Our backyard chickens

When the kids flew the coop the house went quiet. We went through the list of what we could do to bring ‘noise’ back into the house. We do a lot of traveling so cats or dogs was out of the questions. We are marine biologists so a fish tank would make sense. My husband cares for a few at work so he refused. One Sunday afternoon in July last year, I saw an ad on Facebook that the lady we had been buying fresh eggs from was selling a coop and three hens! It took the time we went to church to decide that we were going to raise chickens! By early afternoon, we had the three chickens and a coop hauled up on the back of the truck, thus, began our adventures in raising chickens.

What we didn’t realize is that this is an addictive hobby. Once we started to get fresh eggs two days after we got the chickens, we decided that we needed more chickens. So we added 11 more from a local farmer. It didn’t stop there. By September, we had 22 day-old chicks arriving in the mail and 11 more from someone I follow on Instagram! By the spring this year, almost all of our chickens were laying eggs in a rainbow of colors. I will write about the different types of chickens and egg colors they lay in a different post.

This summer we suffered severe reduction in the flock from raccoon attacks:-( We lost 12 chickens in two weeks. We are down to 22 chickens. These are some of the remainder of the flock.