Enjoying the sun

A few days ago Hubby took advantage of the nice weather and cleaned out the chicken coop.  It is a miserable task, shoveling and hauling barrow-fulls of soiled chicken litter from the coop to the compost pile across the yard.  I'm very fortunate it's a task my husband has been willing to do since we first got chickens nearly twenty years ago. 

The cage around the waterer is to stop them from roosting on it.

We've learned a lot over the past twenty years.  We give our chickens a good home, but not a fancy one.  The run is large, with plenty of space to wander and search for seeds and bugs.  In Ortonville we used to free-range our hens, and hoped to again when we moved to this house five years ago.  But the neighbor's dog also free-ranges, and according to the folks who lived here previously, she is a known chicken-killer.  We could make a stink about the neighbors keeping their dog on their property, but in the interest of peace, we built a fenced run instead.

We have about 1500 sq ft of fenced run.

I really like having chickens.  They are fun to watch, and can get quite tame if you spend time with them.  Different breeds will lay different colored eggs, including Ameracaunas which lay blue/green eggs.  They eat leftover kitchen scraps (their favorite is spaghetti).  In their run they eat grass and young plants, which turns the yolks of their eggs a deep orange color.

A barred rock hen

Like most birds they are fairly hardy in cold weather.  It's a bit more challenging to keep chickens in Minnesota, where winters drop to well below freezing for days at a time.  But with a bit of planning and good coop design you can keep your birds healthy and laying throughout the cold months.  Chickens are cheap, easy to keep, and if you lose a few along the way it's not a big deal. Well, not a big deal to anyone but the chicken.

The chickens were also out enjoying the sun.

I've found the best time of the year for laying is mid-winter.  The chickens have finished their fall moult, and the days are getting longer after the winter solstace.  Egg production is affected more by changes in sunlight than by temperature.  So as the days get longer, the egg production increases.  As long as the hens have plenty of food and water and shelter to keep their bodies going, the eggs will keep coming.

A pretty, camouflaged speckled Sussex.

We have just one rooster at the moment (unless the little silkie we got this spring is a male - hard to tell until they're fully grown), a beautiful blue-laced red wyandotte.  He's a calm roo, doesn't crow often, and doesn't bother the hens too much.  Which makes him a keeper.  A mean, loud, aggressive rooster gets the boot. And when I mean the boot, I mean the stew pot.

Our roo, still in moult.

We have about 25 chickens right now.  That may seem like a lot.  However, half of the hens are at least three years old, and don't lay much anymore.  And we lose several a year to predators, despite our fence.  So although we have enough eggs for our needs right now, by next fall we'll be falling short.  Which means I'll be placing an order for new chicks in the spring.  That is, if the post office can be trusted to mail live chicks at that point.  (See this news story if you're curious.)  If not, perhaps we'll make a road trip down to McMurray Hatchery in Iowa.  

A California white looking for goodies.

Or perhaps I'll get an incubator and try hatching a few eggs at home.  That might be risky - our lone rooster is a few years old, and like I said not very active.  With so many hens around him to choose from, we may not get many fertilized eggs.  And with hatching, we'd run the risk of getting a bunch of males instead of a bunch of females.  When you order from a hatchery, you can usually specify which gender you want.

Whatever the case, we can look forward to raising a few chicks in the spring.  We can also look forward to another year of fresh eggs from happy hens.  And hubby can look forward to another year of cleaning the coop.