Frida the Malamute leaves her toys at the gate of chicken run. she does it so often that i like to believe she’s trying to share her favorite things with The Girls.
Tag Archives: chickens
The Girls sense that spring has almost sprung.
first 67°F and breezy day of the year and The Girls were all clucking loudly LET US OUT TO GET ALL THE BUGS HUUUUMAN! so i did.
we’ve really enjoyed this small flock of hens for the past two years. they are super sweet. i think we’ll probably keep them around for awhile longer even though we have new layers coming in. so they’re not going to be dinner for a local amish family just yet 🙂
3/365. The Girls are still laying Fresh Eggs.
with the shortened days, normally chickens stop laying eggs in november and go into molt. but nobody told The Girls. so, yay, we’re still getting fresh eggs!
they are so funny when i open the side nesting box. it’s like i’ve created a whole new and interesting world. every. single. time.
The Girls loooooove an unmowed lawn ( not a euphamism ).
reaping the benefits of an insulated nesting box.
the sub-zero temperatures over the past week have provided a good test about whether or not it was worth the effort to insulate the nesting box in an attempt to prevent frozen eggs.
The Conventional Wisdom folks said the insulation wouldn’t make a difference and unless we were able to collect the eggs throughout the day ( not a possibility ), we’d probably end up with a 25% of the eggs frozen by the time we got to them.
we haven’t had a single frozen egg so far this winter.
preparing breakfast for The Girls.
while it’s true that chickens are not particularly picky about what they eat, we have discovered that they do certainly have preferences and The Girls are quite fond of salad greens and yogurt ( all organic of course ).
the salad greens are great because the’re nutritious and they help maintain the deep orange color of their yolks.
there is some debate about feeding yogurt to chickens since they are lactose intolerant, but others say yogurt with live cultures is just fine since the probiotics break down the lactose and the benefits of probiotic cultures on the chickens gastrointestinal tract outweighs the risk of lactose intolerance ( diarrhea ).
i’ve never noticed any runny poop or other effects after giving them yogurt, but i really have no idea if the probiotics in the yogurt is actually helping them. all i know is they lurve the yogurt!
and when i say they loooooooooove it, i mean They Love It. as in, even after i bring them their regular chicken feed, they keep looking at me likem, “hey, seriously, are you bringing us the good stuff?” and when i do bring it out they don’t even wait for me to put it down before they start diving it ( there is a full fresh tray of chicken feed behind them in this photo ).
although i don’t know for sure if the probiotics are helping them, i do know The Girl who was feeling under the weather recovered relatively quickly and didn’t die ( which is what many people who have chickens privately told me was probably going to happen ).