Time to talk about chickens. Chickens are funny animals, they peck around the yard and lay eggs every day. There is one rooster who obviously facilitates the egg laying, and also likes to crow all the time (not just at sunrise). The chickens have special food in their coop, but they also eat corn and whatever else they can find around the yard (especially scavenging from the compost, and pecking around the ground for various bugs and worms). You can tell when they are hungry because they cluster near the gate waiting for us to feed them. They also get really excited whenever we bring new scraps to the compost. Whenever that happens they spend the next hour or so feasting on the special treats.
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| Cleaning up the yard |
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| Weeds for the chickens |
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| Making eggs, tee hee |
The chickens require care 3 times a day:
- Close the door to their coop in the morning, so the sparrows don't eat all their food
- Feed them corn at lunch time
- Open the door to their coop at sundown so they can eat
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| Lunchtime corn |
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| Dexter wishes he could come in too :( |
They collectively lay around 10 eggs a day. This is a lot of eggs! We share a lot with neighbours but somehow nobody has needed eggs in awhile an we've go a backlog. Time to start calling people, or handing them out for free on the street, haha.
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| So many eggs.... |
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| The egg laying area |
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| This is where the chickens are supposed to lay (and they usually do) |
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| Fake eggs and golf balls to identify the laying area for the chickens |
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| But they also like to lay in this secret nest in the corner |
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| And sometimes up here |
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| For awhile they were laying way on the other side of the yard too...luckily they have stopped |
Basically the trick is that if there seems like fewer eggs than normal, time to start looking around the yard for secret nests.
