Chicken Talk

I've come in for a break. The weather is just too perfect to waste being indoors so I was out as soon as it was daylight thinning limbs, piling brush, raking up leaves and shoveling charcoal into the compost bins.

Last week, when Greg was here, it rained--almost everyday. It was horrible because I had plans on turning him into slave labor, but there you have it, even ogre slave mistresses get the shaft from Mother Nature sometimes.

Greg dodged a bullet because we were going to raise the chicken coop and re-drape my naked greenhouse. All we could manage were the four posts to the chicken coop. It's not much right now, but I can promise you, it is going to be AWESOME.

Since we were housebound most of the time while he was here we brainstormed some future projects and drew out various plans for a chicken coop and yard.

The last chicken health club Greg built was pretty cool for our first time building animal shelters. Greg made a large coop with a cement floor and beautifully built nest boxes of the kind I've never seen replicated elsewhere. The guy just has a craftsman's touch with everything he builds, even if it's just a box. It was a snap to clean and disinfect and I always had nice clean eggs since the hens loved their nest boxes and would lay nowhere else as some chickens are apt to do.

After being taught a lesson by a particularly ravenous raccoon, we turned the chicken enclosure into an aviary. We lost several chickens to that rascally raccoon but it took us a while to figure out what was killing our chickens. Thanks to Greg's inventiveness, he rigged up a silent alarm so that we could catch him in the act. I swear to you that coon was so shocked to see us, he stuck his hands up in the air in surrender.

Since there are even more predators where we live now, a completely enclosed yard is already in the plans for our future chickens.

Our fowl enclosure should be ready this year, though I doubt I'll be getting chicks before January. We'll see. I am debating between several breeds since I want them to be dual purpose--eggs and meat.

I am partial to americaunas, barred rocks and australorps. But I'm also game for trying new breeds to see what they'll produce. While I'm partial to green, blue and brown eggs for aesthetic reasons--the quality is no different to white-shelled eggs. The difference comes from how they're fed and raised. Yard chickens will produce supreme tasting eggs compared to commercial egg producers.

Expect to see future posts on chickens as we prepare for a lot more clucking (not necessarily my own).