About a month ago, my family fell into a little flock of mixed chickens. A friend needed to get rid of them because he was having problems with his neibor. So, in an impromptu fashion, these little guys ended up at my place.
To begin, I knew absolutely nothing about chickens. I eat them from the grocery store, but other than that, I had no clue. I knew they needed a coop and my husband dutifuly contructed a rag tag looking, but deceidedly solid, home for them out of recovered wood from some of his other projects. When that was done, we released our seven new friends into their new home. In the mix, we had two roosters and five hens, one of which was looking pretty unhappy, having lost a lot of her feathers.
My first stop after getting them home was to the feedstore, and the Feedstore in Waldobro, Maine is quite an experience for the lady farmer. They had more stuff crammed into the shop than I'd ever seen and all kinds of different feeds and grains for chickens, plus chicken vitimins, chicken wormer and even something called a beak trimmer. I must have looked overwhelmed, because a nice older man came over and asked me all the right questions to help me get set up. So....$50.00 later, I started off for home with a new waterer, a feeding trough, gravel and a 50 pound bag of layer pellets, plus some cracked corn for a little variety. He also gave me a basic chicken bookelet to help me figure out how much to feed and how to take care of them.
My ten year old son, Jacob, helped me get everything all set up for them and the chickens all really like him. We jokingly call him the chicken whisperer because all the chickens come a runnin' when they see him coming into the yard. He's even named all of them, and a few have learned to jump up to get a treat when he holds it up in the air for them.
We have two roosters in our flock, Handsome, a beautiful bantam, and Fred, a speckled Hamburg. The hens are Oreo and Cruela, crested chickens, and then we have Baldy, who is the Roosters favorite, and Tiny, who are also Hamburgs. Last, but not least, we have Moxi, a cheeky Bantam.
Once they got settled in, our ladies started laying like professionals and our girls are producing an egg a piece each day. The Feed store guy says they must be happy chickens if they are laying so well for us and I've deceided that maybe I could use just two more laying hens......
Basic chicken care information
What I like about chickens