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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

You Think You've Got A Good Idea, Then You get A Chicken, And Then......

 Raising meat birds seemed like a good idea. A few months of work and then you have a freezer full of meat you grew and cared for yourself. So, Marty built a chicken tractor and we have raised two batches of birds so far. On nice days, the birds have run of the yard and enjoy scratching and pecking about. At night they were safely tucked away.

 Then you think of how lovely fresh eggs are and are encouraged to give laying hens a try. So, you order a few little brown hens when you order your meat birds. They are sweet and fun to watch as they travel as a unit everywhere they go.

 THEN, you are offered a lovely rare breed of rooster.  He sings a lovely song every morning, but is otherwise quite quiet. Handsome fellow, Mr Mister is a welcome character to the flock.  Housing becomes an issue.

 So, your husband labours over a coop design until he can put it off no longer and then builds that coop over a number of weekends.

 About the same time the coop is ready to be inhabited, you get two lovely young Chantecler hens to go with your rooster. After all, the Chantecler is on the critical list for rare chicken breeds and is a good bird for meat and eggs, and is also cold hardy.  What's not to love?
This is Pearl and Opal.  Opal is standoffish, but Pearl is a bit of a bully, ever vocal and pushy.


                                                  She lays lovely eggs though.

                          Once all three were introduced, everyone got along just fine.

 The young brown hens are still a little gang of six, enjoying exploring their world.

 Finally the coop is complete and all are settled in nicely.  After a day of running around, all are happy to head upstairs for a safe good night's sleep.

 On a cold wet day, they are very happy to stay within the coop with plenty of room to scratch and peck.  Fresh eggs however, bring a new options into play...

 So, Marty built an incubator for those fresh eggs to see if we could get some little Chantecler chicks from them.

This isn't the finished incubator. He has since figured out how to turn the eggs regularly from the outside. It appears that a few are actually viable so far.

We may need another coop!

3 comments:

Jenny said...

That has to be the best chicken coop in the world -deluxe!! Your chickens must be very happy. Do the hens not want to sit on the eggs? Hope the incubator works.

Nichola said...

This happened to us! Only our chicken coop looks a wreck and yours have a lovely coopy castle :)

Erica of Golden Egg Vintage said...

I loved this post! I'm having such a great time reading about your garden and chickens tonight!
I'm so glad you've joined my swap! I'll be touch real soon.
ERICA :)

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