The Feathered Fiends, errrr, Friends

The chickens in the back yard all started as a combination of many reasons. Getting back to real food, zomg the Zombie Apocalypse is coming, economy is crashing, let’s be more self sufficient, etc. No real one reason and I am by no means a “prepper” or a survivalist or a back to Mother Earth type. That said, the chickens are fun, noisy, messy, and surprisingly addictive. We got the first 6 from a local shop that ordered them in as part of the spring batch in 2014. Here’s the beginning roster:
Miss Vicki Chicky, an Ameraucana:

Baby Vicki

Vicki

Mabel, an Ameraucana:

Niko, a Buff Orpington:

Colleen, a Delaware:

Bridget, a Speckled Sussex:

and Serena, a Speckled Sussex:

They started out in a tote box with a heat lamp in our back room. Who knew chicks liked to cuddle? When they started escaping that and spending more time out of the box than in it, we built a temporary run for them while we got cracking on the real run. 

Here’s the real run under construction:

and finished:

We started getting eggs in September when they were 6 months old. 

First time we got 6 in one day! The pale ones are a blue/green from Vicki and Mabel. The ligher brown 2 are from Bridget and Serena, the medium one is from Bridget and the spotted one is from Colleen. Sometimes hers are spotted more than others. They went into a short time period where we got no eggs in the depths of winter  2014/2015 but went right  back into being good producers once the days started getting longer.

That was our 2014 chicken adventure. 2015 adventures will be another post.