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Happy Square Root Day! (3/3/09) Once again, there's snow on the ground and it's COLD outside. That means a lot of time spent cutting wood and splitting it, to burn in my wood stove. It also means that my poor chickens have been cooped up inside the hen house for four days in a row now. Did I mention my chickens yet?
I have a pair of Buff Cochin Bantam chickens (hen & rooster) and eight new baby chicks, hatched last week. I was hesitant to keep the eggs for hatching, since the weather isn't good right now, but then realized that keeping the chicks and mother hen inside the hen house with a warming lamp is sufficient to keep them warm and also keeps them safe from predators.
This is our third batch of baby chicks since we bought our chickens last spring, and we haven't had much luck increasing the size of our flock yet, even though we always start off with 8-10 chicks. The warm weather chicks can squeeze through the fence around the coop, where the local cats are always waiting to pounce on the tasty little chicks. Maybe this batch of chicks will have a better chance, with the hen house to protect them.
There's nothing like watching the hen and her chicks peck the ground. It sounds corny, but it's true; just like city folks watching fish in an aquarium. Of course, a lot of city dwellers are raising chickens, so maybe some of you know what I mean. In addition to being entertaining, chickens are also great for insect control and lawn fertilization, not to mention the benefit of getting fresh, free-range eggs. For those of you that don't know about free-range eggs, they are lower in cholesterol and higher in nutrients than the eggs produced by those poor hens at the egg factory assembly line. I also know exactly when my eggs were laid and what type of chicken feed went into producing them.
