Ahhh the joy of chickens! These fluffy butts are both smart and stupid. And each with their own personality.  They have a warm coop but still stand drenched in the rain, looking forlorn and depressed. The pecking order can look very brutal as the older girls peck and chase the younger girls (the littles as I call them). I use to have to put out 3 areas of feed as the abuse was horrid. My older girls abuse Doood as well.

Doood is a teenager, not yet a year old. Like many teenage boys, he thinks he is smarter, stronger and faster than every1 else. He IS the only rooster and thinks all the hens are his concubines.  I believe the saying goes “Young, dumb and full of €¥^!” Every morning, he hops out of the coop and struts his stuff next to every hen around the feeder. The 2 oldest girls peck him to make him go away as they get breakfast. The 3 youngest wait to eat until Doood decides he wants breakfast more then sex. Ugh. Such is morning times in the coop of Crooked Fence Farm.

My flock started with a purpose. I dreamed of having a full lush garden, brimming with veggies. Patrolling the grounds, are my chickens eating all sorts of nasty, garden munching bugs. As well as wandering the rest of the property, gleefully munching on lawn destroying grubs and dog pestering ticks. I was soooo wrong. Shortly after turning loose my 1st flock, I realized all green is delicious to chickens. Forget the color red! My flock ate every flower then every leaf in my garden. If, by chance, a flower remained hidden long enough to fruit, it was ravaged as soon as it was spotted. In chicken talk, they share the location of each tasty tidbit and they all flock together to lay waste to this potential deliciousness.  I learned that I don’t really need a deer fence around my garden but actually a chicken fence!

I digress. This is a writing about why my chickens are freeloaders.  Chickens have a delightful habit of laying packages of protein called eggs. But, in winter, they do 1 of 2 things: they stop laying due to less sunshine or they molt. (I’ll save the molt for another posting as it needs 1 all to itself.) Out of 8 hens, I am getting maybe 4 eggs A WEEK! (For reference, I should be getting 4 to 5 eggs  DAY!) Slackers! They are eating just as much, maybe more as I supplement their feed with cracked corn to stoke their internal furnaces  to stay warm all winter. 

The littles are only 6 months old and just coming to age to start laying. Since it is January when this is occurring,  sometimes the cold and lack of sunlight delays the actual laying until spring.  A fart egg sometimes happens when there is a hiccup in the egg production process. A fart or fairy egg are much smaller than the usual eggs. They may or may not even contain a yolk. Like I said, it is a glitch in the process.

Fart eggs and only 3 eggs a week will not fulfill the need in this household. Hubby laments that he is feeding a noisy flock and still has to buy eggs. In a few short weeks, we will be drowning in eggs. The birds I chose for my pack of backyard dinosaurs are all heavy layers and should lay 5 to 6 eggs weekly.

Keep a watch out! Crooked fence farm may have to start selling these butt nuggets when production ramps back up!

Whoa. I was very long winded today. Enjoy!

Caroline 🐓