Chicken News

There’s been some activity in the flock the past few months. Thought I’d give you an update, since the chickens and their antics are quite popular on the blog!

First, this chicken, who I’ve been calling Beauty for obvious reasons, took up residence in a small nest by the front door, sitting on a rock day and night. She’s been broody since the beginning, but I hoped she would set up shop in the coop after we moved the chickens from the barn to the new coop.

Actually, I hoped she would LAY EGGS, but OK.

This lasted for weeks, though she often left her nest in the morning for about an hour to eat in the coop and take a dirt bath to cleanse herself of mites. She’s healthy and I got used to her being there, though I felt awful for her on those days when the air conditioner was running right beside her.

Meanwhile, the other three chickens were delivering two eggs a day. Not too shabby. And best of all, they laid them in the fenced in area, under the coop, every day. In other words, I could always find them. Bonus.

But I really want more eggs. I am still buying eggs to cover us through the weekend, since Steve eats two a day during landscaping season.

My friend Scott Pauley, who is a master seed saver and has in recent years gotten into bird breeding, had a bunch of chicks in June and offered me three hens once we could tell them from the roosters. I said I had one real criteria: good layers.

So last Sunday we picked up these lovelies. They are small, which is quite nice. The fathers were jet black Australorps. The mothers were a Rhode Island Red/White Rock cross called Tetras. All three breeds are excellent layers. I have high hopes for these girls.

So far they stay in the fenced area during the day. But the second and third evenings, two of them slipped out and slept somewhere in the wild. The third one slept alone in the small coop, while the Americaunas claimed the big coop.

Then, something amazing happened. We have a housepainter here, Richie Palmersheim. He’d made some comments about telling Beauty that her rock had hatched and she could go now. When he got to her area he tossed the rock away and flattened the ground that was her nest, covering it with arbor vitae leaves.

And Beauty was free! She rejoined the flock! And now she roams around all day eating bugs, and sleeps in the big coop. So heartwarming. I had no idea. From now on I’ll give her a couple weeks on an egg or rock and then “hatch” it for her.

The past few days I’ve shut the door in the late afternoon, before the white chickens slip out, and they’re bonding with the small coop. I don’t expect to get eggs from them this season, but come spring, OK! And I’m going to try my best to bond them to the laying boxes (see how I used dish towels to make them think they were private??) so they’ll lay inside the fence.

So now there are seven. And the disrupted Americaunas, who couldn’t get access to the coop for one day while I kept the whites quarantined, have set up a secret nest somewhere in the prairie.

Which means, of course…. zero eggs.