoon after work and the majority of the weekend as long as we are home or in the neighborhood.

{Heidi and Amelia}

They love dandelions, slugs, worms, grass, swamp daisy and many other things. They will still come running for fresh grain, which we make available to them every day. They seem very happy; and I say that because they let us know whenever they are not. Whether it is a sunny day, the water or feed is low, the rain has caused a puddle in their coop, or they just feel like it they squawk and squawk until the problem is solved. Freeing them to the yard generally solves the problem.

{From front to back: Amelia, Paloma, Heidi, and Tulip}

Now we just need some good egg recipes to catch up on our stash.

EGGS

It has been discovered what came first - the chicken (the egg took a while...). After an endurance trial of 6 months, our flock is happily laying. Here is a photo log of the past six months of chicken hood.

{This is Heidi - a Wellsummer breed}

We picked up our chickens on a whim at The Urban Farm Store. We purchased them for all the right reasons - because they were adorable. They quickly grew out of that "phase", and every time we went back to the store, for food or knowledge, Maya remarked that the new chicks are cuter than ours ever were.

{Cherry - the Silkie and ugly duckling}

Sadly our dear Cherry turned out to be a boy (the molting buff silkie in the photo above). We had to return the he/she to the country. The silkie is an ambiguous breed and all investigation into the sex said wait until it either lays an egg or starts crowing. Cherry started crowing and now she lives with a different flock. We like to imagine our little turkey strutting and crowing with his own kind. We are better off without a rooster.

{This is Tulip - the big Australorp. We also have a small Australorp named Amelia}

Then one day they were full grown.

{You can't see in this photo, but this egg is blue. It came from Paloma, the Ameraucana}

And the final result: a demented coop-keeper and his prize.