Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Hello Bloggers! I'm new to this idea of blogging but am gonna give it a try

We have four RiR's (Rhode Island Red's) baby hens! Emily, Rosie, Sasha and Malea. Or as dh (dear hubby) says, BBQ, Grilled, Fried & Baked. The picture on left is close to what they will look like when mature except that it is a rooster. Even tho we live in a very small rural town, Village ordinances say No Roosters  allowed... but we can have a couple of back yard hens for pets! I'm excited about being able to gather eggs. Wish us Luck! as this is our first time trying chickens :)  
  
(update spring 2010)
Hens are doing great! We were getting three eggs a day like clockwork! The kids just love to check for eggs every-time they come over.  
Photo to right is our lil grandson.  He had a hand full of grain and was bent oer trying to feed them and when he stood up without emptying all the grain from his hand one of the hens jumped up and nips at his poor lil ear thinking it was his hand. 


To date we've added two more. Barred Rock chicks. This was them early in March of 2010.  


They have quite different personalities compared to the RIR's. 


I've named our barred rocks Salt and Pepper.  It's mid-August now and they've been laying eggs for three weeks now. Their eggs are quite a bit smaller than the RIR's so far.

1 comment:

  1. Hi folks! Above was my very fist post on blogspot... that was almost a year ago when I tried to start this. Than I got rather ill for awhile and wasn't able to do the blogging. But here we are now and my girls are still alive! Well, most of them. We have had three chickens that have been with us all summer. Finally at August's end, beginning of September these girls started laying eggs. woohoo! I love the pretty brown color of the eggs. And they taste so good. Never before had I realized what a difference fresh eggs offer when making homemade noodles!
    The girls have very faithfully given us each an egg a day. yummy! Now it's below freezing outside. We have their nest boxes attached to our little greenhouse. We had been getting eggs most near everyday until this week when windshield temperatures plummeted! dh thinks they are in a bit of shock but should come out of it. Just to help them out I went out and made sure their door opening is well covered. I know I don't like sitting in drafts so I doubt they do either. I figure they don't even try to venture out in these freezing temps so why not just keep their door closed until a thawing break comes around. One thing I have learned for sure from these chickens is that you can't have your cake and eat it too! LOL. I love the fresh eggs and I love my flower beds.. and ya can't have all lovely manicured flower beds when you let chickens roam the back yard! They absolutely dig in every bit of dirt out there! Who'd of thunk it. I didn't. LOL, It had never even occured to me that would be a problem. Here we have all that back yard for them to roam and what them girls do? everyday they head straight for my flower beds. Two things I've done to try for work-arounds is 1.) cut-up coat hangers stabbed in the ground all around my hostas. I notice they don't really like stepping over all that metal poking out the ground. 2.) when I spray my neems oil on my my plants the chickens seem to stay away from that area more and my plants seemed to recover from being trampled by the chickens.

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