A brown one!

After months of waiting, we finally have a brown egg! We're up to three chickens laying eggs now (Prius and Spyker, our two Americaunas lay blue eggs). Our latest layer?

Evora has finally started laying eggs. She was one of the first two chickens we got, way back in September. She was 12 weeks old when we got her, which sets her at around 25 weeks. We expect Esprit, another hen exactly her age, to lay soon too.

A lovely brown egg among our blue ones

Empty nesting boxes

We continue to keep finding our eggs on the floor of the coop, instead of the nesting boxes where they belong. They love hanging out and pooping in them, but just can't quite figure out their intended purpose. Oh well--- they help with ventilation, and let some light in.

Leftover bacon fat

We're pretty big fans of bacon. With so many fresh eggs, it's very tempting to throw on a piece of bacon to go with our breakfast. Over the past couple of weeks, we've wound up with a ton of leftover grease. We decided to mix it up with some of our chicken scratch and food, and gave it to them. They absolutely loved it.

Next time, I think I'll try making cookies with it. You can use it instead of butter or shortening, like in the following recipe:

1 c. bacon grease or lard
1 c. sugar
1 egg, beaten
4 tbsp. molasses
2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon

Sounds delicious!

Breakfast

After waiting another day, we got another egg. We decided to cook them up into egg-in-a-holes, which were absolutely divine.

Finally!

We got the first of our chickens in late September, just in time for Seleighna's birthday. We weren't sure of most of their ages, so we didn't know when to expect eggs. This morning, something amazing happened.

It's a lovely blue green, so we know it came out of the Americaunas. Spyker is the smaller of the two, so we're relatively sure Prius was responsible for this. We're hoping the others will start laying soon as well.

Chicken feeder

Up until last week, we were wasting quite a bit of chicken feed. We'd put it in a pile in the run, but when it rained, most of the food went to waste. Our local feed store wanted close to 50 dollars for a one-gallon poultry feeder, which wasn't about to happen. We tried an automatic pet-feeder, but the dish was so wide that they'd just jump in and scratch it all out. Then Mr. Dennis had a great idea.

We went to Publix and asked the bakery department for a left-over icing bucket. After drilling some holes and attaching it to a shallow plastic dish (like the kind that goes underneath terracotta pots), we had our nearly-free chicken feeder.

Priming the chicken coop

While Taylor and I were out one evening, Mr. Dennis surprised us by painting the chicken coop with primer. Hopefully we'll paint it pretty soon, and have a barn-red chicken coop with a white picket fence. I just love this coop's charm.

Hand-fed

We've discovered a fun new past time.



Hand-feeding our chickens. Except for Princess (Saleighna's chicken). She pecks at everything but the feed, and it hurts.

The Pecking Order

Our chickens seem to be quarreling much less than when we first put all eight of them together.

The first two chickens we acquired, Evora and Esprit, were less than thrilled to have six new hens squawking about and eating their food. They constantly pecked at the newcomers, but have since relaxed and excepted their new housemates. They're still in charge, along with the two barred rock hens who also boss the others about freely, but they don't constantly fight anymore.

Taylor and I, however, have developed a sympathy for the two ameraucana chickens, Prius and Spyker, the underdogs of the bunch.


Spyker is the grey one, and Prius is the reddish one in the back.


They don't come out of the coop much (except the one time when Spyker jumped the fence and made a run for it. Luckily Taylor caught her just a few moments later, and we've since re-clipped her wings), and Prius seems to be rather hen-pecked.

As they get more comfortable, the pair make appearances in the run every once in a while, and seem to be eating more. We're hoping, with time, that they'll eventually be just as comfortable as the others.

Quite a flock

Today we added another six chickens to our tally.

This is Seleighna and Princess. We decided a chicken would be a perfect birthday present, so we let her have her pick of the new bunch. She chose this beautiful Rhode Island Red.

Taylor and I have taken a particular liking to Royce, our Buff Orpington.

She's absolutely gorgeous, but a touch smaller than the other chickens.

Our two Black Stars, Esprit and Evora, aren't too happy to have new housemates. They're fighting with all of the girls, but I'm sure they'll establish a pecking order soon. Our run is rather full, and we'll have to see how eight chickens work out. If it's too noisy (we're trying desperately to keep the neighbors from noticing our flock), we'll have to get rid of a few.


Seleighna was a bit scared of the chickens at first, but now she runs around and grabs them without a problem.

More pics of the girls to come.

The view from here

The other day, Mr. Dennis decided to clean the roof.



Talk about a busy guy. He's always doing something productive.

Taylor went up with him to help clean the skylights on the roof, and discovered a beautiful view of our gardens from the higher vantage point. He dragged me up there after class just in time for sunset, and it was absolutely beautiful.








It's was really neat to see our garden from another point of view.

Say hello to the ladies

So after browsing Craigslist, we finally tracked down an old farmer out in the boondocks that had a few dozen hens for sale. For eight bucks a pop, we finally added these two lovely girls to our flock.


Our new hens are twelve weeks old, so they won't begin laying eggs for another couple months or so. The all-black chicken is named Evora, and the hen with the brown neck and lighter feet is named Esprit.

They're very attached to eachother, and aren't ever more than a step or two away from eachother. We're hoping to add more to our flock soon!

Getting ready for the newcomers

So the coop is ready for its new inhabitants, but we're still working out a couple of details to make sure the chickens are happy and healthy. We started out by getting some feed (developer and some scratch). We're hoping to start out with older chickens, so we don't have to worry about incubating and feeding young chicks.



Nobody here has ever raised chickens before, so we're a bit unsure about all of the specifics. Most of the books we've read are pretty unclear or really technical about a lot of things, but we're learning slowly. Things are going to get a bit more complicated when we have a bunch of birds of (probably) different ages running around, but we'll sort things out in the end I'm sure. Thankfully we're able to start out with all of this on a small scale, so later on we can know a little bit about everything when we decide to expand.

Our New Coop!

After weeks of work, we finally have completed our new chicken coop. Tons of thanks goes out to Mr. Dennis. Not only did he supply us with a bunch of plywood that he had laying around after another project, and not only did he help financially support this endeavor, and not only did he and Mr. Phils let us take over his backyard with these crazy farming projects, he also spent grueling hours in the humid Florida weather helping build this coop with us. Don't tell anyone, but he was also the mastermind behind the adorable design.



We're hoping to get chickens soon, and we still have a couple more details to add to the coop. We're also planning on painting it--- you can't have a picket fence without it being white washed!

Chicken Coop!

Garden - Check.

Rabbits - Check.

What's next?

Chickens!

Behold the beginning of our new chicken coop:

Mr. Dennis has helped us construct this Category 5 Hurricane-resistant chicken oasis.

The interior of our coop as of yesterday afternoon.

More to come very soon...