Chickens are one of the delights of life. They are the most active and colorful animals on the farm. One cannot grow tired of watching chickens, each one with their own personality, living in their orderly society where the pecking order means what it says.
We have a small flock of mixed breed chickens that lay eggs for us. We have experimented with many different breeds and have come to like the dual purpose chickens like Black Austrolorps, Orbingtons and Barred Rock. We get a few chicks every spring to replace the old chickens that will go into the pot in the fall. We get light colored one year, dark colored the next and spotted ones the year after that. The chickens live with us for two and a half years at which time they reduce their laying to a point of not paying for their keep, so they go into the pot. It is a true delight to raise little chicks every Spring. They are so full of life and are such joyful little critters who love it when I bring them scoops of worms from the compost.
People say that chickens are stupid. I have raised hundreds of chickens over the years and never seen a stupid one. If people took the time to understand what the chicken is interested in and what it is they want to know about, one would realize that they are in fact very smart. Some smarter than others, but still capable of learning things from one another. This is more then I can say about some humans.
Our chickens live in a mobile chicken coop surrounded by a mobile electric net fencing. We can move them to any place on the farm where they are needed. This could be cleaning up the old compost area, weeding the vineyard or fertilizing and harrowing the fields. It is also very good to move them around for parasite control as well as giving an area a rest after having chickens on it for some time. As long as we keep them happy they have no issue with staying inside the fence. The fence is more to keep wild animals out then it is to keep the chickens in. Our area has a healthy population of both Coyotes and Raccoons that would love to get a chicken meal from time to time. To this day we have never lost a chicken to a land predator, but we have lost a few to owls, hawks and Bald eagles. Not easy to prevent them from having access to our chickens. In the summertime the chickens can by found moving around in the fields but in the winter we keep them close to the house.
Chickens are originally from close to the equator all around the globe and need no less then 12 hours of light every day to lay eggs. So, as the days get shorter here in the Northwest, we provide them with artificial light to make up the difference. This keeps up the egg production in the darker days of Winter.
We sell eggs here at the farm. Most of our customers are our neighbors which means all of our eggs are spoken for each week.