It’s Chicken Day

Beautiful sunny December 1st.

Since I finished the chicken coop and outside fencing (a.k.a. “run”), I decided to obtain some adult Rhode Island Reds and/or Barred Plymouth Rocks. Both are cold hardy heritage that have been around for 2 centuries.

This area already had old, tough metal fencing panels, grape vines and scrubby trees. The area must have been home to some sort of small animal years ago, maybe a pig (?). The trees had grown into and through the fence and would have been very difficult to remove, so I decided to reuse the resources at hand and make this the home for chickens. The trees should protect chickens from the many hawks around here. (I’ve seen as many as 5 hawks at a time scanning the pasture for meals.) Hawks like to swoop down in open spaces.

I have used some of my copious supply of oak leaves as initial coop bedding and feathers from an old pillow the cats ripped up for the nesting boxes. It seems like a chicken should like nestling into a feather bed to lay eggs, right? Sorta of like nestling into Mama.

I found a local person on the dreaded CraigsList with a few 14 week old Rhode Island Red pullets and a rooster for sale at a reasonable price ($10 for hens, $5 for rooster). I’m going to get them at 3:00.

Exciting day! My first livestock on the Small Calm Farm!