my chickens today

My wonderful husband is so good to try and meet my whims...and you'll remember that Amanda and I told him we wanted to raise some chickens for fresh eggs.  Well, you can read here when we got our 6 chicks this past spring.  Chuck worked so hard building the coop.  And you can read here how much they've grown in just 3 months.



Well, as it turned out, 3 of the chickens were actually ROOSTERS, so there goes my dreams of lots of eggs, lol.  We allow our chickens to free range during the day, and I love how it has cut down on the bugs in the yard.  But we have to keep the roosters penned up separate because while my black one looks amazing, he is a mean little sucker.  He had my Hannah running full tilt one day, it was actually kind of funny.  We've learned to not turn our backs on him.  LOL.  In this picture you will only see 2 roosters because one stayed out and didn't come home to roost at night, and while we found his feathers, he hasn't been seen since.

 

A few weekends ago, we went out and purchased 3 more hens, and added them to our hens.  I figured they were just chickens, so no problem.  Well, they fought over everything for the first week.  The 3 new hens versus the 3 old hens.  It was like watching teens girls in high school. hahaha.  And they all tried to lay their eggs in the same spot.  So if there was a hen in the nest, Pearl would stand at the bottom of the ladder and fuss like crazy.  We were getting 2-3 eggs a day before we got the new hens, but while we were still getting 2-3 eggs, we should have been getting 6 since each hen will lay 1 egg per day.  Chuck figured they just didn't have enough room so...



Chuck revamped our horse stable.  So much room!  While Chuck was building this coop, the hens would scratch around his feet.  They are very calm and will come right up to you when you're outside.  Owen loves to try and feed them.
 

 

Come and meet my girls.  These are the 3 we've raised from chicks.  The black one is named Blackie and the other 2 are Whitey and Pearl.  Yeah, I know, real original.  But it's not like they come when called anyway.  The white ones are Leghorns.  They are the most prolific layers and lay white eggs.  They have been laying a lot of double yokes too.  Blackie is a Plymouth Rock and she lays brown eggs.  Her's are usually smaller than the white ones.

 

These are the "new" girls.  They are actually older then my original girls, but we wanted eggs NOW, hahaha.  They are all Americana's.  The roosters of this breed are absolutely gorgeous and colorful, but Chuck said no more roosters.  Oh well.  From left to right we have Coco, Chuckie (Owen named her), and Spot.  They lay large GREEN eggs.  They look really cool.  Now hopefully with all the ladies having this much elbow room they will all lay every day.  I have noticed that while the shells are much thicker then store bought eggs, the yolk is more yellow, the the taste is better.

 

So, what's going on at your place???

Be blessed.

Debbi