Chickens!? Chickens!? Anybody who knows me could tell you I'm a not a farmer. I know some farmers and I respect them for the work they do, but you have to be driven to want to be in that business today. So how did I end up with chickens? Well, they're my wife's idea, like many of the best ones in my life. Don't ask me why.

Well, let me tell you - chickens are easy. We have laying hens, you know, female chickens that lay eggs. Put chicken feed in, clear the chicken manure out once in a while, provide a small amount of care and protection, eat lots of eggs. Lots of eggs. Eggs to give away. We get about one egg per day from our hens. We have 7 hens. That works out to a lot of eggs in a week. Yeah chickens are easy. Sort of.

If I start at the beginning, I recall that chickens aren't that easy. Not hard, but there was a lot of infrastructure to set up.

Our chicks, a few days old.

We had them in a little brooder made from a plastic storage box with an air and heating space cut in the lid (and then covered with hardware mesh to discourage cats.)

We started by putting our chicks in a small home made brooder, and using a heat lamp to keep them good and warm. Then as they grew, we had to move them to a bigger brooder. (So first.... into a cardboard box while I made a brooder from pine 1x2's and hardware mesh.) We made the larger brooder with a detachable top so we could let the chickens sit in the grass and scratch around with the top keeping them contained and safe.

Our chicks (now pullets), in the larger brooder..

Then, as they continued to grow, it was time to build the henhouse. I enlisted the help of a good friend and we build a henhouse that could withstand the rain, wind, cold, heat, and snow that Vermont delivers. It's now come through a storm with hurricane strength gusts like a champ. I call it ... the 'Taj-ma-hen'.

Side view of the Taj-ma-hen. 4 year old for scale.

Front view of the Taj-ma-hen. That's a hen door at the bottom, middle

Once the henhouse was finished, time to put in the occupants. Once we put them in, we left them there for two weeks to establish it in their minds as their home.

Our girls check out their new home..

And then the big day. Finally we let the hens out to free-range over our land.

So we free range our hens, which means simply that you let them roam where they will. We try to keep them from the worst hazards, and we do keep an eye on them. But pretty much they roam over our ten acres fairly freely. When it gets dark they usually come home to the henhouse to roost. There's always a risk in free ranging chickens. All of our neighbors, and we ourselves, own dogs, and some dogs do kill chickens. There are natural predators to chickens that live in the Champlain Valley. Or a chicken might simply get lost. Still we passed the entire summer and fall with no incidents.

Some of the girls in the woods on our property.

The big day! In late September, we got our first egg! Within a week we had several more. Several weeks later we were getting 7 or 8 eggs a day.

Our first egg!

And then came the winter. In preparation for the winter I strung an extension cord out to the henhouse to supply power for a heat lamp. We also keep the henhouse lit on a close to summer schedule, to keep the egg production up. I insulated the exterior walls of the henhouse with R-13 and paneled, so the hens wouldn't eat the fiberglass. I insulated the roof with R-19. Then came the first snow.

"Hey! What's all this stuff all over the ground! I don't like this!"

Until one intrepid Black Astralorp (now named 'Snowball' for her indifference to snow) decided to give it a try.

Since our hens mostly didn't like snow, and there was nothing for them to scratch on anyway, we mostly kept them in the henhouse during December. We would let them out occasionally when the snow cover was reduced enough to give them a place to scratch around. This proved to be a mistake.

On December 31, 2003, we let our hens out while we went into town to watch a movie. They had never been molested by any predator before, but maybe the short supply of prey made them more of a target. Or maybe we just got unlucky. In any case a hawk killed one of our hens, a beautiful Aracauna named Inu. Our only green egg layer. So now the hens stay in the henhouse until Spring.

Inu: May 15, 2003 - December 31, 2003. R.I.P.

And that so far, is the story of our chickens. We plan to get several more Aracauna's in the Spring. They are not the greatest layers, but with 3 Golden Comets and two Black Astralorps we usually have 5 sure eggs a day. And the Aracaunas sure are pretty birds with eggs that can be most any color (though a particular chicken seems to always lay the same color).