Chickens have a very important roll here on the farm. One of the first purchases we made when we moved here was a bunch of baby chicks shipped in when they were a day old, soon we had a big chicken coop up and our relationship with chickens on the farm began. We had kept chickens at our old house, but this was going to be different.  Before we only kept 10 or 12 chicken and they were housed in a small coop with a tiny yard and fed kitchen scraps and basic chicken feed. Here we had 30+ chickens, they had free access to the entire five acres, we did still feel them kitchen scraps and chicken feed, but they were also eating bugs, weeds and grass.

This year has been what I like to call a “building year”. Chickens are at the peak of their production when they are one and two years old and then fade off a different rates depending on the breed, feed and how the winters are managed. To keep up egg production, without a period of lag, new chickens need to be added to the flock yearly or at least every other year and the old hens culled out. After the first few years we had gotten off track and this past fall our girls were tired and old, some hens had just finished their fourth summer, it was time for retirement, to the stew pot. We kept about five hens and a rooster, the rooster had been hatched and raised here on the farm and so had a couple of the hens and then there were a few favorites that got to stay. It was nice to only care for six chickens over the winter, but I did miss fresh eggs, especially as I bought boxes of eggs from Costco.

This spring we started the flock over fresh with a new bunch of little pullets and recently they began to lay eggs.  New pullet eggs are small and cute and I just love them.  The plan is that next summer we will have enough to start selling them again.

Not only do chicken provide eggs and a little bit of income from eggs, they are little workers. They can clear a plot of land from weeds in an afternoon and turn a pile of manure, straw and pine shavings into usable compost in a couple weeks. Tomorrow I will manually turn the compost pile they have been currently working on and I anticipate it will be ready to be moved and covered with a tarp while it waits to be used and a new pile started. Our little flock is valuable part of our quest to build fertility and practice regenerative agriculture.