The birds are 6 months old. We still have 13 hens and 1 rooster. We know their patterns now and they know ours. When I take Joey out in the morning they come running to the fence. They know I am bringing some sort of food scrap. Usually I feed them scraps of strawberries, cucumbers, bananas, tomatoes or carrots. Joey loves cucumbers and carrots too. The other morning he reached his paw through the fence and pushed a cucumber right up to the opening. He waited patiently until the Barred Rock came over to eat the cucumber. He then pounced at the fence and scared her. She jumped up and squawked and Joey trotted away proud of himself. If only I had a video!!

The rooster is quite annoying to me. I know he is only being a rooster but he can stop coming after my boots! It normally happens in the evening when they are all beginning to roost. The hens are all roosting up high and he is patrolling the ground floor. If we have to go in to fill water or feed he has to come over and peck at our boots. Some days it’s harder than others! I take a rake with me every time, just in case I need to swat him. He has chased me out of the coop once, I try not to turn my back on him. The other Sunday he was magically out of the fence. We have NO idea how his big body could fly but it obviously did. Joey helped coral him back into the coop with us. That was an eventful morning to say the least!!

This is a Red laying an egg. She gets in, lays an egg and then leaves.

This is a broody Leghorn. She does not leave this nesting box. She is filthy dirty, her comb is  flopped over her eye, she has stopped producing eggs and we have to physically lift her out of here to eat or drink. Once she is out she puffs herself up real big, makes weird noises and tries to run right back in. I try to wait around to watch her eat and drink. She is completely broody, only wants to lay on an egg and become a mother. Just the other day we lifted her up and she was laying on 5 brown eggs! She lays white eggs! We are constantly going into the coop to take the eggs and kick her out of her box. We are hoping this stops soon and we don’t have to put her in a separate area so she has no contact with any eggs.

On average we get about 10 eggs a day. I have been saving the shells to make grit. I rinsed the eggshells under warm water, laid them on a baking sheet and cooked them at 350 degrees for 20 min. This is supposed to kill off any bacteria and get the “egg” taste out so the chickens won’t start eating their eggs. I then crushed the eggs up real small and put it in their grit feeder. I have read about this method on line. It is supposed to give them back their own calcium and is full of nutrients. We will see how this goes.

If I am going to cook with eggs, I have to crack them in a bowl to see how many yolks I get. This egg below on the right ended up having 2 yolks in it. For some reason in about every 2 dozen we are getting a double yolker. I have not done too much research on this but plan to study up and see why this is happening. I have seen double yolks from our brown and white eggs. The tan and darker brown eggs are just regular eggs! I do cringe when I see a massive eggs like this, poor hen!

The chickens have been laying about 8-10 eggs a day. We have been recording the color and how many eggs we get a day. The Leghorns are the easiest to track since we only have 2. We have been getting about 11 eggs a week from them. A couple of brown eggs have had double yolks. I know of 4 so far.

The chickens will eat just about anything. I cleaned up the cauliflower from the garden and within hours this was completely gone! We also throw grass clippings into the fenced area to watch them scratch around. They love finding the bugs in the grass.

We are almost certain every chicken is laying an egg. We have four different breeds so four different egg colors. We are not certain but think the Reds and the Rocks are still getting the swing of things. Here are a few other pictures just for fun!

There was a pretty strong storm that went through early today, and when I first went out there were no eggs. After the storm there were 4 eggs! I took Joey out for a little walk and peeked into the coop. There was a Buff in the nesting box making some loud noises. Maybe the storm is making them lay later in the day, who knows!!

This weekend I was able to work on clearing up some of my garden. The chickens enjoyed a bunch of lettuce, cauliflower, and some corn on the cob. Since Joey loves lettuce, he was taunting the chickens as they would come close to the fence to get their treat. He keeps them on their toes!

Going out and collecting eggs has made this past week so much fun! The first six days were consistent. One brown egg then the next day a brown and white egg. The past three days we have had 2 eggs each day. I am assuming only 3-4 birds are laying right now. Hopefully each day more and more will start to lay. I cracked open the first egg and put it next to a store bought egg. It clearly has more color, a harder shell and a thicker consistancy. It was mighty tasty too! I am saving the shells to bake, then crunch up to feed back to them. Supposedly this is a great source of calcium for them.

We also clipped all their wings. We had a Red escape to the woods for a full day. She finally came home at dusk. When she flew across the creek we knew it was time to make flying a little challenge for them.

I checked on the chickens earlier today and two were hanging out near the nesting boxes and I think another one was in one of the boxes. We checked the boxes when Abby got home and there were two more eggs laid!

So since one of them is white that means a leghorn laid it. The other egg is a darker brown than last night’s brown egg. So it seems we might have 3 of the breeds laying now. The eggs are still pretty small compared to a store bought Large egg.

Here’s a comparison picture with the first egg, the two from today, and a store bought Large.

We were out doing the nightly rounds and I decided to take a look around the whole coop for eggs. In the first nesting box there was the smallest brown egg!! We had placed golf balls in the nesting boxes about 2 weeks ago hoping they would get the hint that eggs should be laid there. It worked!! I had to do a double take. So now the fun begins…..

We are patiently waiting for the chickens to lay some eggs. We have about 4 weeks to go for the Leghorns and 6 weeks for the others. The chickens have enjoyed brocolli, pineapples, asparagus, strawberries, zucchini and cucumbers. They come running out of the coop in the morning to see what treats I am going to give them. We have one Leghorn who is an escape artist. She has been outside the pen twice. She may be the first one to get her flight feathers clipped! The rooster is learning his voice. Below are a few videos of him working on his crow. More posts will come once the eggs are here, as for now they are just hanging out being chickens!

https://youtu.be/3OgMhjZEc3w

https://youtu.be/qNWNZRMAfSs

Today I took some strawberry scraps out to the chickens. They seemed to enjoy it by the way they were running around with them in their mouths. Joey on the other hand was sad he didn’t get a treat.

The Leghorn was so excited she had strawberry juice down her side.

The chickens were too fast to get any good pictures, but this one made me laugh!

The neighbor farmer has been working on the fence that butts up to our  property line. We were happy to see new calves were born and out in the pasture.