UPS AND DOWNS WITH CHICKENS


We have had our ups and downs with chickens over the past few years.  We have gone through a few periods with no chickens and periods with tons of chickens.  Right now we have a few bantams, a rhode island red rooster and a phoenix hen.  We did begin this spring, however, with all of last year's chicks that were all grown up and laying nicely and a buff orphington rooster that thought he ruled the roost.  My son was selling eggs to the neighbors and loving that.  There was a total of about 26 chickens.   

 We have a chicken house that has worked pretty well for us, minus a couple mishaps we had.  The building is about 14 x 24 or so.  We have roosting boxes on one end for them to lay in.  Just last week we put together an outdoor pen about 10 x 20 or so for them which they now love.  At first they wouldn't go outside for anything!  We put them in every night and it's nice they can get outside during the day.  They have, however, eaten some of the flowers I had planted there. 

The first year we had chickens we learned the hard way that you cannot let them outside at night.  We had a nice outdoor pen of chicken wire fence with a roof on it and thought through being purely farm naive that it would be ok.  Well, it didn't take the predators long to figure out how to get to all the tasty chickens!  Soon after the outdoor pen came down and remained gone til now.

This year we had a similar problem -chicken massacre!  Our chicken house is old and was in need of some repair but we haven't ever had a problem with it.  We believe it was a racoon that actually tore a board off the outside of the house and bam -in one night =half the chickens dead!  Some of them were just killed, some eaten and some dragged off into the night.  Our beautiful rhode island red rooster made it through but without his tail.  This all happened a few weeks before our county fair so he couldn't be shown and the kids had a lot less chickens to show.  Of course after the buffet he came back the very next night and found another spot to get in.  Since then we have sturdied the outside and put on a new metal roof.  No more predator problems.  After all of this I was looking for some new chickens for the kids to show and found this very nice gentleman who actually gave them the bantams we have.  They ended up showing a few of them and took a couple grand champions/reserve champion places with them! 

All of our chickens eat layer feed and occasionally scratch grains and fresh fruit.  In the past few years chicken feed has gotten a lot more expensive but it's still worth it.  We do keep a few of the show bantams in cages in the chicken house.  They have plenty of room along with layer feed and fresh water.  We also have 4 ducks that live with the chickens.  They may be a story of their own!  Through all of our chicken experiences I am still a little skiddish of the roosters with their intimidating size and fluffing up of the feathers they do.  I do, however, love to watch the chickens, hear the rooster crow and now I can watch them "play" outside.