Scraps for Chicks

Our chickens really enjoy escaping from the chicken castle every chance they get. They love spending as much time as possible foraging in the yard, overturning rocks, looking for bugs, and picking at leaves and other left over garden veggies. The really interesting thing that we noticed is that when they "escape" they do it in the same order every time. This must have to do with the pecking order in the flock but it's kind of cute.

Today they got a real treat, apple scraps left from an apple crisp. Our apples have been dropping from the tree and I have to keep them picked up before the chickens get them, so when I put a big bowl of peels and cores they all began consuming them with zest! Between the chickens that the compost our garbage can is pretty empty these days, unfortunately the garbage bill does not go down just because the can has only one or two bags in it. I does go up though if it's too heavy. Oh well, we're certainly doing our part for the planet and our family...

Two Eggs Per Day

Two of our hens are earning their keep now and we are getting two eggs almost every day now. I finally figured out which of the other hens started laying last weekend. It turned out to be our barred rock hen Phoebe! So now both of our dark colored hens is laying and it looks like our golden sex-link hen "Goldie" should be next. She is the second oldest of the five hens and her comb is starting to get a little redder.

Our Dominique hen Sadie is laying pretty brown eggs, and today's egg was the biggest yet. Phoebe's eggs are still pretty small and a lighter color brown with some mottling. Yesterday we gave our son a dozen eggs and we have a dozen in the refrigerator after todays collection. We used up the last of the store bought white eggs this week so not it's self sufficiency time for us. At least as far as eggs go.