Chickens are great. I'm not sure why we didn't have these little magical egg producers before, but I'm sure glad we have them now.
Reed and I visited a local Chapel Hill farm where a nice couple, Tony and Caroline raise chickens and sheep. It was a riot to see these free range birds laying eggs in trees and even funnier when we chased them down to catch them.
I worked out a barter for some valued plants in exchange for 5 chickens and we took them home to the farm. At first they lived in the goat pin before we made a chicken coop out of recycled building material.
After taking Tony's advice of picking up the hens and throwing them into the coop every night for protection, the little obedient birds are doing it themselves automatically and are already laying eggs in the roost. We have gotten over a dozen eggs in less than a week, without even needing to feed them.
We plan on extending our operation with more hens and a rooster to hopefully maintain a sustainable population of this eggselent source of protein.
