Morning in the coop.

I don’t know much about chickens, but I thoroughly enjoy having them.  There is nothing quite as refreshing as leaving chores undone, and slipping outside to the morning sun in a sleeveless shirt. Water is scattered, the coop swept, and the chickens feed.  I also feed the dog and cat along the way and pluck some weeds from the garden, watering if needed.   It’s a  wonderful half hour of my day.  And more so if the little man is not yet down for his morning nap and joins me. 

We currently have two roosters and four hens.  The first hen just showed up one day, two others where given to us, and Rafa bought one.  I bought the first rooster, and then the next week we were given another.  They fought, so the younger of the two is now resting in the freezer.  Then we were given a third {pictured above} rooster.  He is younger than the other one, but is the one we want to keep.  The older rooster is too old and tough for eating purposes, so he is currently waiting in the back patio to either be traded, sold, or given away.  You would think with all this chicken action we would have eggs coming out of our ears, right?  Nope!   When the first hen showed up, she laid for a while then gave up.  We are hoping she comes back around or she will end up in the freezer too.  Then a few weeks ago one of the younger ones began to lay, but with all the rain we had, stopped.  She has begun again and we get one egg a day from her.  After she lays, she cackles and the others join in and the rooster crows and the dog begins to howl.  Announcing is a family affair!   And picking up a warm egg is incredible!  

The other two are still young, so we think they will begin laying soon. {For their own sakes!}  So there is hope that Job will have all the fresh eggs his little heart desires once he starts eating them!  Our plan is to get our little flock up to about a dozen laying hens and one rooster.  Then we will use the eggs for just eating purposes and maybe raise a few extra chickens to process.

Besides doing a poor job of supplying eggs and producing offspring, they are great about gobbling down kitchen scraps and plucking up the abundance of little critters and insects that can me found around here.  They also love the weeds we tosh them from the garden.  So even if the egg production stays low, we will keep them for the other purposes they serve or even for the pure joy of just having them.