Let's talk about Chickens!

Dec 20, 20162 min read

Tim and I always liked chickens. We had them in the 90's when our kids were little, but we didn't have enough protection from Coyotes and other predators to keep them.

We used an incubator and hatched more, but tragedy struck again. As I was trying to keep them warm, I cooked them with a heat lamp. Poor baby chicks! I needed a break from the heartache.

Early in 2016, we decided to get chickens. We started off by building a fortress. We were blessed to get used tin from a friend and built a lovely home complete with a chicken run with wire covering on the top and sides.

We found a lady in Elm Mott, Texas who raised the breed we wanted... Buff Orpingtons! They were due to hatch on April 11, 2016. As excited as adoptive parents, we drove all the way there and back with 38 fluff balls of peeping joy.

Buff Orpingtons are a heritage breed and they tend to go "broody." That means they like sitting on their own eggs and hatching them! No more incubators for us! We will let the clucks do all the work. Tim calls them perpetual chickens. Nowadays we like to use the term sustainable.

Out of those 38 chicks, we lost a few. We ended up with 17 hens and a lot of roosters.

We open the gate of their fortress a few hours a day and they all go back inside at night. Nothing hard about it. I love watching them... and having conversations with them. They are quite funny! I think I need more chickens. In fact, I have a chicken addiction!

At only five months old, we had our first broody hen and she hatched a pullet egg! What a wonderful joy. On October 18 we had another broody cluck hatch 12 chicks. And now we are going to set duck eggs under another broody hen tonight.

In 28 days I will be saying "Let's talk about ducks!"