Chicken Talk

Let's talk about chickens and farm fresh eggs.  Here on our farm we have some chickens and a few roosters.  We also have a beautiful forest that cuts up the middle of our property and runs down to the Missouri River.  It's incredible, it's the reason that my father bought this property, "Cause a man needs a forest."  The downside to this, is that animals can travel to and from our property very easily.  When I say animals, I mean the wild sort, like coyotes and racoons, both of which love to eat chickens.  We knew this and have four large dogs to prevent such animals from coming to close.

Since living here I have never seen a racoon even close to our property, but you should see them at my neighbor's dog-less property next door, boy they love chickens. Coyote's are another story.  Each day I take our four dogs for a run.  We are gone for 20-35 minutes, guess the coyote's have figured this out too.  Upon our return one morning, a rooster was gone, a feather trail on our lawn attesting to its demise.   Then a few days pass and another roster is gone.  Rosters aren't a big loss, since they don't lay eggs.  We didn't think much of it, untill the number of daily eggs decreased from 18 down to seven or less.

When your chicken population is over 30, it's hard to count them.  We had three different colors, white, black, and red, so we could estimate how many of each, we thought we had.  Currently, white - 2, black 8-10, red 10-12.  As you can read and estimate from our figures, there are some 10 -16 chickens that are gone.  Guess whence a coyote finds such an easy catch, it comes over and over.

To give our dogs some credit, the chickens normally don't disappear during the night.  Two dogs are out patrolling, and their barks can wake us up with a start when they find something.  Side note - all four dogs are never out at once, or they would leave our property and go find another property to terrorize, a hard lesson learned.  The downside to having these dogs out at night startling the forest creatures, is that they are tired all day.  Our chickens love to wander into the forest and scratch in the fallen leaves.  Now when we hear them out there, we call out to them, "You know your just coyote food out there."

I can feel your thought regarding this, and you are wondering why I didn't go into the forest and chase the chickens back to safety.  Well, just imagine trying to run though the forest with low branches and bushes and all while chasing a chicken, a small animal that can duck for cover in spaces you can't reach, and can fly to heights that you also can't reach.  Typically going in after chickens only makes the situation worse, sending the chickens further into the forest, while clucking, which gives predators their location.

Besides the predators, there is also, one, possibly two snakes that live in our barn.  I know the thought of snakes scares most of you, but we allow them to stay since they are black rat snakes.  Unlike rattle snakes, they don't bite, they instead eat mice and rats.  Not having a cat, defaults this responsibility to nature, known as our snake.  We refer to it has a her, and she like to eat eggs too.  Why chase mice, when you can curl up in the roosting box and wait for the not-so-smart chickens to lay on egg right on top of you??  We've seen as many as seven bumps in the snake.  Pete has actually extracted an egg from the snakes mouth while she was in the act of eating it.  What we won't do to get enough eggs for you all.

So at the beginning of the season I felt like we could fill everyone's egg order, and we did for months.  Those times have changed, sorry.  Please keep requesting how many dozen eggs you would like each week and I'll get as close to that request as possible. 

We also have a chicken sitting on 10 eggs.  We are hopping for a disproportionate number of hens, since typically you get about 50-50 (chickens to roosters).  As mentioned last year, mother hens do a much better job raising baby chicks then I do.  So please send your good ju-ju, vibes, thoughts, and prayer, to our un-hatched chicks, that they will be hens, and that they will be smarter then the last generation and avoid the forest.

As always, thanks for supporting our farm and our dreams to be farmers!!!!