Backyard Chickens

You know the drill: sorry for my absence, lots to say, a bit too incoherent for a blog post at this time. However there's other stuff that I gotta get to. Most excitingly, we've moved. Well, nothing too dramatic, but it's a pretty good change. Now I live in a house full of people with chickens in the backyard.

I'm sure there's a great post somewhere about the merits of keeping chickens in your yard, but I don't think this is it. For a large house of seven, there are only three hens. While it won't feed us impressive amounts of eggs, it is a nice treat when they do lay. And trust me, once you've eaten good quality pastured eggs, there's no comparison.

There's Big Mama:

She wears the pants in this trifecta. She pecks the best food, and gets the best scraps of compost we feed them. She'll eat from my hand if she likes what I've got.

Pepper:

Pepper is a stubborn bird. After spending a little time with her, I imagine having a barbecue.

And Naked Neck:

Naked Neck is a Turken. Turkens are not in fact a cross between a turkey and a chicken as the name suggests, but it's nice to pretend. Naked Neck is probably our best layer. She's been laying daily.

On a normal day we'll get two eggs, which just isn't enough. There's talk of getting three more hens, although we are technically only allowed to have three in city limits.

I was lucky enough to photograph the very first egg pulled from the hen house some weeks ago.



I like living with these birds and the results are wonderful. While the greenish, reddish, and brown eggs are certainly wonderful to look at post lay,

they are even better

for eating.