One of the things that has been missing on our little hobby farm is birds. Chickens in particular. We had them a few years ago, but lost our flock to a pair of foxes and some dogs from the local neighborhood. The dogs got loose from their homes, and raided our chicken coop. Several times; I kept making repairs and trying to stop them from making a problem. However, the dogs were quite persistent and kept breaking into the coop. Once they had made the holes in the fence or the coop, then the foxes came by and cleared out the survivors. One dog even got into one of our rabbit pens that we had at the time. It didn't end well for the bunny, just as it didn't go well for the poor birds either.
But we have spent the last few years making some BIG changes to the farm. The rabbits got their own barn, and we will be doing the same for the chickens once the snow goes away this spring. Initially we had plans to order our chicks this summer, after the barn was done. But if we do that, our "order" would not get filled until almost September of this year, or even as late as November. That's when things turn back into winter around here. A very bad time to start raising chicks. So......what to do?
Well, I got a text message from a fellow hobby farmer in our area. They are hatching chicks and wondered if we had any interest in egg layers. Of course, the fast answer was "YEP!" Although getting birds NOW is a bit ahead of our planned schedule. But we will make it work out. We drove out to their farm this afternoon, and came home with 17 little fluff balls. It's a straight run of barnyard-mixes, but looks to be heavy on females. The folks we got this batch from will be doing a 2nd run for us in the next few weeks. And, one of our in-laws is also hatching out a run of eggs for us as well. So, we have chickens again!