chickens Archives - Our Homestead Adventures

This is why you don’t name your chickens

Chickens can be a great addition to your farm, family or homestead. But there’s an old rule about keeping a chicken… don’t name it

Farm Eggs vs Store Bought Eggs

Yes, you can taste the difference between farm fresh eggs and store bought eggs. We’re asked all the time whether we can tell the difference between the eggs from our chickens and those bought at the grocery store. They come from chickens, how different can they be? Oh… there’s a difference. Since building our coop…

Polar Vortex Hits the Homestead

The much talked about “Polar Vortex” made its way into Kentucky Wednesday. While school was called off, farm chores never are. We’re surviving, the animals are doing well and hopefully warm weather will return before too long. We knew that the Polar Vortex was coming for a few days, so we had time to prepare.…

Beauty in the Fade, Fall on the Homestead

Finding meaning in fall. The leaves swirled down from our persimmon tree with a wind rushing up our hill. The chickens have lost quite a few feathers, as a palette of various shades have been wind-blown lining the sides of the chicken run like a tossed feathered boa. Our majestic sunflowers with multiple heads of…

Preserving Eggs for Winter

Fresh eggs long after the hens stop laying. People ask all of the time, what do you do with all those eggs? You can eat that many eggs? The truth is, we don’t get tons of eggs all year ‘round. We think we’ve found a way to continue to have fresh eggs in the winter.…

Our First Predator Encounter

Not a single predator… until now. A predator is going to come hunting for dinner when you have a farm, it’s just a fact of nature. We’ve taken every precaution to protect our chickens and have been very fortunate… until now. When Chris designed the chicken coop and chicken run, he designed the fence to…

Count ‘Em? Never Before They Hatch

And now we know why you never count your chickens before they hatch. For the past few weeks we’ve anxiously awaiting the arrival of chicks. We’ve counted down… and kept counting… and counting. Nothin’. Nada. Zip. It’s been a bit frustrating and worrisome. The Black Australorp hen began sitting on eggs more than a month…

Restoring Order in the Chicken Coop

Order in the Coop Last October we hatched our first chicks in the coop, “Thursday” and “Friday”. It was extraordinary to watch our little chickens grow-up. We discovered at about 4 months of age that our distinctive young chickens were roosters. We knew we would not be able to keep them, especially since we still…

Perspective: Every day something dies so you may live

Where our food comes from has new perspective after butchering our first chicken. We rose well before the sun. It was raining, we couldn’t see the orange glow had we gotten a later start anyhow. But as we prepared to butcher a chicken for the first time, we were met with a range of thoughts…

Introducing New Chickens to Your Flock

Sometimes “Soon” is “Too Soon” We’ve heard a lot of advice about when to introduce new chickens to your flock. Until now, we’d had great success. Typically, we’re told, you want the new chickens to be about 3 months old before adding them to your flock. A group of Barred Rock and Silver Laced Wyandottes…