Me and My Boys: Chickens

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Chickens

This isn't something any of us predicted would happen, but we have some new pets! A church friend was anxious to get rid of some chickens, and we had a day to make what felt like a split second decision. We decided to try it out and see how it goes! I blame it on Covid Fever and being cooped up! The friends gave us all their supplies, including a chicken coop that was mostly finished.

The boys are in love! We started out with 6 chickens and a rooster. We named the rooster BBQ because he would need to be killed before the hens started laying eggs. The rooster only lasted a week because of his consistent crowing around 5:00/5:30 every morning that woke me up! I was incredibly nervous that he was waking up the neighbors as well. Instead of killing him, we found someone in the stake boundaries that has chickens and wanted him. I was glad to have him gone and glad that we didn't have to kill him.

We each named a chicken that became "our" chicken. Matt named his Buttermilk, I named mine Dixie, Caleb named his Speckled Flogs, Carter named his Nugget, Bryson named his Fluffles, and Bryson named his Chicken Pot. She has since been renamed Batman.

The boys spend so much time outside with the chickens! They are very entertaining. We let the chickens roam free and feed them all our veggie/fruit scraps. They also take care of any bugs in the yard. We've also seen some catch lizards and one caught a small snake. They sleep in their coop on a perch and go in all by themselves at night. We purchased a roosting nest to attach to the coop. As soon as 4 of them were laying eggs, we left the chickens cooped up for a day to train them to lay eggs in the roosting nest. However, my chicken stubbornly refuses to use the roosting nest still. The white chickens lay brown eggs and the brown chickens lay cream eggs. The boys have been fascinated by the whole process. Matt's chicken was the first to start laying eggs and my chicken was the last. Austin's hen recently took a week break from laying eggs, which we were all very concerned about and did some research to learn reasons why. Thankfully she started up again.

Austin with Fluffles (the easiest one to catch)

Occasionally they will fly high as seen by this one on top of the play set. (She is kind of camouflaged but on the same beam as Carter.) Nugget flew over a neighbor's fence, and their boxer quickly pinned it down. We were inside doing school when it happened; we heard some squawking and went out to investigate. Nugget looked dead with the dogs mouth holding her down, but she survived somehow with only a little blood under her wing. We haven't had any other issues with any attempting to fly over fences again until the other day, which is the determining factor that it is time to clip their wings.

Our first dozen eggs! It took awhile to get a dozen at one time between me using them and also for a long time we were only getting 2 per day. The first egg that Batman chicken laid was a double yolk, and it was really long and skinny. I felt bad that that was her first experience with laying eggs! One other fun surprise was Dixie laying a super tiny egg that had no yolk!