How many chickens?
Too Many!
Ah, the Chickens…the question I usually get when I roll up with a cooler full of eggs is how many chickens do ya’ll have? My typical answer is too many! The chickens and the “fun” that comes with them (egg collection, chores, stench, etc.) are not typically my favorite things. I would rather be crafting. Then again I would rather craft than many things, so we live side by side, and don’t bother each other too much. Don’t worry they are loved deeply by the farmer of the house, I’m sure he would love nothing more than to stay home and hang with them while working the land. For now he will keep his day job so we can eat, but a man can dream.
Our little chicken adventure started with an innocent homeschool science experiment. I thought it would be so neat to teach the life cycle and actually watch it unfold before our eyes in this hands-on experience. We created a DIY incubator, collected fertilized eggs from a local chicken farmer, carefully hand turned each egg at the correct time intervals, and mission accomplished life cycle lesson complete. After they arrived we could have some egg layers, after all it seemed to fit the scene. City folk move to the country and get chickens. I was game. And it was neat! Then they got bigger, smellier, more destructive, time consuming, and they multiplied! It was the life cycle lesson, over, and over, and over again. Some even came by mail to get more consistent egg layers and a variety of colors to our egg collections, that was the farmer’s call, I thought we had enough. Something I have learned from the Barton family is that more is always better. I tend to disagree, but I was able to keep pretty much hands off the dirty work, so I didn’t complain. Fast-forward to today and we have a variety of different breeds including Ameraucanas, Rhode Island Reds, White Leg Horns and many mixed breeds. When I finally drew the line no more chickens, we received a shipment of ducks in the mail! I learned to be terrific, I must be specific!
The Big Top Tent
The Scoop on the Coop
When you pull up to our property one of the first “fun” features you usually notice is the large area under the protective net that looks sort of like a big top circus tent, this is the home of our lovely flock. It all started there because there was a rickety old covering out there that we would use to hang their food and give them shade, then the chicken condo was constructed. (Oh, I mean the chicken coop.) This coop was built nicer than our house, I joked when my husband finished the coop, if the chicken thing didn’t work out we could always use it as a rental condo. The net enclosure around the coop and chicken run were for the protection of the chickens. We had heard in the area that hawks like to swoop down and have a feast. In the end I think it ended up looking like a big top circus tent for the chickens.
My favorite coop story was when my husband put the final touches on the coop, and was at work one day, I innocently went to check on the chickens that had recently moved in and found a huge black snake in the coop. I called my husband and he said kill it, so I called my father-in-law next door and said, “There’s a black snake in the coop, can you come kill it?” He brought a shot gun over and blew a hole through the snake and through the brand new coop floor. After that the door of the coop held a sign below saying no guns allowed.
There’s been talk of the big top moving to the bottom of the hill, I won’t hold my breath till it happens. (Actually, that’s exactly what I will do because they stink!) Just word to the wise, if you plan a chicken area, make it far enough away from your door so it doesn’t instantly waft the chicken poop smell to your nostrils when you step outside!
The Ducks and Geese
Friends & Frenemies
The ducks and I are friends. They keep to themselves, waddle away if we get to close. Entertain the the little ones as they waddle all over the yard. They eat bugs and grass, and they are pretty cute with their little duck sounds. I wish we had a pond for them. We have Golden Hybrid, Khaki Campbell and Rouen ducks waddling around the farm. I’m happy to report we have some babies on their way soon! I’ll update the site when they arrive so you can meet them. Also duck eggs are so nutritious, who knew?!
The geese on the other hand are my frenemies. They are mean. I am not even sure why we ever had geese, except the two positive comments that their large eggs make a beautiful decoration and make a wonderful cheesecake. The only stories I heard from when my husband had them growing up were about chasing, biting, honking. I am not sad that we no longer entertain geese on the farm. We choose to get rid of them one year when they stopped laying, they were just a menace, and we had to hire help with the farm and our uncle and we didn’t want the help getting attacked by them. Good riddance. One cute story was they hatched babies while we were on vacation one time, of course they hissed as we came near them. That sort of took the cuteness out of the whole thing. We had, and I am happy that is past tense, Chinese geese on the farm.
