we’ve had egg laying chickens for about 8 years now, and they are one of the easiest animals to care for.
over the past 8 years we’ve also lost of a lot of chickens to predators like fox and raccoons. Luckily we have a treeing walker coonhound that does a great job at protecting them, and keeping predators away.
right now we have about 35 chickens, and two are roosters. We have all sorts of breeds, but we have found that Rhode Island reds are the most reliable egg layers. Our chickens are free range.
my husband built feeders out of PVc so we only have to feed them about once a week. We also have two waterers that hang from the coop ceiling that get cleaned and filled Atleast one to two times a week.
We have been having issues with our Americana chickens, or “Easter eggers”, laying their eggs in random places. We frequently are on egg hunts around the yard and in the pole barns.
we love being able to throw all of our food scraps to the chickens. It makes it feel that you are not wasting as much as you would if you just threw it in the garbage.
this year we bought two guinea chicks. They are cool looking birds, but they are very noisy. They are good at alerting the flock of danger coming, but a lot of time are noisy for no clear reason. We did end up losing both already. One was picked up by an eagle, and the other was hit by a car.
the chickens’ egg production has slowed down now that it is fall and getting cooler outside. We now get a couple dozen a week.
I would say the worst part about having free range chickens is how much they can destroy your yard. They like to dig in mulch and small stones. This fall they also dug all over in our front yard for grubs.
my son does love the fact that when he opens the door, they like to run toward him because they are expecting treats.
overall, we love our chickens. The eggs taste so much better, and are more nutritious than store bought. They are an easy farm animal to start out with.