Chicken Chores

Raising kids by raising animals….

The Chicks Arrive:

 

In The Brooder (and, yes, we had a lot of chicks, as you can tell from the second brooder peeking out from behind The Mackenzie):

 

Many, Many Months Later, these chicks, or at least the better half of them, would be laying eggs in the row of nest boxes built in our coop:

 

Every Morning, and most evenings as well, one of the kids had to go up and harvest the eggs; sometimes there’d be three or four, sometimes a dozen or more:

 

If You’re Accustomed to grocery store eggs, spotless, and uniform in size and color, raising your own mixed breed flock offers you the chance for a wide variety of eggs, all covered in chicken poo and in need of a hygienic scrub:

 

Once Scrubbed, the eggs are dried, then boxed and refrigerated.   We ate many of them…we have  cookbooks just for eggs.  We also gave eggs away by the carton, which mollified the nearest neighbors, the ones who had to endure cocky roosters crowing at dawn.

 

And every single weekend, the coop had to be mucked out; a few dozen birds generates a lot of garden enhancing muck!

More later… {essay on why we raised chickens & other fowl, etc.}