Thanks, Girls!
Hmmm... We've been out of town at Joe's graduation, and I had written a post about our chickens and scheduled to show up on Friday night. And now it is gone. I guess even these new-fangled, user-friendly blogging sites foul up once in a while. Or I did. Anyway, here's what I was going to say about chickens!
I wanted them for years before we got them and had collected a file of instructions about feeding and housing them. Not being at all handy, I think I was waiting for that day when I had acquired enough skills to follow coop-building directions. That was not happening, but John - who is less fearful of failure than I am - just up and did it anyway last summer. He thought up a coop, bought the supplies and it was finished in a few days.
It's by no means perfect. We had to add a door once we realized how heavy it was to lift to get at the food and water. And the heaviness is an issue he hadn't thought of in building a "chicken tractor" - a small, moveable, bottomless coop for scooting around the garden so chickens can scratch and "fertilize" fallow areas. John thought he was opting for a more sturdy coop when he used heavy boards. Suffice it to say it doesn't actually move without borrowing the labor of friends and neighbors. So it's more of a small coop instead of a "tractor."
But it's working fine. We get about five eggs per week from each off our three girls - more than enough for our family. While we don't have good records on what we've spent on feed, the chickens range freely on a regular basis and so don't eat as much as they might.
We wonder what will happen as they age and don't produce many eggs. I remember my grandparents' chickens, many of which I grew up with; several had to be at least a decade old. I have a feeling that, like them, I would find it hard to cook up Henny, LouAnn and Junebug - lserving "Pet Pot Pie" as my brother called it when he and his kids slaughtered and ate their rooster.
For right now, we 'll just enjoy the eggs and not worry too much about the future.
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