It’s time for you to finally meet the chickens!

I’ve mentioned them here and there, but I haven’t gotten around to a formal introduction. Backyard chickens seem to be trendy lately, so I thought I’d share our story with you here; because who knows? Maybe you’re interested. If the photos seem somewhat hazy, it’s because I took them through the chicken wire (I don’t like going into the coop with flip flops on, you understand).

We have twelve chickens- all egg layers (not broilers, which are raised just for meat). We got our chickens about a year ago through the mail via My Pet Chicken. They were delivered to the local post office, where I picked them up in a little box (with holes, don’t worry) and they chirped the whole way home. They lived in the garage for a while while my husband built the coop. They were pretty cute at first, but turned a little freaky when they hit their “teenage” years- not fully grown, but acting crazy! As soon as they started jumping out of their box, mama sent them right outside.

We actually started out with 16 chickens. Three of them died as chicks and one turned out to be a rooster (it’s very difficult to figure out the gender of chicks, so occasionally, you’ll get a rooster instead of a hen). We decided to get rid of him since we live in a residential neighborhood and we didn’t want him clucking away every morning and waking the neighbors. Nick took care of it, and I made some broth (gotta do what you gotta do). If you have any questions about that process, I’ll pass them along to Nick.

Nick is great with the chickens. Typically he feeds and waters them in morning and gathers the eggs. (Recently, he’s started cooking them up for breakfast, too- thanks, babe!) I do the chicken chores when he’s traveling, but I’m not a huge fan of the job. I wouldn’t say I’m “scared” of the chickens, I just don’t like to hang out in the coop longer than I have to.

We typically get about 8-10 eggs a day. We eat most of them, but I love having extra to give away to friends. The chickens seem to come up in conversation a lot, so it’s nice to have enough extra eggs to pull out of the fridge and let people try. You can easily tell the difference between our eggs and store-bought eggs. They have darker and richer yolks, stronger whites (try whisking them, geez) and thicker shells.

Nick designed and hand-built the coop. It has gone through a few changes and it’s not too fancy, but it works for us. Inside the coop are three water containers, two feed containers and some hay bales for them to lay eggs on (we used to have boxes for laying, but they never went in them). The chickens eat some feed, some greens and lots of our leftovers. We wish we could let them roam free in the yard, but we want to respect our neighbors and keep them safe.

We’ve really enjoyed having the chickens so far. They’ve been pretty easy to take care of and the fresh eggs are absolutely worth it.

What do you think? Does anyone out there have chickens or want to have chickens? Any questions about how to raise them? Do you think it’s crazy to have chickens in our backyard? Id’ love to hear what you think!